Category Archives: cycling

A hilly 200 km brevet in scenic Izu peninsula

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Yesterday I cycled 200 km across the mountains of west Izu (Shizuoka prefecture, Japan) on my Bike Friday folding bike. I had resolved do at least one century ride (160+ km) every calendar month of this year, some of them organised events, but most personal rides. BRM309 200 km by AJ NishiTokyo was my first official brevet of the year. I completed it in an official time of 12:58, i.e. just over half an hour under the 13 1/2 hour time limit.

The scenery was beautiful and the weather perfect but the course tough. With a highest point of 450 m, I first found it hard to believe that this course should really have more climbing (3159 m total) than the 300 km Fuji brevet I did last May (2800 m total), but except for the first and last 10% and some short stretches through the towns on the coast, this was a pedal-powered roller coaster! On the smaller roads grades of 8-11 percent were not uncommon.

I loaded the Bike Friday into the Prius the night before (no need to fold the bike or take off the wheels), went to bed at midnight and got up at 04:00. A little after 06:00 I got off Tomei expressway at Numazu and drove near Mishima station, where I found a 1000 yen ($10.50) a day car park. One couple dressed like randonneurs was already setting up their bikes in there.

An hour from home on the expressway it had suddenly struck me I had left my reflective vest at home. No vest, no brevet! But it was already too late to turn back. Fortunately the organisers had some stock and sold me one for 1600 yen ($17). To start with I was wearing new bib shorts and new jerseys (two layers for the morning and evening chill). GS Astuto’s HauteRoute shorts proved exceptionally comfortable, like wearing your best pair of pajamas at home. I sweated a lot, in fact my cheeks were white with salt afterwards, but the shorts and jersey kept me comfortable. The deep pockets safely stored wallet, camera, keys and some food.

There were 60 riders in two blocks of 30, starting at 7:30 and 8:00. They started us in smaller groups. I was wearing my heart rate belt and wanted to aim for a consistent workout throughout the day, but I worked much harder during the first 50 km than I had intended and less hard later on. When you have some other fast guys to follow (which would save you having to navigate) it is tempting to hang on at whatever cost. We headed through town and along a river to the south. After 20 km the route started climbing, peaking at a tunnel about 450 m above sea level, then down to the coast. We made the first 50 km in 2 1/2 hours, putting me more than half an hour ahead of the pace needed for completing in time, and that is what I also finished with.

I glimpsed Mt Fuji across the bay from near Toi.

The coastal road went to Matsuzaki through many tunnels and a couple of climbs. After Matsuzaki we climbed the second highest pass on a small mountain road and it was very pretty. Plum trees (ume) were in bloom everywhere.

PC1 (point de contrôle 1) was at 95 km, almost at the half way point, but there had also been a safety check at the first tunnel (lights!). We were given pastries baked in the shape of bicycle cranks.

From the control point we headed west to the coast, which we mostly stayed on. As mentioned before, the coastal road goes mostly up and down. It only becomes level again at the north west corner of Izu. The top third of the west coast was the hardest part. There were few villages, no shops and it was gradually getting dark. I had somehow expected the second half of the ride to be easier than the first because the maximum elevations were much lower, but it was actually harder. Between Toi and the north coast there were no flat portions in towns between descents and climbs, because there were no towns (or more appropriately, there were no towns there because there was no flat land).

The following was a sign we had to spot and then write down the Kanji characters, as part of a quiz question. As a Kanji-challenged foreigner, I got dispensation to bring back a picture instead:

Izu used to have a lot of terraced rice fields built into the hills because there wasn’t much flat land. Much of these fields now lie fallow or have been turned into sugi tree plantations contributing to the hay fever epidemic in Tokyo.

Mt Fuji at dusk:

I completed!

Having my brevet card checked at the finish:

Garmin Edge 500 on long rides

Since January I’ve been using a Garmin Edge 500 with heart rate monitor strap for logging bike rides. Garmin quotes a battery life of “up to 18 hours”. After this 13 hour bike ride, it showed a remaining battery capacity of 21%. Extrapolating from this, the battery would have lasted about 16 hours in total.

I was not just logging the ride (GPS data) but also using the heart rate strap and had the Garmin track a course with turn-by-turn instructions, which probably draws a bit more power. I had created the course as a TCX file in RideWithGPS while looking at the course as published on http://latlonglab.yahoo.co.jp.

In any case, 16 hours is enough for a 200 km brevet with its 13 1/2 hour time limit, but not enough for a 300 km brevet with its 20 hour limit, unless you are a really fast cyclist and/or the course is extremely flat. For my 300 km brevet I am planning to use my Garmin Edge 500 power hack, a special USB cable that allows me to charge the device while logging and navigating.

