It took a casual spin around Kyoto last weekend, as the cherry blossoms were starting to come in.

Looking down the street from next to the construction, toward the right, it was a mad house:

So, instead I went up the steep road that goes under the shrine arch seen two photos above.

Not long past the shrine gate, I noticed a huge statue off to the side, and wondered how long it had been there and how I had never noticed it before:

It turns out that it's been there since 1955, and is 24m (80') tall. I guess I'm not very attentive.

I ended up taking the long way around to the other side of the “not going to even try” street, where it was just as crowded.

I'd never noticed this street that pitched down in zig-zag curves like a snake, so was happy to try it despite the bumpy cobblestones.

It eventually brought me to a service road where a trash-truck driver was replacing a “do not enter” rope. I guess there was normally one at the top, but it had been placed aside for him. So, I don't think I'll be able to take the road again, now that I know I wasn't supposed to have the first time.

Popping out of the eastern gate, I made my way up to Shogunzuka, where I used to go often to try to catch a nice sunset.

The “nearby photos” link under the photo brings you to some of the many posts I've done from up here, including some amazing sunsets like this and this and this.

This ride was the first this year not to wear full-on winter gear. It was lovely to be out.

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 point in the course loop, so I could catch them twice during each loop. Sometime during the first loop, the motorcycle pulls away and the race is on.

Kazutaka Hatano, whom I would meet a week later on my “bullet train view ride”, was in this race, and I happened to catch some photos of him.

As I discussed in the first installment, it's much more efficient to draft behind someone than to be the leader, who is essentially an “air plow” for those smart enough to follow close enough behind. I've never raced so my understanding is in theory and not practice, but generally one doesn't want to be the leader until the last seconds of the race, camping behind others conserving energy until releasing all the pent-up savings in a final explosive sprint to the finish.

Something strikes me odd about this photo. I know it's a sprint finish and that these guys are all fighting against each other for a spot on the podium. They're giving everything they have, probably going 50~60kph (~35mph). Yet, other than the expression on their faces, there's no sense of movement or urgency in this shot. Even their body positions are not all that aggressive looking. Just feels odd to me.

I didn't realize until it was over, but they started the women's C4 race a half a lap after the men's, so I totally missed it. )-:

Then it was time for C4L, the younger men's C4 race. Before it starts, I'll note that the winner of the older men's C4 race (Mr. Love Me Tender) would have placed 42nd, in the back of the pack, had he been in the C4L race.

Ionut, who we saw riding in the pairs race with Stephanie in the first post, would be in this solo C4L race as well.

I said earlier that one doesn't want to be up front (except during the last few seconds of the race), but a notable exception is when working as a team. Two or more riders working together might work to pave the way for the fastest sprinter to take charge during the final sprint. Until then, the support riders plow the way, burning their energy in the long leadup to the finale so that the sprinter can conserve.

I don't know whether that was the plan for the rider seen leading above, but there were two others behind him with identical jerseys, so presumably on the same team. If it was their plan, though, it didn't work, as the fastest among the three finished in 30th place (which perhaps sounds much worse than it is... 30th place was five seconds behind the winner).

Another reason to not ride behind someone is if you're so much stronger than everyone else that you can ride faster alone than the others working in a group. This “stronger than everyone else” thing is usually more wishful thinking than fact, so it's common to see such attempts crumble as the energy is squandered.

After the stretch above, the riders disappear from my view for 30 seconds or so, to reappear at the start of the long backstretch...

The reaction of me and those with me was “oh no, Ionut, what are you doing!? Big mistake... get behind someone!”. Those who had raced said that until you had experience, it was difficult to moderate oneself during the heat of the race.

However, yet another reason one might want to be at the front of the race is to control the pace, either setting it fast because you think you can burn out sprinters who might be fast at the end but who don't have the endurance to keep up a blistering pace for the whole race, or to keep things slow so that you yourself don't get burnt out.

It's this final reason, to slow the pace, that Ionut later said was his plan. But we didn't hear that until later, and didn't think of it ourselves at the time, so the whole time he was in front we were cringing.

After the hairpin that ends the loop, there's a descent (seen in the background above) where speeds can get quite high if someone attacks (tries to break away), so I imagine there's a lot of jostling for position during this section. Ionut is finally not leading, but he's also still not drafting so the performance penalty is the same.

In the photo above, Ionut isn't drafting, but someone is drafting him, the guy in the center of the photo in red and black clothes, with a GoPro slung under his white handlebars. He posted the video from the GoPro on YouTube... this link opens the video at the spot the photo above was taken; you can watch from there or move around to see the whole race or just the finish (he came in 9th, 1.5 seconds after the winner).

Orange Socks — Seiya Iwata (岩田聖矢) — is in middle school (about 14 or 15 years old) and, according to my web research, has been racing like this for a decade longer than I've been cycling at all. He doesn't appear in any of the photos except these two at the finish because he was always tucked in behind someone, drafting, and not sitting photogenic (but inefficiently) at the head of a pack. He may well be the most experienced rider of the group. That's not saying much for a “C4” race, I suppose. One expects that he should be moving up to “C3”, at least if the rules allow someone that young to do so.

In the photo above, Ionut is at the far left. He came in 6th place, 1.2 seconds after the winner. Full results are published here.

There were, of course, higher-level races held at this event, all the way up to the semi-pro “C1”, but I didn't see those races.

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 reply:

Now that you mention it, her leg doesn't look to extent quite as much as it should, combined with the too-close handlebars and she's all squished up with no where for her lungs to expand.

