|
|
THE RISING SUN: TOUR OF MIASA
Lee Rodgers
August 27, 2009
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Haven’t had much to report on of late, other than suffering a slow, lingering demise in the Mt. Fuji hill climb (24% in places, 14% average – for 11kms!), getting a slow puncture and left without a spare wheel halfway round the 190km Hiroshima road race, and then running into `mechanicaru` on the first lap of the Gunma race just two weeks ago. `Mechanicaru` is the Japanese term used to describe anything that screws up on your bike other than a flat. The `mechanicaru` that laid my reasonable chances of a top 5 finish to waste in this case was a single loose bolt on my front derailleur, improperly tightened – or properly untightened, if you wish to be perverse – by the team mechanic. I learnt a valuable lesson that day, to always give your bike a quick once over before you race, no matter who worked on it, though I think it’s reasonable to expect a pro mechanic to tighten the bolts!
Some hardcore readers might be thinking `Well you should do your own bike work.` However this kind of thinking is evidence of a failure to understand that, for some of us, the idea of fiddling with anything beyond bar tape, possibly brake pads and, if there’s been a beer or two swigged and we’re being really adventurous, pedals, is enough to fill us with dread. Attempting to comprehend the instruction booklet for my SRAM derailleurs might be easier if it was written in 10th century B.C. Egyptian.
Personally I’m about as mechanically minded as a Humboldt squid with basic learning difficulties. As my mother once said, ‘Every one is different. Some just a little moreso than others.` So I gave up any hope of ever mastering the inner workings of the derailleur and until now have always relied on the Ever Omnipotent Grease Monkey. However, after the Bolt Incident, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t dust off my Idiot’s Guide To Bike Maintenance and get studying, even though, as ever, it’s almost certain to end in tears of frustration.
Which brings me, in a very roundabout way, to this weekend’s race up in the beautiful Nagano Prefecture, the two-day 2009 Tour of Miasa. Nagano itself is stunning – awesome mountains rise out of plains filled with almost iridescent green rice, sleepy hamlets perch on hillsides laced with smooth, narrow lanes – but the journey there from where I live in the south is a killer. I left my house at 3pm on Friday, met up with the rest of the team at 7pm, `slept` in the car at a highway service area from 3am to 7am, and finally arrived at 10am on Saturday. Take out the time attempting to sleep on the highway and that’s 15 hours of driving! The first day’s riding, thankfully, was short, a 3.1km hill climb TT up a windy little road that had an average of 8%, though the last kilo was about 10%. Fortunately my start time was late, 4pm, so I had chance to catch a wink or two in the car.
Proving that mental capabilities do indeed diminish as you get older and that there’s no point in trying to learn from previous patterns of behavior, I was my usual hotheaded self at the start and went down the ramp and up the first kilometer like Jan Ulrich in a cake shop – frenzied. By the half waypoint I began to realize the folly of my ways but it was too late, the horse was out of the gates and frothing at the mouth, headed for the glue factory. The guy in front came into view with one kilo left and I finally caught him with 200 meters to go, but I could have put in a much better ride if I’d just paced myself a little more intelligently! I came in 15th in the end, in 10.01`, quite a way off the leaders time of 9.14`, but not bad considering the quality of the field and the lack of intensive training of late.
From there it was back to hotel – or ryokan, actually. The ryokan is a little different from a hotel, more of a traditional inn, a large house owned by a single family and traditional in design, with tatami mat flooring and sliding paper doors. They’re cheaper than hotels and much homier, and the food is usually great, though for the evening meal they give you enough for three people, it just never ends, it’s a tsunami of edible produce. The breakfast is a little, erm, `difficult` for most Westerners – usually consisting of copious amounts of white rice, fermented soya beans that stink like unwashed socks, cold, tangy fish that wakes you up quicker than smelling salts ever could, and either raw eggs or a cold, rubbery, pre-fried egg atop shredded cabbage – definitely not the usual cyclist’s fare of pasta and cereal! The pillows they provide are always exactly the same somehow no matter where you stay, compact little things full of rock hard beans of some sort, apparently designed for use in floods and to ensure that Japan’s chiropractors stay in business. They’d be handy in a fight – the words `blunt`, `heavy` and `object` come to mind. I tried sleeping on one once and since then never fail to take my own pillow to races!
`Alberto!` shouted Lance. `Breakfast is ready!`
Day two brought with it sharp blue skies and a manageable temperature of 28 degrees, though it was still hot enough for me worry about cramping up over the 200km race distance that lay ahead. I’ve been plagued with cramps this year, which probably has something to do with both my legs not yet being accustomed to the sheer intensity of workload the muscles are put under at this level of racing and a habit of mine of not drinking enough during races. I was determined to last the distance after my recent poor showings, so left bottles filled with electrolyte-heavy juice with the team staff to hand me in the feeding zone. Little did I know that that was the last I would see of those bottles!
Shogo Ito proves he’s all mouth.  Start line calm
The course itself was a 12km loop through picture-postcard countryside, with a 5km or so climb that never really got nasty, and a long rolling descent that still required you to pedal almost continuously, run on fairly wide roads. A group of 14 riders got away due more to the slow pace of the main pack than anything else, with the yellow jersey, Jyunya Sano of the Nippo-Colnago team, seemingly content to let the leaders tire themselves out up ahead and confident that his team could reel them in eventually. I wasn’t so sure though, as there were some very good riders in the lead group, like Kano from the Shimano team, last year’s overall Japan Tour winner.
Personally I was feeling quite good but the idea of 200km was daunting, as I’d only once ridden that distance in a race before, and that was much slower than this race would be. Slowly though I found myself getting into a rhythm and was staying up near the front of the peloton without any problems. Then came the first feeding zone episode. And what a nightmare! Because the course had no flat areas the feeding zone was on a slight 4% rise, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t come after the long climb. As a result we were moving slowly, and it was this that caused the chaos, with riders weaving and dodging to get to their stuff. Added to that was the fact that the guy handing me my drinks had never done it before and was holding the bottles in a full grip as opposed to from the nozzle - same story with the energy gels too! Out of five attempts to take stuff on board three ended up in failure, with bottles and food flying to the floor. I was left having to ask teammates for bottles, none of them having my invaluable electrolyte stuff in them.
At 180km I was beginning to feel the cramps along my thighs, not a good thing, so at the last feeding zone I was determined to get something. I ended up at the back of the pack and got blocked by another rider and again missed my chance to get liquid. Even worse, the pack caught sight of the early leaders and decided to take off at just that second! I was left with three others to chase but the game was up. I eventually managed to break away from the other three and come in 22nd, over three minutes down on the winner – Sano again from the Nippo-Colnago team, a worthy winner and a very talented rider overall. He’s built like a rugby wing but climbs with great power, one of Japan’s outstanding riders at the moment.
A professional umbrella holder... no, seriously!
So, I learnt a few lessons, yet again, though how many I’ll remember is another matter! I was naively caught out at the feeding zone due to worrying too much, I really should have just gone for it, and it might be an idea to always have a spare bottle in my jersey throughout the long races. I moved up in the national rankings though as a result of finishing, into the top 40, not bad but still a lot of room for improvement! The chance will come soon – next race is in two weeks, and it’s 200km again…
Hot tarmac was never so comfortable...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|