Garmin Edge USB power hack

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I use a Garmin Edge 500 for recording most of my bicycle rides (I do at least one ride of 160 km or more per month on my Bike Friday Pocket Rocket). One problem with the Garmin is that some of my rides will take longer than the Garmin’s battery will last, but if you try to use an external power source to top up the charge, it will instantly end the recording. Here is my working solution:

Garmin quotes “up to 18 hours” of battery life, but last May I did a 300 km brevet with a 20 hour time limit. There are also 400 and 600 km brevets with 27 and 40 hour time limits (I am not thinking about 1200 km events yet!). While the Garmin has a USB port that it can be charged from using a cable, it won’t normally operate as a GPS unit while connected to a USB power source. Any GPS recording under way will instantly be terminated when you plug in the cable. So what can you do about that?

I searched a bit on Google and found that when you plug a USB cable into the socket at the back of the Garmin, it tests pin X on the USB mini connector. On normal cables (including the one that comes bundled with the Garmin Edge 500) that pin is left disconnected. Unless it finds it tied to ground (GND) as you supply external power to the Garmin, it will switch into a passive storage device mode. In that mode it provides read/write access to a PC via the USB port with all GPS functionality and user interface disabled. The screen will display only the brand name and it won’t respond to any buttons being pressed. If pin X is tied to GND, it will operate normally.

This behaviour mirrors the way pin X works on smart phones that support the USB “On The Go” (OTG) specification. USB OTG allows smart phones to drive certain peripherals such as memory card readers, in the same way a PC can drive those peripherals. Normally when a smart phone is connected to a USB port, it acts as a passive storage device to which a PC can upload MP3 files or from which it can download photographs (JPEG files). With an OTG cable, the phone remains the active end. Pin X is the magic key that tells the phone which way to behave, active or passive. It all depends on whether the USB plug is an OTG plug or a regular one.

My cheap low-tech solution was to buy a USB mini OTG adapter (480 yen – about US$5) on Amazon. This has a USB mini plug with pin X wired to GND on one end and a female USB-A connector (like a USB socket on a PC) on the other. To get power into this I cut the USB A plugs off two old peripherals (such as an old USB mouse), stripped off the ends of the wires in the cable and connected black to black (GND), red to red (+5V). This was not too hard even for my soldering skills. A bit of insulating tape and voila! We have a new male-to-male cable that can draw power from any USB power source and feed it into the female end of the OTG adapter. When I plugged it all together, I could run the Garmin in GPS mode while running on external power from my USB battery.

Lawyer Note: Do not use a male-to-male cable or OTG adapter for any other purpose. Do NOT connect the male-to-male cable to two PCs. Do NOT connect the OTG adapter between a phone and a power source. Only ever connect the cable to the OTG adapter. Only ever connect the OTG adapter to the Garmin. I won’t be responsible for bad wiring mistakes or other stupid mistakes. Don’t sue me if your Garmin or house goes up in smoke!

Here is the photographic evidence that it all works for me:

You can find USB Mini OTG adapters and USB Mini OTG cables on DealExtreme (dx.com). They also have USB-A male-to-male cables and adapters, so you don’t have to make your own as I did (though it’s not difficult if you have at least very basic soldering skills). Any combination of a USB Mini OTG cable or adapter and a USB-A male-to-male cable or adapter should work.

Garmin Edge 500 with Heart Rate and Cadence

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I’ve had my first week with my new Garmin Edge 500 with cadence sensor and premium heart rate monitor strap, so it’s time for a review. I bought it on Wiggle for about JPY 24,500 ($274).

Around the time I bought the Garmin Edge 500, the new Edge 510 came out. It adds a touch screen, wireless connectivity to a smartphone and various nifty new features, but is also more expensive, so I went for the existing 500.

I switched to the Garmin after more than a year and over 8,000 km of GPS logging using Android phones, mostly my Google Nexus S. Here are my first impressions (the cadence sensor in the bundled set is installed on my son’s bike for use with his 500, so it’s not part of this review):

