The Himedomachi Cycling Club

I started booking accommodation a few weeks ago and now I am mapping bike routes, typically with a copy of The Roads to Sata open on my desk and the Garmin route planner on my screen. Booth walked the route in the 1970’s using paper maps and reckoned he had walked about 3,400kms by the time he had finished. I used GPS and think his figure’s pretty much accurate. I’ll be doing less as I’m going to take the train through the zone of the recent Noto Peninsular earthquake, cutting off about 400kms between Niigata and Toyama and leaving me ‘just’ 100kms of cycling per day.

I started training at the end of September, laying down base miles and fretting over the endless performance metrics modern day cyclists measure themselves by, Functional Threshold Power, watts per kilo, Rating of Perceived Exertion. I figured I’d get that all out the way in advance so that, when I reach Japan, I can free myself from the tyranny of the metric system and simply ride.

I bought a spiffy-looking static bike from a friend and have spent hours in Zone 2. I discovered that you can watch POV videos of other people cycling through Japan and I put them on for motivational purposes while I keep my cadence at 90 rpm and my heart-rate at 60% of Threshold. I’ve cycled up Mount Fuji this way, through the seedy backstreets of Roppongi and Kabuki-cho, and over many of the mountains of central Honshu. My body has acquired a certain stick-insect-ness and, although I can cycle more than 30kms in an hour, I cannot escape the fact that it’s terribly, terribly boring.

The sun rises at 4am in Hokkaido in May and sets at 6pm. The bears are most active at daybreak and twilight, so I’ll want to be off the road by 5pm (the chances of me being up at daybreak are slim to non-existent). On my first serious day’s riding in Japan I’ll ride 87 flat kilometres from Wakkanai in the far north to Teshio on the west coat. In order to find the sweet spot between avoiding bears/staying in bed/investigating points of interest on the route, I took the train to Riddes and timed how long it took me to cycle back to my apartment in Lausanne.

I cycled this route with my kids on a hand-me-down mountain bike during one of our first multi-day adventures. It’s easy to navigate and descends gradually along the path of the Rhone. I returned when I bought my first road bike, cycling up and down the river, my face wrapped in a scarf against the freezing wind. This time I made it difficult for myself by cycling up through the vineyards to Chexbres and across to Lutry.

There were quite a few cyclists out doing the same thing. Mainly men, wearing tatty lycra and looking like they had been forced out against their will. I had a brief interaction with one as we waited to cross a busy road back to the river, “It’s like a motorway,” he said. His face was red behind his scarf and his bike was elegant carbon. He seemed cross and, when a half-gap appeared, he dived through it.

The trick to covering long distances is to cycle using the minimum amount of force necessary. To cover the 100kms everyday I will need to keep my legs as fresh as possible and move from my preferred ‘Sport’ to ‘Touring’ mode. Every time my speed crept over 25kmh I reined myself in and asked how I was going to find the energy for tomorrow. I stopped every hour to snack on cereal bars and admire the blueness of the sky and the white peaks of the mountains. I regretted not bringing something more substantial to eat to replace the calories I was using, but every time I passed a bakery I felt sick at the thought of eating something rich.

It took me almost 5 hours to cycle back to Lausanne, 4.5 hours on the bike and 30 minutes eating and, having cycled past the only curly bridge over the Rhone, getting lost. After the hours spent on the static bike it felt good, even the last few kilometres climbing up Avenue du Leman to St Francois.

I drank a recovery drink and stretched my legs – both new habits I’m trying to form now so they are second nature in Japan, and when I woke up the next day I didn’t feel a hundred years old. This was an easy day. My longest day in Hokkaido is going to be 130kms and 1850m of climbing, harder than most things I have done on a bike and the day I really need to train for.

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