About her elbow coming back behind the knee, it seems there's often some overlap when getting really aero, at least if you don't have aerobar extensions, but her's seems extreme. Compare with this photo from the earlier post, of a lady with minimal overlap despite that she's sitting way forward on the seat:

Anyway, it's a joy to see children enjoying sport, so I was happy to click some photos when they raced.

The tot “race” was a short out-and-back affair. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to launch inexperienced children down a lane directly into a sudden hairpin U-turn, but the results were entirely predictable.

It was bedlam for a short while as kids lost control at slow speed, and kids behind them attempted to react.

This little boy couldn't have been much past his third birthday. He'd hit the corner too fast and ended up dropping the bike, causing some accessories to fall off. I and a few other adults tried to help him get going, but it took a while to figure out how to get things remounted, and the whole time I was struck with the poise this child possessed. He was clearly intent on finishing the race, and was clearly a bit shaken up by the “crash”, but he never cried and remained calm and steady and on task. Were it that I had such poise under pressure.

Continued here...

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, but at least on the map the roads looked to be “interesting”. So, I made a plan to investigate some of the roads on them. It turns out that a couple of friends could join me, so we made a plan to meet yesterday morning on the other side of Lake Biwa, nearer to the mountains.

On the way there, I passed by the entrance to a short but steep side road up to a mountain-top golf course. I had done the 1.1km @ 11% climb only once before, and hadn't planned on doing it on this ride except that I'd lost the KOM (“King of the Mountain” — the fastest registered attempt) when someone rode it faster the previous day, so why not? I tried it again and regained my KOM. It's a hollow crown, though, because, inexplicably, only two other folks have ever attempted it. 🙂 If someone even remotely strong gives it a try, it'll be out of my range.

I was looking forward to the nice decent from Tochu Pass toward Lake Biwa, which I think I could KOM easily if I got lucky with traffic, but the blast of a headwind the moment I started told me not to bother. Luckily, the wind turned out not to be much of an issue for the rest of the ride.

One lane of this bridge has groves cut in the pavement that cause music to be heard (presumably only when traveling about the speed limit). You can hear it as cars go by, with the same strong drop in pitch as when an ambulance passes. (Here's a video with an example of what it sound like in a car.)

I'd met Yano-san briefly at the Moriyama Criterium the other day. We've seen Okabe-san on last year's post about cyclocross.

Finally we got to the first climb, 1.8km @ 9.2% up to the Kawarayazen Temple. As is my habit with new climbs, I took it easy. The KOM earlier, on the way to the meeting spot, was my one hard effort for the day.

The road at the top is fed by two approaches, the easier of which we'd just taken. My plan was now to descend halfway down the way we came, turn off to the other approach and descend all the way down, turn around, and climb it right back up to where we were now.

The other approach brought us down past a shrine, so we stopped for a bit.

After reaching the temple at the top again, we descended back down the way we'd come the first time. I'm still not feeling my descent mojo, but even when I'm taking it easy I tend to be fairly zippy, so I was bummed that I missed the KOM on the descent because my water bottle bounced out on a bump. Even though I had to stop, ride back up a bit to pick it up, and then get myself going, I missed the KOM by only 14 seconds. Maybe next time.

(To be clear, I know that descent KOMs are sort of meaningless... the real work is in going up, but I'll take my warm fuzzy feelings where I can.)

We had a comically-difficult time finding a place to eat, with every place we tried being closed. Eventually I resorted to a simple search for “restaurant” on Google Maps, and one with the name “Smile Chicken” caught my eye. I loves me some chicken. We went, and it was great... it was a simple all-you-can-eat buffet for 1,100 yen (about US$10).

It was only when writing this post that I realized I'd been dyslexic in reading the name, transposing two characters to end up with an oddly-pronounced “Smile Chicken”. It's actually “Smile Kitchen”. Still just as tasty.

The third climb of my plan was one of the approaches to the Kannonsho Temple (観音正寺), the temple I'd seen from the bullet train that started all this.

The climb was comparable to the first one we did, and like that first one, there were two lower approaches leading to the same final road, so like that first one, we descended and turned right around to head back up.

On the second descent I didn't stop for photos or lose my water bottle, so I made the KOM.

Now that we'd done these two approaches to the temple, we moved around to the other side of the mountain for a third approach, the North Approach that goes quite a bit higher: 2.4km (1.5 miles) @ 10%.

That out of the way, I had one more climb on the agenda, one that I hadn't looked at closely but seemed to be short and mild. I wanted to bother with it only because I wanted to do all the climbs on these two mountains.

It was ridiculous. The short road is about 1km @ 15% average, which turned out to be more or less several “Nasty” segments tied together by road whose steepness was merely jaw-dropping. I'm getting used to these kinds of steep, especially after this place, but it was still demoralizing to come around a hairpin and see a stretch before you that didn't look humanly possible.

I was happy to survive without stopping, for I don't think I would have been able to clip in and restart.

Eventually, Okabe-san came along...

The other two never made it... they came around one of those hairpins and decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

All in all it was 172km (107mi), my ninth-longest ride. There was 2,070m (6,800') of elevation gain.

I fared much better than last week's Century of Bonk, mostly because I ate better.

Somewhere between the last climb and dinner, my left cleat gave out and wouldn't stay clipped in.

I'm just so thankful that it didn't give out during that last steep climb, or sometime before; I wouldn't have attempted it if I knew my cleat was iffy.

These clips lasted since this ride last fall, meaning that I got 6,075km (3,775mi) out of them, which is comparable to what I got with the previous set. I don't quite know why they get so roughed up, though, since I generally use cleat covers when not riding.