Race file:
tom_DraffenTom532007.wko
The race started off on time at 9am. The “A” course of Tour de Kunisaki is the 160 km route. The total number of participants is probably close to 500, though only about 100 of them show up to race the event. The rest take part to complete a 160km distance and see the Kunisaki peninsula. That was me last year. This year I didn’t see much of anything but the wheel in front of me and pain on the front.
Ceremonies and “customs” don’t allow much for a warm up. Racers are lining their bikes up at 8am for the 9am start. Fortunately, the first 10-12km of the course is pretty flat and tame so while the sprinter types from different teams are all stretching their legs, the rest of us hop on the back about 15-20 riders back and just spin to get the legs warmed up. After the first 12 kilometers, the race is pretty much on from there and selection process starts – read “hill climbs galore.”
(Masaki's custom Carrera is the team bike of choice, but he and Yuko are the only two with one. Yuko's was her wedding gift. Nice!)
Masaki and I were the key players from Club Athlete for this race. Masaki took third place last year and has won the race in previous years. He’s most familiar with all of the power hitters from the number of different clubs/teams that are out and about. Hiroshige showed up with some good teams. The team from the local high school was there with 4 or 5 riders (more on them to follow). Then there was a spattering of solid riders from universities and teams from up and down southern Japan.
Hiroshige seemed content to control the pace on the major climbs that hit you right off the bat. Each of them start off as a steady incline and end at 6-7% grade at the top. We crested the first climb with a 100 rider peloton that was pretty easily managed. The descents strung us out quite a bit. One advantage I have over all the Japanese climber specialists, is I can descend faster with 10+kg of weight on them. We crested the first climb and I just got in the tuck, Masaki behind me and we hit the base of climb 2 with 100 yards or so giving us a chance to take climb 2 a little bit easier than the bunch.
I could go on and on about the climbs over the next 50 kilometers, but to be perfectly honest, they would all sound the same. Climb steady, slip/slide when I could, then descend off the front in the tuck.
At about 53 kilometers was the “King of the Mountain” climb. Each of the courses takes this climb, and awards were given for it. You had to request specifically to take part in the KOM points competition (and pay more). As we approached the bottom of the climb, 5 or 6 of our riders in the lead group took off to get up the climb in the quickest time. I looked at Masaki with the questioning “Do we let them go?” He gave me a look of, “ahhhh… not so sure.” The riders going up the climb were some of the better riders in our bunch and getting over the climb might mean all of them could stay away. So, off we went. It ended up not being so bad, and without having to catch and latch onto our mountain climbers, we kept them in sight knowing we would grab back on with a long descent coming. Coming over the top of this climb, the ups and downs had whittled off any remaining heavy sprinters and we were down to a peloton of around 50, I’d guess.
We hit a “feed zone” @ 1 hr 45 minutes, crawled out of there and took a few minutes to get a steady pace in the 40 kph range. There are a couple of short, steep rollers on an overall slow, steady descent to the base of the second long climb of the day. Hitting the base of the second climb the entire group slowed to a crawl. The climb really didn’t go up fast, but we knew at this point there’d still be 80 km of racing to go after we got over the top. No one seemed anxious to take off up the top, knowing all of the rest of us were still fresh enough to make chase and keep it controlled. We literally crawled up the scenic river valley, 3-4% grade, at a meager 30-32 kph. This would be the hill I dreaded the most – the top is 10-11% for the last 300 meters, but by the time we got there we were all very fresh. The challenge this day would be the fact that road work had completely removed all asphalt, so we were going to climb 10-11% on dirt road. I took the chance to stand once, but as soon as I did the rear wheel lost traction and I was sitting down again. The descent on the other side was no better. The pace car actually held us back to a slow descending pace because the roads were so bad. I envisioned water bottles coming flying out and a pro-style crash on the wet pavement.
When we hit the bottom of the descent onto the flats again, it was apparent that a large portion of our peloton was spent. There were 6 or 7 of us off the front and it took the back portion a good 5 minutes or so to latch back on. There was no use in making the break quite yet with a feed zone coming in about 10 minutes and some strong winds along the coast with some steep rolling hills.
We pulled into the feed zone at right around 3 hours as a roughly counted group of 22, but left the feed zone as a definite group of 15. Now comes the real selection process. Coastal hills. Up, down, flat, wash, rinse, repeat. The composition of the group was: Blue Grass, 3 Hiroshige, 2 Club Athlete (Masaki and I), Oita University, Yoshi (no affiliation), 2 high school, and a couple more folks that ended up being non-players.
--------------------- Consideration later after writing the report, before posting:
About 10 minutes after we left the feed zone, Masaki and I, Club Athlete, lost our opportunity to win this race. One of the two Hiroshige riders dropped off the back, unknown to most of us. The strongest of the two Hiroshige riders dropped back to pick him up – and I noticed that. If we had driven the pace up here we probably could have kept them from catching back on, or at least put them in a situation that they couldn’t push the pace like they did. Had it occurred to me at the time, it would have been extremely difficult communicating my intentions to the others due to the language barrier without just hopping up front and picking up the pace, hoping the others would follow suit when they pulled through.
