Tour de Utsukushigahara

Thanks to Phil's organisation, I completed my first bike (only) race last Sunday. It is called "Tour de Utsukushigahara", it's a hill climb race and the course is 21.6km long with 1,270m elevation gain. I always wanted to do this race and was happy that finally I could do it.

2,300 cyclists in their colourful bike jerseys gathered in a small onsen town near Matsumoto, Nagano prefecture. The atomosphere is totally different from running events and even from triathlons.

The first coulple of km was very steep, like a wall, but when you conquer it, the slope gets milder, well, after experiencing 18% of hill, you feel anything is mild. After that, I just kept climbing and climbing until 5km to go point, that was solid sober effort with lots of patience. Then, here comes my favorite part! A long down hill with some curves, and uphill that you can climb up by the momentum of previous down hill, then down again (yeah!) and the last short uphill to the finish line. My time was 1h50m07s, 35th out of 95 women.

Anna did great, too. Before the start, she was so nervous and worrying about being cut-off, even talking about DNS, but she completed the race with 2h04m18s, 60th place.

Phil finished under 2 hours and he looked happy to improve his time from last year.

Here is the Results.

I shared a room with a girl called Naoko, she told me a lot about bike maintenance. Phil and she were really surprized when I told them I have never put oil to the chain and derailer since I got my bike and told me how to do it. I really appriciate it, and promise that I will do it by myself from now on.

The onsen ryokan we stayed was great, too. Phil's parents-in-low run it.
Sakamotonoyu

Including a 72km ride from Ueda to Matsumoto on Saturday, I completed 94km for two days.