この間、金光万石さんと一緒に六甲山を登りました、神戸空港から924mの山頂まで。 乗ったルートは距離は長かったので、坂はだいあいマイルドでした。楽しかった。 (ポートアイランドと神戸空港のサイクリングはつまらなかったけれども。) 一番キツイ道は16号線から山頂までの300mの丸形滑り止め道。15%の凸凹坂ですが、行って良かった。山頂からの景色は本当に良かったです。

On Thursday I made my biggest single bicycle climb so far, at least mathematically, by riding from sea level in Kobe Japan, to 924m (3,030') near the summit of Mt. Rokko some 25km (16mi) distant.

Despite its mathematical ranking, the route I took was apparently the easiest route, and wasn't at all challenging. It was just fun. Overall, the day saw 78km (48mi) with 1,800m (6,000') of vertical climb. (Activity at Strava)

But the fun belies how totally stressed and apprehensive I was in the week leading up to it. Mt. Rokko is hundreds of meters [...]

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Manseki and I rode into the mountains of northwest Kyoto to check out some roads I found on the map that we'd never ridden, but in trying to continue after a rest pause, I found my rear tire was flat. It must have been a slow leak of some sort.

Once on our way, we came to the first road to check out, which starts here.

Like so many of Kyoto's rural roads, it was lovely.

We tried both. The one toward the left quickly became gravel so we abandoned it.

The other continued nicely...

And then I got a [...]

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Saturday was a NORU group ride with 14 people, my first big group ride this year, I think. (The first NORU group ride was this lovely ride last fall.)

Vincent was doing something that looked quite strange... can you notice it in the photo?

Vincent suggested we take a short alternate to the planned route, down a lovely descent. I had the camera and so took it slow at first, but still got upwards of a safe 70kph. So fun.

The route brings us past a picturesque lake with a cemetery on the hillside opposite. It was pretty hazy so [...]

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English follows this short Japanese version of the post...

京都から大阪へのサイクリングコースはほとんど良いですが、京都市内では嫌な部分も有ります。 泥、水、砂、凸凹。この範囲は楽しくないので、別のルートを作りました。 ルートは難しくないが、説明はちょっと複雑ですので、上の地図を見て下さい。 それとルートのGPXファイルを準備しました。 帰り道は行く道とちょっと違うし、来年の４月までの工事の為に迂回もあり、４つのダウンロードを作りました。

2017年3月31日まで2017年4月1日から 京都から大阪へ 京都から大阪へ 大阪からの帰り道 大阪からの帰り道

In my first blog post about cycling to Osaka from Kyoto, one can see photos of the lovely bicycle route that spans much of the 40~50 kilometers (~30 miles). My other posts that include the trip also show scenes of the lovely, flat, smooth, bicycle path.

What I haven't shown much, besides the photo above that appeared last week, is a horrible ~4km (~2.5mi) section of the path that exits eastern Kyoto. It's full of teeth-rattling bone-jarring bumps, in [...]

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Having been back in Kyoto for two weeks after having been away for three months, I finally started to ease back into real cycling with my first challenging ride since January (probably since doing Sugino Pass three times in a row on Jan 11).

I'd built up slowly with some simple rides, but nothing with a lot of climbing. I was surprised to find during those simple rides that I was doing much better on short/intense climbs than I did before the three-month break, and I wondered whether this unexplained fitness would transition to longer climbs.

The answer turned out [...]

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