  1. I really love being able to use a heart rate strap and it’s nice to be able to see the HR figure without having to push a button (daylight permitting). I can ride at a consistent effort level, avoiding both effort too light to build stamina and extreme effort that would lead to premature exhaustion. If money were no object, a power meter would work best (which the Garmin supports). A heart rate monitor is an inexpensive alternative that works for most cyclists wanting to improve their performance.
  2. Because of its barometric altimeter the elevation totals are much more meaningful on the Garmin than on the GPS-only phone, where they may be exaggerated by a factor of 2 to 3. Current altitude data on the Android is OK, but small variations add up too much and grades on climbs and descents may be overestimated.
  3. I love the 90 degree turn quick attach / quick release of the Garmin. It feels both secure and convenient. It is more confidence inspiring than the Minoura iH-100-S phone holder for my Android, which is generally reliable, but not 100% bulletproof. Even after using a bumper for the phone, which has improved the grip of the holder, I’ve had a few instances where on bumpy roads only the USB cable attached to the phone saved my day. I would never entrust my $300 phone to the Minoura without some kind of backup method of attachment, while I feel safe about the Garmin’s mode of attachment.
  4. Importing the rides into Strava or Garmin Connect after the ride is really easy. I just connect the Garmin to the USB cable of the PC and click “upload” on the website in the browser and the browser plugin finds the fresh tracks and uploads them. Assigning a name is marginally easier with a real keyboard than a soft keyboard on the Android Strava app. With the smartphone I could also upload rides while I’m on the road, but why do that if I’ll still add more kilometres until I get back home? That would only be a benefit on a multi day tour without laptop.
  5. One drawback of the Garmin is lack of direct Linux support. My son runs Ubuntu on his laptop, while Garmin only officially supports Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, so he asked me to upload his activities on one of my PCs. There’s a workable solution though. When you connect the Garmin to a USB port on an Ubuntu machine, it gets mounted as a removable volume named “GARMIN”. In there is a folder called Garmin, with another folder Activities inside which contains all logged rides as .fit files. Copy those to your hard disk and then upload them manually from a browser (Strava supports .gpx, .tcx, .json, and .fit files).
  6. When leaving the house, both the Garmin and the Android take a short while to lock onto the satellites and the Android seems to have something of an edge (excuse the pun) over the Garmin, which does seem to take its time. Maybe that’s because the Android pull pull satellite position data off the web, while the Garmin can only use whatever data it captured before. In one unscientific test, I took my Android and my Garmin outside in the morning. The Android had a satellite lock in 15 seconds while the Garmin took a more leisurely 44 seconds. This is a minor issue to me compared to the next one, GPS precision.
  7. While I have seen better GPS results on some rides from the Garmin than the Android, switching from the latter to the former has not been a dramatic improvement. I think their results are still in the same class, i.e. far from perfect, especially in built-up areas. Neither is like my car GPS, which is pretty solid. Both my son and I have been riding on Strava segments in Tokyo, expecting to be ranked but found the segment didn’t show up because the plotted route was slightly off to the side, so the segment start or end didn’t match up.
  8. Having temperature data on the Garmin is nice, but not really important to me. Unlike heart rate and cadence it’s not feedback that you can use instantly in how you cycle. Your body is a temperature sensor anyway and how you dress is at least as important as the absolute temperature.
  9. The Garmin 500 battery is supposed to last “up to 18 hours”, which would cover me on everything but 300 km and longer brevets, but on any significant rides I tend to take my Android phone, which I use for Google Maps, e-mail, SMS and yes, even the occasional phone call. Using an external 8,000 mAh battery for the Android, battery life has not really been an issue. The same battery will charge either device (one at a time), provided I take both a mini and micro USB cable with me.

Summary

If my Android had an ANT+ chip or supported BTLE (BT 4.0) for using a heart rate monitor as well as a barometric altimeter, then it would still be my first choice for logging bike rides. Given the limitations of my phone and the reasonable price of the Garmin Edge 500 I am very happy with my purchase.

Cycle more than you drive

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When I bought my bicycle last year, I had a couple of goals for the new year. The amount of driving I was doing had gone down dramatically since moving to Tokyo, so it didn’t seem too ambitious to aim for cycling more kilometres than I drive by car.

I also wanted to cycle a weekly total of at least 100 km, a nice round figure. If I achieved that minimum and assuming I would sometimes do more than the minimum, a goal of 6,000 km for the whole year didn’t seem too ambitious. That would be a monthly average of 500 km. As it turned out, my monthly total was only significantly below 500 km in three months of the whole year.

After getting into longer rides (100 km or more) in February, I ended up doing at least one long ride every month except August, including 16 rides over 100 km and 11 of those over 160 km. The longest ride was a 300 km brevet. I am not fast, but I like to start early and to keep going.

While the year is not quite over yet, my total cycling since January comes to 7250 km (excluding any rides under 5 km which I don’t log), while our car this year has clocked up about 4,000 km being driven by my wife and me. About 1/4 of that driving distance was actually due to bicycle races that my son Shintaro competed in.

While cycling more than driving is not a realistic option for everyone, once you get used to it, the bicycle is a viable alternative more often than you might at first think.

Nichitsu ghost town ride

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I try to cycle at least 100 km per week, with at least one all day ride (12 hours and more) a month. My latest such trip took me to Nichitsu ghost town, a former mining town set up by Nitchitsu Co Ltd in 1937 and abandoned in the late 1970s. Since May several members of Tokyo Cycling Club (TCC) had been passing through that place. The pictures of it that I found on the web looked very interesting, though I did not fancy looking for the infamous brain in a jar.

