BRM908 Aoba 600 Utsukushigahara

It's been a couple of months since my last official brevet. Summer in Japan has been really hot and riding out in the open has been minimise to very early morning or evening short rides. Also took refuge in deep forest single tracks for MTB rides to avoid heat exhaustion and keep some conditioning. Even as of Mid-September, Tokyo temperature still reaches 33C. This is the official recording from weather bureau where temperature is measured 1.2-1.5 meters above a grass lawn in a shaded environment with good air circulation. However, the real temperature is much higher for cyclist in an urban or rural roads as I experience in this ride (as much as 10C difference!).

This 600km brevet is organised by Velo Club Randonneurs Aoba. So far, all my 600km brevet rides (two so far) for this organiser is DNF. Over-sleeping as the reason for DNF didn't go well with the organizer :(. The pressure to finish keeps increasing as they reminded me again with a friendly nudge during the registration.

Also, from the past couple of months, I made a few tweaks on my Rando bike:

• Changed spokes on my dynamo front wheel. [Fed up with constant truing after long brevets]
• Changed to a wider handlebar. [Need more leverage for a heavy front bag]
• Power meter on the rear wheel. [Need a reference to trick my mind]
• Changed back to 27.2 saddle post. [27.0mm with aluminium can spacer is not 27.2mm]

And now for the ride...

Left home around 4:30 prepared for the expected rain forecast (I didn't got wet at all during the ride) and arrived 40 minutes later at the Kawasaki Museum starting point. There were probably around 45 randonneurs and met familiar faces... Maki, Gaku, etc...

The route took us on the flat lands of Kanto just skirting the big mountains on the left side on the road until Usui Toge (碓氷峠) to the plateau of Karuizawa. Then down to famous old town of UnnoJuku (海野宿) and climbed a couple of mountain passes (四十八曲峠と四人峠) before descending to Azumino (安曇野). The second half of the route guide us to high but familiar mountain passes  (杖突峠と富士見峠) and then to a nasty climb to the new tunnel (若彦トンネル) that opened a couple of years ago to connect the city of Kofu and Lake Kawaguchi. A nice descent from Lake Yamanaka follows and finally a nasty Sunday traffic at dusk awaits us at the finish.

Few notes on the ride.

• I was surprised that 80 meter official mountain pass exist (Fuefuki Toge). Yes, you heard me right. Eighty meters in vertical height. This could be the lowest official Toge and I forgot to take a picture on the top of this pass.
• Climbing forest roads at night in remote mountains was scary! There were many noises of running animals (or sort of) on the side of the roads.
• Highest temperature recorded was 41C!!! I was boiling... Luckily, we were following a mountain stream and I dumped myself to cool off!
• I was able to rest and sleep for the night for around 4 hours. Longest night rest I had so far and still able to finish. Found a nice bench in a baseball playground to sleep somewhere in Matsumoto. So far, heavy sleeping goods is worth the baggage :)

So, after completing the brevet in 37 hours and 59 minutes, below are some feedbacks:

Bikes (after the tweaks) :

• Changed spokes on my dynamo front wheel. [Still perfectly true.... Yehey....]
• Changed to a wider handlebar. [Much better and easier to turn especially when tired...]
• Power meter on the rear wheel. [Absolutely necessary going forward!!! Even if my mind is complaining that it is tired, I can assume as third person and talked it out by saying that Jayves is still not working enough... "C'mon, I need more power. Push!Push!Push!". I'm still using the old wired model so cannot sync with Garmin data but a non-issue for realtime use]
• Change back 27.2mm saddle post. [Solid!!!]

Body:

• Butt is painful again after it soften from the last couple of months!!! Need to maintain an iron butt!
• Blisters on the edges of cycling pants. Is there a proper way of 'wearing'?
• Toe pains on both feet. Left foot: pain below the big toe. Right foot: pain above the little toe. Need to tweak the cleats position and spacers.
• Numb fingers.
• Back pain (probably as a result of lower handlerbar position)

Others:

• Garmin Edge 800 lost around 80+ km of GPS data because of device inability to continuously log 20+ hours or 300+km of GPS data. [Need to reset every 300km going forward].
• Camera complained that it wasn't able to access the SD card past Karuizawa. This explain my limited pictures.

Same bike but few tweaks.

I still think the saddle hasn't broken yet!!!

Check this out!!! a hub dynamo that can be installed into existing wheel just by inserting between the fork and existing hub. However, build quality was questionable.

Rare red temple...

Old and new house design.

Megane Bridge.

On top of Usui Toge.

Blisters...