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Yours Truly

Overlooking the Ise Bay

at the 185km (115mi) of a 326km (202mi) bicycle ride

I'm coming out of blogging hibernation to write about a bicycle ride I did
yesterday. I'm pretty happy with myself for it, so in keeping with using my blog as a
diary, I'm putting the story here.

the ride at Strava

There aren't many photos, both because I had only my cellphone and wasn't stopping a lot, and because the stupid iOS app I was using (Halide) decided to not actually
save all but one of the photos that I took in the first eight hours. )-:

So, having seen friend Vincent's ride to Ise City last month, I thought I'd give it a try. Vincent's group took the train back, but I thought I'd cycle back, making it a round trip.
At 326km (202 miles), it displaces last year's 304km adventure with Gorm as my second-longest ride,
following my longest (408km two-laps-around-Lake Biwa ride) in 2017.

Yesterday was my longest solo ride, my second “double century”, and my 40th “century”.

It took 16 hours; the first few hours were in the dark, as were the last
few hours.

The morning dark was sometimes lit by a lovely full moon,
but it was mostly cloudy, a condition that would persist most of all day. And unlike the weather forecast (“warm and sunny!”), it was cold and sprinkly with strong wind much of the day.

It was mentally much easier than I expected. The key seems to have been
that I approached it as two separate rides: a 180km (112mi) ride to the cafe in Ise City
where I would have lunch, and then, by the way, almost as an afterthought, just a short 140km (87mi) ride to get back home.

The first 45km (28mi) were on a flat bike path that barely counts as cycling, so by the time I
actually started riding on mountain roads, I had only 135km (84mi) until that ride ended at the
lunch cafe. This could be tough for me if there were a lot of mountains or I
had to do it quickly, but neither applied this time: I had no particular schedule, and this part
of the route had only 2,160m (7,090') of climb, which is nothing to sneeze at, but it's well within the realm of reason for
me.

Once off the bike paths and onto the “real” ride, it didn't start smoothly.

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Scene of the Crime

looking back to where I'd come from

( the highlighted marks on the curb are almost certainly from my tires )

At the 47km point, in a wide-open road in the middle of nowhere with pristine pavement, I crashed in the most monumentally-stupid way I can imagine.

As I approached a slight curve into an intersection, my cycling computer beeped a navigation notification, and I glanced down
for just a moment. A split second after returning my concentration to the road, I rammed straight into the sweeping curve of the
high concrete curb.... a sweeping curve that had been plainly visible as I approached during
the prior 45 seconds. I was going a relatively-lazy 23kph (14mph).

Oh, how I wish I could see the look on my face in the 0.1 seconds between realization and impact. It's
absolutely inconceivable to me how I did what I did. I spent much of the next 14½ hours of the ride contemplating it. I didn't come up with anything. I'm still utterly dumbfounded.

This was the second “real” crash in my five-year-old cycling life,
and considering the sheer unadulterated stupidity on display, I was extremely lucky and came away
relatively unscathed. I suffered a compound fracture of my pride, but after
that there's just a bit of road rash on my knees, my left knee is a swollen and
should make a swell bruise, and I ripped holes in both knees of my new winter kit, the
most-excellent Velocio ZERO
winter bib tights. They have a repair service that I now get to try.

(A day later, the half-dollar-sized circle of road rash on the skin of my knee hurts, but no other pain.)

I brushed myself off and checked the bike; it was fine. I continued on, and at one point thought
I should maybe pour some water over the wound on my knee, which I could most
definitely feel, but could not see because the big hole in the tights was inexplicably 6" above the wound. After another
kilometer, I came across a vending machine and thought I
should fill up on water, only to find that my wallet was gone. I trekked back to the site of the
crash and picked it up.

So, with my ride having now started in earnest, I entered the mountains and started to tick off the kilometers. At first they
went very, very slowly. Sometimes I'd grind into the wind for what seemed like 15~20 minutes, only to notice that I'd gone only
one kilometer. Literally. I don't know how long it actually took, but it was very disheartening.

The stretch from between 50km (31mi) into the ride, and 80km (50mi) into the ride, was the most mentally-difficult of the
entire day, but once I crossed the “100km until lunch” mark, I brightened up. Then when I got to “90km until lunch”, the halfway point of the ride to lunch, suddenly I felt that everything was downhill from there, so to speak. I was halfway there,
and after lunch, I'd just have to ride home... the ride home almost didn't even count, mentally. It made no sense to me even as I thought it, but the feeling was there and I was happy for it. Mentally, I was in great shape for the remaining 235km
(146mi).

Two and a half hours, and 50km (31mi) after the crash, I finally came across a
convenience store, so I took the opportunity to put a dressing on my
knee (which requires me to strip the bib tights, and hence why I didn't do it at the scene). I de-stuck it from the inside of the tights, and applied a sheet of Mepitel Film
(similar to Tegaderm) from the first-aid stuff that I started to
carry after this ride where a member crashed.