A week ago another TCC group went on an autumn leaves viewing tour in the area, but I couldn’t make it. So I decided to go the following weekend, together with my friend Jose, with whom I had done several long rides last winter and spring (including the BRM519 300 km brevet in May).

It turned out to be one of the most beautiful rides of the year, but it was also one of the more challenging ones, because of how mountainous the route was and because of how cold it was already. According to Jose’s Garmin 500 GPS, total climbing on the route was only 7 percent less than at the 300 km brevet around Mt Fuji we rode in May!

Jose and I both wanted an early start and we agreed to meet at 05:30 at the Tamagawa bridge near Yanoguchi station. I got up at 04:00, planning to leave at 05:00, but ran 10 minutes late because I decided to get changed again to be better prepared for the cold and later was glad I did! I changed from my cycling shorts with extra set of tights on top into corduroy pants and long johns. Later on, when descending from a tunnel that is the highest point of the route (elevation: approximately 1250 m), I also wore up to three shirt layers (two short sleeve and one long sleeve sports shirt) plus a wind breaker, a scarf and ski gloves.

While climbing I stripped down to a short sleeve t-shirt when it was 9° C. At the higher altitudes it was around 3° C and I wore another layer.

The day before the ride I got myself a Carradice Pendle saddle bag for the Brooks saddle on my Bike Friday to carry clothes, bread and the obligatory bananas (hey, you can’t go on a lengthy bike ride without bananas!). The bag was the perfect size for this kind of trip.

After meeting up at the Tamagawa river we cycled along the east bank up to Oume. After a 20 minute stop at the station convenience store we headed off into the mountains, climbing Yamabushi pass and descending into Chichibu via a route recommended by my friend Pete.

5 1/2 hours after leaving home we arrived at Chichibu where we had a nice 50 minute bakery lunch and coffee at a mall, then set off for the big autumn leaf viewing loop. We encountered plenty of nature, including one deer with big antlers, but fortunately no bears:

The back roads were great, some of them almost totally deserted of cars. At other spots there were many parked cars and people walking around with tripods and fine SLRs to capture the splendid seasonal views.

It took us four hours from Chichibu via route 140 and route 210 to Nichitsu and the tunnel above. These are some workers’ dormitories:

This used to be the public bath house:

This is the tunnel at the top of the valley:

The trees became more colourful the higher we climbed. At the top most of them had already shed their leaves. The climbs were maybe as steep as 10 % and did I already mention that it was cold?

Though we never stopped for very long, we stopped many times for pictures, as these were a main goal of the ride. Thank you for your patience, Jose!

After already riding for an hour in the dark we got back to Chichibu around 18:00. We had just enough time to pack the bikes and get some food before hopping on an express train back over the mountains. We had covered 177 km with over 2400 m of climbing in beautiful countryside. What a great day!

Ultegra Di2 versus Alfine 11 Di2

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I just saw a post by Bike Friday head designer Rob English about Ultegra Di2 becoming available on their high end folding bikes. Di2 is Shimano’s electronic gear shift system. The first version appeared on their high end Dura Ace group set used by professional racers. The latest Ultegra Di2 is more affordable, but it’s still not cheap (about US$2,300 vs. $4,000 for the group set). A few months ago my son had the chance to take the Di2-equipped 700C bike of my friend Eric of the GS Astuto team for a spin and simply loved it. Gear changes were so quick and precise and the front derailleur adjusts as you switch through the cassette at the rear. No manual trimming is ever required to avoid chain rub. You never mess up any gear shifts, even under load. Once set up the system remains precisely tuned, with no maintenance required for months.

Some cyclists are skeptical about electronic shifting because it involves batteries. That’s somewhat understandable, since as users of mobile phones and digital cameras we have all experienced running out of charge, often when it’s most inconvenient. However, from what I hear one charge of the Di2 battery should last you about 1,000 km of cycling, far further than the average car fuel tank. A battery that lasts weeks and months should be good enough for most people. What’s more, even if you do run out of power you first get ample warning. For instance, the front derailleur stops working before you will run out of juice for the more important rear derailleur. The ideal setup of course would be electronic shifting combined with a dynamo hub. You would get all the benefits of an electronic system with the self-sufficiency of an all mechanical setup.

After Ultegra Di2, some people were hoping for Shimano to announce a 105 version of Di2 as the next step of digital shifting for the masses (105 is the next road group below Dura Ace and Ultegra), but instead Shimano chose to announce Alfine 11 Di2 (Shimano SG-S705), an electronic version of its 11 speed internal geared hub (IGH), the mechanical version of which had been launched in 2010.

