Back to cycling the Palace, slowly

FULL RIDE STATS:

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Brief cycling for Shinjuku night photos

RIDE STATS:

• Distance:  2.13 miles  
• Time in motion:  13 minutes 39 seconds
• Average speed:  9.4 mph
• Max speed:  17.4 mph

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Cycling with Mike, again, and throwing up, again!!

FULL RIDE STATS:

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Yamate Dori Evening Cycling in Tokyo

RIDE STATS:

• Distance:  11.07 miles
• Time in motion:  47 minutes 22 seconds
• Average speed:  14.1 mph
• Max speed:  30.7 mph

Continuing the trying to be different cycling theme this week, I finally rode somewhere besides the Imperial Palace!  A comment from Tornandoes28 helped motivate me to once again return to exploring riding, as I used to do so much.  Yet this is not my first ride down Yamate Dori toward Ebisu station, so technically not exploring.   [Read more]

Day-cycler does 3 Imperial laps!

FULL RIDE STATS:

Due to the sudden arrival of a powerful thunderstorm last night, I could not as usual do laps around the Imperial Palace in darkness.  So after I got up today I donned my yellow jersey and dropped in on bright sunshine.  It felt good.  

The atmosphere driving through the city during the day is totally different than the night, as one might expect of course.  Riding during the day feels friendlier.  I guess if you are seeing people out and about, they are on break from work or just plain not working.  So it feels a bit relaxed.  It could also be that I am not working while other people are out working, so my leisure time feels that much better. 

I was expecting more traffic on the palace loop than at night, but I can’t really say traffic was any worse than any of my last few night rides.  I did have to come to a complete stop once, but did not have to unclick, I could stand and balance in my pedals until the traffic started moving again.  Also, there weren’t the lines of cars waiting at red lights were not that long, so not much trouble snaking through and on to open road.  

In fact, I had a helluva fun ride.  There were no illusions of doing a fourth lap this time, so maybe the heat did have an effect on me, but I didn’t notice the heat in particular.  Maybe not eating breakfast before riding was more cause for not doing a fourth lap.

The ride was not without incident, as some fool riding against traffic on a housewife’s bike around a blind corner made me have to skid to a stop.  Ignant.  

Still, I may soon go day-riding again.  I like the atmo in the city and around the palace.

3 Imperial Laps in a Haze

• Distance:  15.82 miles
• Time in motion:  1 hour 00 minutes 56 seconds
• Average speed:  15.6 mph
• Max speed:  28.5 mph

I just didn’t have it tonight, and I knew it even before I left my apartment.  A ludicrously late bedtime last night, a late, undigested dinner, and lots of humidity and red lights all added up to a very slow 3-laps around the Imperial Palace tonight.  I felt like my head was in a cloud the whole ride.  The constant red lights just getting out to the palace loop did nothing for my rallying, and I didn’t even make the light for dropping into the loop, which I make like 90% of the time!  

I had no delusions of doing 4-laps tonight as I proudly did last Thursday night.  I just barely finished the 3-laps tonight in the allotted 30-minute time limit.  I had to even clip out of my pedals once the traffic was so bad.  No doubt I have to go riding earlier from now on.  I now believe traffic picks up again after 11pm.  So the best time is between 9:30pm and 10:45pm.

Of note, the level of safety Japanese cyclists find adequate totally baffles me.  I saw these two things tonight:

1. On one of the fastest parts of the palace loop I pass a young j-girl on a Japanese-style bike listening to earphones while checking e-mail on her cell phone with no front or rear lights and wear dark-ish clothes.  
2. A seemingly real cyclist j-dude on a track bike riding in between two lanes of full speed traffic in a very hairy section of Shinjuku-dori without a rear light in dark clothes!  (later I saw he at last had a front light)

I would personally feel totally petrified to ride under either circumstances.  It was really shocking just to see that j-dude ride in the middle of the road with cars zipping by him to his left and to his right, all with no rear light!  This wasn’t just for a second either, it was for several hundred meters.  Shocking.

FOUR laps around the Imperial Palace!!

• Distance:  18.95 miles
• Time in motion:  1 hour 7 minutes 53 seconds
• Average speed:  16.85 mph
• Max speed:  29.6 mph

Tonight for the first time I did four laps around the Imperial Palace!!  I was hoping for a new average speed record too, but more on that later.  I was able to easily do a fourth lap tonight because I ate dinner at the relatively normal time of 7:25pm and started my ride at the relatively late time of 10:50pm.  That meant plenty of time for digestion and hence no risk of throwing up when grinding away around the palace.

I got to ride under the light of almost a full moon, which was nice to glance up at when I could see it between buildings.  I was going to use the second clock on my cyclo-computer tonight to record stats for just the laps around the palace, but I dropped into the palace loop so fast I didn’t want to take my hands off the handlebar.  Thus, no second set of stats.  So, somewhat unofficially, a new average speed record was set for the stretch of riding from my apartment in Shinjuku to the end point of the loops:  17.6 mph average.  

I was hoping to be able to smash or at least beat my overall average speed record of 17.0 mph, but I swear I couldn’t string two green lights together the whole ride home.  This was basically true for all but the third lap around the palace as well.

Ah, so why four laps tonight at last?  Well, thanks to digesting mostly.  Then also because shortly after starting the third lap I wasn’t even sure if it was the third or second lap at first.  Realizing after a second that it was in fact the third I though, “hell, I can go for four tonight!”  Easy to say on the fast downhill part, but even on the last ascent of the fourth lap, my legs were good and my heart rate even better.  

I’m not sure if doing four laps will become the new standard for every trip out to the palace, but at the least it’s good to know it’s totally doable, as long as one has had enough time to digest!

Please comment with your own cycling story or digestion story!

High traffic 3-laps around the Imperial Palace

• Distance:  15.8 miles
• Time in motion:  58 minutes 15 seconds
• Average speed:  16.3 mph
• Max speed:  28.4 mph

Tonight’s 3-laps around the Imperial Palace was marred from the start by some dude totally unnecessarily  honking at me as I dropped in to the loop and then by at least 50% red lights.  I wasn’t feeling well enough to go for 4-laps like I had hoped, and having eaten dinner too late again, I had digested enough to even put on the speed for a new record 3-laps without risking throwing up again.  So I guess it was actually a good time to be limited by all the red lights and traffic.

I have been watching Tour de France highlights from a British show the past week, which has inspired me to ride even more.  When I was a kid in the 80’s I used to ride my 10-speed around my neighborhood imagining I was Greg Lemond in the Tour de France.  After watching the stage 9 highlights during dinner tonight and seeing Riccardo Ricco’s inspired burst up the second category 1 climb of the stage, I decided to get up out of my saddle on the much, much more modest climb on the back-side of the Imperial Palace loop.  This allowed me to stay in gear 3-6 up most of the climb, then when I went back in the saddle I clicked down to the usual gearing of 3-5.  

I thought getting out of the saddle was weak before, but everyone in the Tour does it, so I’m going to start doing it more myself.

I’ll attempt 4-laps on Thursday night I think.  Got to digest!

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