This is the final installment about the races introduced earlier in "Watching My First Cycling Road Race", cycling races held on closed streets in Moriyama, Shiga, Japan, about an hour's drive northeast from Kyoto.

After the "youth races" were some "C4" races, races for inexperienced riders (or riders who are experienced but slow). If I were to ever try a race, I'd start in "C4".

This event broke C4 into three different races: "C4H" for men above a certain age (40?), "C4L" for men below the certain age, and "C4W" for women.

As before, I situated myself at a pinch [...]

I went out for a walk with my camera around Gion in yesterday's drizzly dusk, and snapped a few photos. The combination of the hour and the weather makes them a bit "gritty".

The cycling races in Moriyama, Japan that I wrote about last week included some youth races. I was struck by the form of the child in the photo above... to my untrained, still-wet-behind-the-cyclist-ears eyes, her form seemed so beautiful and efficient.

However, I don't want to appear stupid on my own blog -- at least more stupid than I normally do -- so I had the sense to ask an expert about her form as it appears in the photo: I asked professional bike fitter Vincent Flanagan, and his short reply was an education in my own ignorance. Here's his [...]

In my previous post about a visit to Tokyo last weekend, I mentioned that on the bullet-train ride there I'd passed by a mountain with a temple nestled at the top, and thought it might be nice to investigate the presumably steep road up there. It turns out that it was.

The mountain in question is one of a pair of monadnocks in an area that's otherwise flat as a pancake. Here's the view from Google Earth (with elevation exaggerated for effect):

The taller of the two rises about 350m (1,165') above the surrounding plain, which isn't all that tall, [...]

On Wednesday I did what must have been the roughest ride of my short cycling life, a ride that left me absolutely exhausted to the bone before I was even a third done with it. In the end I rode the entire big loop I'd planned, 175km (110mi) to Kobe City's Mt. Rokko and back, but it took 12 hours and a lot more willpower than I thought I had.

It was almost a spur of the moment, and I didn't think it'd be all that difficult for me, and I left the house in good spirits.

The first climb [...]