Alfine 11 Di2 addresses the vast city and commuter market, but it should also be interesting for road, touring and mountain bikes. IGHs do without a vulnerable derailleur and require less maintenance. The Alfine 11 gear range (low to high) of 1:4.09 is wider than the 1:3.74 spread of a compact crank (50/34) with a 11-28 cassette. Unlike the mechanical version, Ultegra Di2 does not yet support triple cranks and bigger cassettes can only be done via non-standard hacks.

I recently rode some insanely steep hills west of Tokyo (18-20%), which I could not possibly have managed without the lowest gear of my triple cranks setup (50/39/30 and 11-28 with 20″ 451 wheels). Therefore I think I would be more interested in Alfine 11 Di2, even if Ultegra Di2 will be more appealing to road bike purists.

300 km in a day around Mt Fuji on a Bike Friday

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In the evening of last Sunday I returned from my first brevet ride, a long distance cycling event. I was sunburnt, exhausted and dead tired. The event was BRM519 NishiTokyo 300 km Fuji, a 300 km brevet around Mt Fuji staged by Audax Japan NishiTokyo. It was quite a mountainous course, with 2800 m (9200 ft) of climbing (see map). Also participating was my friend Jose, but we rode separately for most of the course because he is faster. In preparation for this event I had done three training rides (227 km, 200 km and 235 km) since March that followed at least part of the route, one of them with Jose, whose company and advice has been invaluable.

From Machida in western Tokyo we rode down to Enoshima on the Pacific coast, followed the coast to Odawara and climbed up to Gotemba. From there we rode down to the coast near Numazu, followed the coast to Fujikawa, then headed north on a long climb on the extended slopes on the west side of Mt Fuji. From over 1100 m on the NW of Fuji the road descends to Fujiyoshida and further down to Tsuru. The final stretch follows mountainous R35 to Sagamiko (extremely steep in places but great descents) and climbs over Otarumi Toge on R20 near Mt Takao (which seems trivial after all the previous climbing).

Though the 15 km/h minimum pace implied by the 20 hour time limit may seem modest, it includes all food and sleep breaks and a course with plenty of climbing. The people who design these courses like back roads and hills. Some of the R35 climbs I was crawling up at 6.5 km/h in my granny gear. You go uphill for 2 hours before Gotemba and 4 hours solid at Mt Fuji, which you can never make up on faster downhills from there. The 22:00 start means the first 6 1/2 hours are at night, so not only do you need proper lights, you also lost a night of sleep.

Lack of sleep proved to be much more of a challenge than distance or elevation. If there was one thing I’d do differently next time, it would be to make sure I get a good few hours sleep during daytime before the night time start. I had meant to do that, but instead spent that time running around looking for extra lights, as I found out from Jose that I needed two lights at the front and two at the rear (one of which could be on the helmet). The first rear light I bought didn’t work when I tried it at home, so I returned it and got a another and finally had only napped 20 minutes before I took the train to Machida.

At the brevet reception:

People there were very friendly, though they were quite surprised I wanted to ride the brevet on a small wheeled folding bike. 80 people had signed up for the ride. I received my brevet card and instructions on how to gather receipts at the unmanned checkpoints (PC = point de contrôle).

After a group briefing each bike and rider was checked to make sure we met all the conditions about lights, bells, reflective clothing, etc. Then we were off into the night.

Jose and I were riding together for the first couple of km, but separated soon when I stopped to remove a layer as I was warming up. There were plenty of fellow riders for following a lead rider. With the pace at which we were going towards the coast (except for traffic lights), I was feeling like I was on the Enoshima Express train 🙂 We got there a little before midnight. I got my brevet card signed (this was the only manned checkpoint) and I refilled my water bottles at the public toilet where PC1 was located, then headed off with Jose and another rider after a few minutes. I soon dropped off again and rode by myself until other riders came along around 10 km before Odawara, where PC2 was located.

PC2-PC4 were unmanned, that means they were convenience stores where you buy some food or drink, making sure to keep the receipt to prove when you were there. Nevertheless the ride organisers came by car to join us at each of these stops, to check everyone was doing OK and to offer encouragement.

From Odawara the climb to Gotemba starts very gentle, but continues for 30 km for an altitude gain of 460 m. I was lucky to end up riding in a group of 5 that set a good pace I could keep up with. As the route got steeper though, I had to work harder and harder and drafting made less difference, so I waived the rider behind me to pass and continued on my own. Somewhere along the way I came across Jose, who was just about to lie down and take a nap in a bus shelter. As it got colder during the night I put on my trousers from my rain gear.

Somewhere along the 25 km route from Gotemba to the coast the sun came up and I could see Mt Fuji:

I led another rider at a good speed, but was feeling the lack of sleep as I was cycling along the coast. We crossed Fuji river and headed up inland towards the next unmanned checkpoint (PC3).

