Let's Wrap This Up: The Road Warriors, Part Three

OK, final push! The "easy" day it was billed as, and I suppose they were right from a terrain-oriented perspective. The only difficult stretch was the narrow-yet-extremely steep range between Ume and Mie that was only fifteen kilometers away from the start line, so at least I'd get it out of the way early. No, the real challenge of the day was going to be conquering myself--my body was in bad shape after two days of riding.


For the ladies.

Throughout winter I'd been heading to Hita once or twice a week to hit the gym, been jogging and riding around Kusu whenever the weather permitted it and had been eating healthier in the weeks leading up to the ride, so it wasn't cramps, stamina or the normal kinds of muscle pains getting me down. Specifically it was my ankles, knees and crotch: ankles because I was wearing the wrong sized riding shoes (I don't know what my friendly neighborhood bike shop owner was thinking with his sizing suggestion) and they were cutting into the skin there hard; the knees may have been weakened a little from the jogging, in retrospect; and the crotch problem is a combination of simply too much time in the saddle and improper frame sizing (since my trusty Trek 1500 is a hand-me-down).

Doing a bunch of stretching and making sure everything was just right with my gear ensured I was the last one to leave camp again. Heading out of Ume was more of the previous day's steady uphill and I was taking it as slow as I could to preserve my legs. Just off the highway into Mie is one of the area's quirky little tourist attractions, Totoro's Bus Stop. Totoro, the beloved namesake of Hayao Miyazaki's classic anime My Neighbor Totoro, is theorized to live around these parts based solely on the fuzzy similarity to a single scene in the movie. It's so damn adorable though.


When will that cat bus come?

Past the photo op I took another wrong turn before the major uphill segment of the day and and added perhaps three kilometers to the ride. Not too bad. The road around here is hellish with generous portions of gravel and farming detritus strewn about the road, potholes and sharp rises/drops. We finally reached a section of road so steep I was having trouble powering up in my lowest gear without doing wheelies and I finally had to get off and walk up, which I'm not proud of. I passed several people around here having similar troubles or who were nursing injuries of their own sustained over the weekend. Finishing the mad hills, coming down the backside was downright dangerous. Word is that one of the riders' brakes went out here and she had to steer into a hedge to stop. This area of Mie--a town I used to come to very often to meet up with an old friend--was completely new to me and miraculously beautiful this season with sakura and plum trees simultaneously in blossom, lots of clear swimming holes along the river and rows upon rows of interesting rock formations.


One of the many swimming holes along our route through Mie. I don't even think this is one of the really good ones.

The beauty, however, was marred by the pain. Only concentration and very delicate, deliberate leg movement could mitigate the knee ache and prevent a strange rising pain in my achilles tendon. Downtown Mie was about the halfway point of the day and I felt like I couldn't throw in the towel now, so I soldiered on through town, into Inukai to meet the Ono River that would take me into Oita City. I stopped at some random ramen shop on the riverside and ate one of the best bowls of noodles EVER! Maybe it was mediocre and I was just famished, but it will always stay in my mind as one of the tastiest Kumamoto-style tonkotsu ramen bowls I've had yet.

By the time I reached the outskirts of Oita City, around noon, I hadn't seen any of my fellow riders or the support cars in hours. Again I thought my mediocre pace and sit-down lunch cost me enough time to be passed, and today with my leg troubles I didn't care, but again I was pleasantly surprised to roll into Sakanoich Station and find nobody waiting for me. It was 1:30PM, meaning I'd done about 75 kilometers in four hours. I kicked off my shoes and took a nap until Guy showed up an hour later to give me some company.


I'm in more pain than this photo lets on, but I can't begin to describe how great it felt to cross the finish line under my own power--Not everyone on the trip was so lucky.

So I messed up my legs pretty badly this trip: I couldn't run for several days after; stairs had to be taken slowly for a week; and I was completely unable to ride my bike for almost two weeks. Even now there's some kind of strange, ummm, "squeaking" in my ankles. I'm taking it easy still and things are returning to normal (three weeks after the event). Two things are readily apparent from the experience, the first being that I'll need to do more training for the next long ride like this, but something lower impact than running, and the second being that I need a new bike fitted for me. So after weeks of researching I've decided on this...



It's a Cervelo Team Sport from Canada. Although the frame's aluminum, modern design and materials tech allows it to be lighter and stiffer than the carbon fiber frame on my current Trek. Go figure.

Well, I made a handful of new friends on the road, solidified existing connections and have a lot to look forward to this summer as long as I take the initiative and get my butt out there to the beaches of Miyazaki and into the mountains around Kusu.

I hadn't thought about it until just now that I've never been more serious about or stuck with anything in my life as long as I have with things involving two-wheeled vehicles. I've been riding a motorcycle for ten years now and a bicycle for four--that's longer than I played soccer when I was a kid or kendo as an adult. So far no really nasty flaming crashes on either conveyance, though it'd be interesting to see how I could pull a flaming wreck out of riding my bicycle. Yeah...that sounds like a challenge. Anyways, I hope this isn't saying something about me having an anti-social, lone wolf personality, it's just that things are much more simple when the world is whizzing by, your face is in the wind and all the issues of work, women, money and family (not that you're a burden, mom, dad, Kelly) are left standing in the dust far behind.

--Matt