Anyway, I
felt a bit better that because the wound was now dressed, I wouldn't have to rip off the scab when I got home.

At the convenience store, I also enjoyed a coffee and a rice ball. The 19-minute stop was the only major stop during the first 180km
to the cafe for lunch.

The route was lovely, with few big thoroughfares. I went across quaint bridges and big dams, and had many lovely vistas. But as I mentioned, the stupid Halide app ate all the photos.

At some point I was calculating my overall average speed (about 21kph / 13mph), which includes climbing up mountains, stops for photos and traffic lights
(and crashes), etc., and realized that I might be able to get back to Kyoto in time for a salsa dance party. I've been dancing salsa for the
last year or so, and really enjoy it. So, I used that to drive my pace just a bit.

During the last hour or two of the to-lunch ride, the wind, which had been intermittently gusty, started to solidify into a brisk tailwind. It was lovely, but I knew I'd pay for it on the return.

Once I arrived to Ise City, I took photos at a shrine, and in front of the train station. Of course, they're gone like the others.

Just about noon, I arrived at the Funae Cafe for lunch, and felt that for the most part,
my ride was done. At least, all the hard parts!

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Lunch

My standard karaage chicken set lunch

While waiting for my order, I pulled out my phone to upload a photo, and found that all the photos so far, except from the crash site,
were gone. So I switched to the native camera app for the rest of the day.

I noticed that the restaurant had slow-drip cold-drip coffee, which I had been talking with someone about during my previous ride, so I gave it a try...

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It was extremely smooth, but mostly devoid of flavor. I'll have to try some others before coming to any general conclusions.

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Bike Stand

tears of happiness

I rolled out at about 1pm in good spirits. Before heading back, I popped up to see the ocean...

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At the Bay of Ise

near where it opens up into the Pacific







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Near the bay was very flat with little protection, so the wind was fierce, and completely against me. I struggled against it for 10km, and also struggled
to reroute when long sections of the bike path were closed for construction, but I remained remarkably sanguine about everything. Normally I fret and
just want to give up, but this time I was in a great mood.

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Disappointing Bridge

the view on Google Earth made it look much more cool

I then had to go through 37km (23mi) of more-or-less city, mostly on a big bypass with lots and lots of truck traffic. If the wind were
with me I'd be able to get it done in an easy hour, but the wind was definitely against me, and it took two hours of mindless grinding.
Slowly, slowly the mountains got closer, and I knew that my reward would be having to go up steep slopes that would cause me to be even
slower than I already was. The whole time, I'm calculating whether I could get back in time for 9pm salsa.

It also started raining consistently. Not heavy, but also not stopping. The temperature also dropped down to 5° (41F).

I had not planned for the rain at all... the forecast was sunny and warm all day. At least for Kyoto. I neglected to check the forecast
for where I was actually going to be. Doh! I would have imagined that I would have froze, but the clothes I had were excellent.

I had only the aforementioned Velocio winter bib tights, the Rapha deep winter base layer, and a Rapha long-sleeve core jersey. And that was enough, in the non-stop rain and strong wind, to keep me comfortable.

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Final Stop

With 64km (40mi) left to go, I made the second convenience-store stop on the ride home. By this point
I was still mentally in great shape, but I was getting tired. (I'd been up
since 3am.) So, I tried the second “Red Bull” of my life (the first having been last year on the long ride with Gorm.) That and a
coffee and some Coke seemed to do the trick... I felt great the rest of the way home.

I felt great, but was still pretty slow, even on the descents. Tiredness, combined with dark and the rain made me ease off
quite a bit. For example, on one long stretch leading into the last hour of the
ride, I averaged only 35kph, while my best on that stretch of road is a much
zippier 41kph.

Still, the downhills in the last couple of hours helped the overall average, and I arrived home at 8:14pm.

My knee wasn't a pretty sight.

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Ouch

but could have been so much worse

All the blood makes it look worse than it is. And if nothing's touching it, it doesn't hurt. The biggest problem for the near term will be when I have to wear non-baggy
pants.

Another casualty of the ride was my toes. Unlike how my great kit kept me warm, my shoes
(Fizik R5 Artica winter shoe) did little, and my toes were frozen for much of the ride. In the shower, I was shocked to see that they had turned gray. I'd never seen such gray
skin on the body of a live person... it was a bit scary. But I massaged them under hot water,
and the color slowly came back.

In any case, I got cleaned up and made it to salsa dancing with 10 minutes to spare.

Overall, it was a great ride. I got to enjoy 228km (142mi) of new roads for me, and score
my second double century. It was much easier, mentally and physically, than many lesser rides
in my past. I'm not why, but I do know that the splitting of it mentally, into two rides,
was just amazing for my psyche. I hope I can do that in the future with equal success.