A fellow brevet rider at PC3:

Before the longest climb:

The 1100 m climb from sea level, starting at about the halfway point of the 300 km up to the pass above Lake Motosu was the hardest part of the ride. The scenery is beautiful though, with many dairy farms. The smell of cow dung reminded me of my home village 🙂

Lake Motosu from the pass:

During the climb I got so sleepy, I had to find a spot to lie down and catch a nap (a slab of concrete next to a rice paddy, with my rinko bag as a pillow), as I felt it wasn’t safe to continue in my state. The same thing happened again on R35 between Tsuru and Sagamiko. I had been 1 1/2 hours ahead of the minimum pace of 15 km/h at PC2 before Mt Fuji, but after those naps didn’t know if I would still make the time limit until almost the very end, when I fought traffic in Machida to make it back by 18:00.

I was so glad when I got back safely and it was all over. I had done well with my training, with eating and drinking and with navigation, but managing naps is definitely something I’ll need to learn if I am to ride brevets again.

I am also looking forward to trying proper cycling shorts which I’ve got on order. Cotton underwear rubbing against certain parts of the male anatomy did become irritating towards the end of the ride. Also, I’ll need something other than a back pack for my stuff, because my shoulders got itchy from the straps, especially with the sweat in warm weather.

They say any brevet over 200 km isn’t much fun and they’re probably right, unless you’re a bit of a masochist. Riding brevets adds a number of challenges beyond personal long distance rides, such as managing time (including sleeping time). It tests planning and self discipline as much as cycling skills. It does give you an excuse for a bunch of long training rides in the mountains. On the brevet itself you’ll meet some extremely nice people who enjoy cycling very, very much. The brevet was almost as hard as my first climb of Mt Fuji last year and “fun” is maybe not the right word to describe it, yet I would definitely recommend giving it a try at least once if you like long rides at a pace that mere mortals can still train for.

Links:

235 km a day on my Bike Friday

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A couple of weeks ago I did my longest ride on the Bike Friday yet – 235 km in a day, across the mountains west of Tokyo to a lake near Mt Fuji during the cherry blossom (sakura) season. This was part of my training for a 300 km brevet ride coming up this month. It was a beautiful ride, one of my most enjoyable so far.

Sakura (cherry blossoms) on route 413:

It took me about 16 hours, of which 14 hours were moving time. I had left home at 05:20 and was back in Tokyo at 21:20 (9:20pm). My Pocket Rocket has a Shimano hub dynamo and a Lumotec IQ Cyo headlamp which provided plenty of light on the last stretch after sunset.

Here is my route. I started from my house in Tokyo after sunrise and cycled out to the mountains some 40 km away, then followed Route 413 up a mountain valley and over a pass over 1100 m (3600 ft) high. I was climbing from virtually sea level (45 m or 150 ft) to 1.1 km high. I was cycling almost continually uphill for the first 96 km (60 miles). After 7 hours (including quite a number of brief stops for food, rest and pictures) I reached the highest pass.

More sakura:

I always want to see the remaining distance:

The exit of the tunnel at the end of The Longest Climb: It’s all downhill from here… NOT!

The shores of Lake Yamanaka at the foot of Mt Fuji, over 900 m (3000 ft) above sea level:

It can be surprizingly difficult to sea Mt Fuji (3776 m high) from just a few km away because of its frequent cloud cover. I cycled 235 km and all I saw of Fuji is this (its foot):

Almost home – at the top of the Mt Takao pass:

The humble Bike Friday Pocket Rocket:

and its crazy rider:

The ABC of distance riding: Always Be Consuming!

There is nothing exceptional about cycling this kind of distance. The key is eating and drinking sufficiently. Most people who first try long distances become exhausted not because of insufficient training, but because they simply eat and drink too little. The energy reserves in your body only last so long. Three meals a day will not cover the continuous energy use of long distance riding. You need to consume about 200-300 kcal per hour and sufficient liquids.

I carried water in two bottle holders, which I refilled whenever I could. Throughout the day I ate: 7 bananas, 6 raisin bread rolls, 360 g of yoghurt, a slice of pizza and several other pieces of bread. I drank about 4 litres of water, orange juice, cocoa, yoghurt drink and sports drink. Don’t worry too much about putting on weight while burning 6500 kcal. I am 10 kg (22 lbs) lighter now than I was the year before I got the bike. I’ve been dropping about one kg a month since I got the bike.

Stick to a speed you can sustain. I am not a fast rider, doing mostly 23-25 km/h on the flat (about 15 mph), with down to as little as 9 km/h (6 mph) on steep climbs, but that doesn’t stop me from going out to see nature, lots of it. I don’t go out there to set speed records, but to see the country, smell the trees and the ocean, view the rivers and mountains and bring back some pictures. Why settle for 3-6 hours when I can enjoy it the whole day?

Long rides on a folding bike

I did this 235 km ride a little over half a year after getting the Pocket Rocket, my first road bike in over 30 years. Some people are surprised that I do these rides on a folding bike. I usually point out that my house is small and a bike with small wheels is easier to store indoors. This is not just my touring bike but also my shopping bike. Almost daily I cycle to shops and carry my groceries home in a back pack. Other people may have a garage with several different bikes for different purposes, but I don’t.

The other part of the answer is that the Bike Friday is no ordinary folding bike. It has the geometry of a regular road bike and it rides like one, but also happens to fold and can even be packed into a regular size suitcase (which I’ve not done yet). It may not fold quite as compactly or as quickly as say a Brompton or Bike Friday’s smaller Tikit, bikes optimized for intermodal commuting, but it is much more suitable for going fast and far. Drop handles offer many different hand positions, which keeps your arms and back comfortable for longer. The wide range gearing with triple chain rings on the front and a 9 speed cassette at the back make it possible to climb steep mountains without too much strain on my knees but still go fast elsewhere. I love my Brooks leather saddle which keeps my bottom happy even after a whole day on the bike.

Ultimately however, it is not about the bike, but about you. If you want to ride more and further, you can do it on almost any bike. A bicycle is a tool. I’ve done a couple of 50 km rides on shopping bikes. When my son was still in Junior High School he once went on a 110 km trip (Yokohama to Enoshima and back) with some friends on a single speed folder. If you have a nice bike, you are more likely to ride it more often because it’s more enjoyable, but whether you ride it at all is still up to you. The type of bike makes no difference if you’re too lazy to ride, as I became once I got into cars, back in my 20s.

If you like longer rides, give them a try on whatever bike you have. If you find that you enjoy these tours and would like a more suitable bike, get a good one and you will not regret it.

Using Sanyo Eneloop Ni-MH AA batteries to power your mobile phone

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About two years ago I started using Sanyo’s rechargeable eneloop batteries. These relatively inexpensive Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH) cells are available in both AA (単3形) and AAA (単4形) sizes. They are low self-discharge cells that keep their charge for months when not in use. I’ve bought boxes of 8 cells of either type, for use in flash lights, bike blinkies, helmet lights and Bluetooth keyboards.

They are initially more expensive to buy than regular alkaline (primary) cells, but you only need to re-use them about three times before they work out much cheaper than primary cells, while you can actually recharge them hundreds of times before they start losing significant capacity.

Here are some nice gadgets that will take them, which I found sold in convenience stores here Japan.

These little cases (by alicty.co.jp) take power from two or three regular alkaline AA or Ni-MH AA cells and provide a USB port for powering mobile phones and other small gadgets with a USB power cable. As you would expect, the three cell version is slightly more powerful, looking to my Google Samsung Nexus S as an AC charger (i.e. it provides more than 500 mA). For the two cell version, the phone shows “charging (USB)” as the status, i.e. it can draw up to 500 mA. The two cell version has a USB-A socket (female) for generic USB cables while the three cell version comes with an integrated micro USB (male) cable. A very similar concept has been around for a while as the MintyBoost.

The nice thing is, if you carry enough pre-charged eneloop cells with you, you can swap cells as needed and have virtually unlimited power. You could even buy primary cells to top up if desperate (one set came bundled with each device), but they would end up costing you more than re-usable eneloop cells in the long term. I’ll carry some Ni-MH cells as spares on long bike trips or hikes, which could come in handy with these little cases.

UPDATE 2012-04-04: I also tried using this adapter with alkaline (primary = non-rechargable) AA cells and it goes through them quite rapidly. Alkaline AA batteries have a notoriously poor performance in high drain applications because of their high internal resistance. You’re much better off sticking with Ni-MH batteries such as Sanyo Eneloop!

It says on the pack that a set of 3 AAs will boost the charge state of a smartphone battery by 30-40%, i.e. it would take you about 3 sets (9 cells) to fully recharge an empty battery. Or put another way, if the phone lasts 5 hours on one charge doing whatever you’re doing, you will consume a set of fresh AAs every 100 minutes to keep it topped up. To provide 500 mA at 5 V (2.5 W) on the USB connector at 80% efficiency would draw 3 W from the batteries, or 700 mA at 4.5 V (3 x 1.5 V). At that kind of load, an alkaline battery might only supply a quarter of its rated capacity, which is normally measured at a much smaller load (which is OK for alarm clocks, TV remote controls, etc. but not high powered electronics like digital cameras or smart phones).

227 km a day on my Bike Friday

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One month after my 155 km bike ride around Miura peninsula, a friend and I got up very early on a Sunday morning and cycled until after sunset. We went from Machida in the west of Tokyo to Mt Fuji and back. My total for the day came to 227 km (see route).

Why this ride? Earlier this month I had signed up for a 300 km brevet ride (randonnée) organised by AJ Nishitokyo for Sat/Sun, May 19/20, 2012. A randonnée is not a race, but individual riders do have to clear certain checkpoints within prescribed time limits. There’s an overall limit of 13 1/2 hours for 200 km rides and 20 hours for 300 km. For more ambitious riders there are also 400 and 600 km events. The most famous randonee is the 1200 km Paris-Brest-Paris that takes place every 4 years. I would have started with 200 km, but all events near Tokyo were already closed for signup, so I went for the next one up. Given that 300 km was almost twice the distance of my longest ride until then, I knew I needed some training to prepare.

My plan was to follow the 300 km route as much as possible to familiarize myself with it, but to cut it to a more manageable distance by taking a shortcut. The full route heads south from Machida in Tokyo to the Pacific coast in Enoshima (Kanagawa prefecture), from there west along the coast to Odawara, then up to Gotemba (Shizuoka prefecture) near Mt Fuji. It swings clockwise around the mountain into Yamanashi prefecture, then returns east to Machida via a route across the mountains. I decided to head north at Gotemba, replacing the long loop around Fuji with a much shorter section near Yamanaka-ko (Lake Yamanaka) to the east of the mountain. According to MapMyRide.com the shorter route would come to 213 km.

I would take the first morning train from central Tokyo out to Machida, ride several km from the station to the starting point and then follow the route. My friend Jose, an experienced randonneur (brevet rider) offered to join me and I gladly accepted. It would have been a lot more difficult without his company and experience.

We started at around 06:30, but I first needed to replace the batteries in my bike lights, attach my waterproof cue sheet to the handlebar and sort out some temporary GPS problems, which took more than half an hour. It’s better to encounter such problems on the training run than in the real time-limited ride…

As we rode along the Pacific coast from Enoshima to Odawara on this March 11, we couldn’t help thinking of the disaster that had struck the Tohoku region exactly one year earlier. The coast here is just as exposed. About 500 years ago, a tsunami destroyed a temple housing the Great Buddha of Kamakura (daibutsu) near Enoshima, almost a km from the coast. Only the bronze statue itself was left. We won’t know what will happen during the next Great Kanto Earthquake until it strikes.

After Odawara the road started climbing towards Gotemba. From there we climbed all the way to Kagosaka pass (1104 m above sea level), where we crossed into Yamanashi prefecture. It started snowing after Gotemba and persisted until we got to Fujiyoshida. We never really saw Mt Fuji, though we passed right in front of it, because of all the snow clouds. On the pass and around the lake everything but the road was covered in snow. I had to rest several times during the climb. I tried to eat and drink as often as possible in order not to run out of energy or get dehydrated (I was sweating a lot, even though temperatures were anywhere from 0C to 6C).

At the top of the mountain pass I knew we still had about 100 km to go, including two climbs of several 100 m each. I started to seriously doubt if I could really get back to Machida by bike or if I would have to catch a train from somewhere. But then we descended for something like 25 km from Yamanaka-ko and my energy came back as I could take it easy. Jose proposed a different route back to Machida that avoided some of the highest climbs and that’s what we did. There were still many climbs around Uenohara and Sagamiko, but I could manage them. Towards the end we rejoined the original 300 km route and got back to Machida around 20:00, which means I would have been within a 13 1/2 hour overall limit for a 200 km ride.

So what did I learn from this experience?

  • “There is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes” Jose told me and he was right. We were dressed appropriately and didn’t have a problem with drizzle or light snow. I was wearing mostly Uniqlo: long sleeved Heattech underwear, Jeans, a light Windbreaker. I also wore a folded handkerchief over my ears under the helmet, old socks with holes cut for the SPD pedal cleats over the Shimano shoes (“Belgian shoe covers”) and ski gloves when it was coldest.
  • I was more tired at the end of my 136 km day than after this 227 km. Eating and drinking often enough are key for long distance. Eat before you’re hungry, drink before you’re thirsty.
  • My butt hurt more on my previous saddle towards the end of the 156 km ride than the Brooks B17 towards the end of the 227 km. The Brooks is great!
  • I had some pain in my left shoulder joint, maybe from the cold and my Achilles tendons felt a bit sore the next day. I probably should have hydrated more before the ride and kept my shoulders warmer.
  • Navigating with the brevet cue sheet was more difficult than I had expected. I needed to edit the printout with bigger fonts and some translation from Japanese.
  • I logged the entire ride with the Strava Android app, with the phone connected to my dynamo hub USB charger via a Li-polymer buffer battery. The phone remained fully charged throughout and at the end the buffer battery charge state was 4 out of 5 LEDs, just like at the beginning. I could ride for days without running out of mobile power.
  • As I already learnt on my 136 km Miura ride (Feb 5, 2012), if you want to go far, start early in the morning and keep going as much as you can. You’ll be amazed how many km you can do in a day if you try!

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