Once Hiroshige latched back on……
-----------------------
Every hill that went, one of the Hiroshige folks would push up the front to quicken the pace. Each time, one of us would have to respond. They were playing us perfectly. Each of us were responding in part, and it started to feel like I was getting the bulk of it. Looking back on the events that were taking place tells me why. The other folks were done for. Looking back, each of them had been missing pulls and rotating off as soon as they hit the front while the Hiroshige folks, Oita Univ guy, and I were taking 20-30 second pulls.
We were down to 10 riders. As we started to come up one climb, the group spread out two Hiroshige folks started to head up off the front. I was next in line but wanted someone else to make chase. Not realizing they couldn’t, the gap happened. The split ended up occurring with 5 riders vs 5 riders. Yoshi, Masaki and I with the two high school kids chasing the Hiroshige riders, Oita University, Blue Grass and one more unaffiliated rider.
We were down to about 45 kilometers to go. Yoshi piled on the pace, but the high schoolers weren’t pulling through. A bit frustrated, I pulled past them, yelled at them and hopped on the front and made chase. Masaki and the high schoolers pulled through and off leaving Yoshi and I to make the chase. Within a couple minutes of ramping up the pace we dropped one of the high schoolers. We soon caught and spat out the unaffiliated rider that was in the break, with the rest not in sight. By 40 kilometers to go we caught Blue Grass rider and he latched on. It was 5 vs 3, but I think by this point the damage was already done. Highschooler, Masaki, and Blue Grass were pulling through and right off, missing a pull here and there and with 30 kilometers to go the pace dropped below 40 kph with a seeming resignation that the gap wasn’t going to close. I’d like to brag and say I had enough left to close the gap myself, but to be honest, I was feeling pretty toasted myself.
We crested the last hill that took us down to the finish with about 8 kilometers to go and I hopped on the back. Blue Grass and Yoshi were content to pull for now and I figured I’d make a bid for 4th place. Blue Grass hopped on the front and picked up the pace just over 40 kph, enough to keep us together on the downhill run into the finish.
First, it’s important to know that the last kilometer of the race is considered basically “neutral.” The course runs over some very ragged concrete and drops onto grass for the finishing stretch on the peninsula, so basically it’s a sprint to the 1.5 km to go mark, basically being forced single file from that point on.
A kilometer out from the neutral point, Masaki jumped. The high school rider was boxed in between me and the guy in front of him coming off the paceline. He jumped hard into me… literally INTO me. I grabbed his wheel as he closed to the gap to Masaki. As soon as we came side by side at Masaki, I jumped ahead. I got a good 50 meters on them as we turned the corner to the “neutral zone.” We still ran through the tore up side walk at about 20 mph and hit the grass. Race officials waved to us to slow down coming onto the grass and I did. Apparently the high school kid really wanted fourth place so he took off along side of me and crossed the line about 5 meters ahead of me to take the placing. I shook my head and yelled at him, something to the effect of “That was a brilliant sprint!” He looked at me with the obvious “I don’t speak English” look, and greeted his expecting parents happily.
4th place......
5th place...... wasn't even expecting him to come along side.
So, all that to say – end result: 5th place.
Could I have held the wheel of the lead break without getting dropped? No telling. Woulda been nice to find out since I could have taken the free ride on the Hiroshige team’s efforts. I’ll face both of those riders again at the end of the month on the Cannonball Race across the island and back for 250 km.
Racing month is here. Next race, Mominoki Circuit on the 20th. Zenitsuboyama Hill Climb TT course comes Tuesday. Taking advantage of the peak!
tom_DraffenTom532007.wko
The race started off on time at 9am. The “A” course of Tour de Kunisaki is the 160 km route. The total number of participants is probably close to 500, though only about 100 of them show up to race the event. The rest take part to complete a 160km distance and see the Kunisaki peninsula. That was me last year. This year I didn’t see much of anything but the wheel in front of me and pain on the front.
Ceremonies and “customs” don’t allow much for a warm up. Racers are lining their bikes up at 8am for the 9am start. Fortunately, the first 10-12km of the course is pretty flat and tame so while the sprinter types from different teams are all stretching their legs, the rest of us hop on the back about 15-20 riders back and just spin to get the legs warmed up. After the first 12 kilometers, the race is pretty much on from there and selection process starts – read “hill climbs galore.”
(Masaki's custom Carrera is the team bike of choice, but he and Yuko are the only two with one. Yuko's was her wedding gift. Nice!)
Masaki and I were the key players from Club Athlete for this race. Masaki took third place last year and has won the race in previous years. He’s most familiar with all of the power hitters from the number of different clubs/teams that are out and about. Hiroshige showed up with some good teams. The team from the local high school was there with 4 or 5 riders (more on them to follow). Then there was a spattering of solid riders from universities and teams from up and down southern Japan.
Hiroshige seemed content to control the pace on the major climbs that hit you right off the bat. Each of them start off as a steady incline and end at 6-7% grade at the top. We crested the first climb with a 100 rider peloton that was pretty easily managed. The descents strung us out quite a bit. One advantage I have over all the Japanese climber specialists, is I can descend faster with 10+kg of weight on them. We crested the first climb and I just got in the tuck, Masaki behind me and we hit the base of climb 2 with 100 yards or so giving us a chance to take climb 2 a little bit easier than the bunch.
I could go on and on about the climbs over the next 50 kilometers, but to be perfectly honest, they would all sound the same. Climb steady, slip/slide when I could, then descend off the front in the tuck.
At about 53 kilometers was the “King of the Mountain” climb. Each of the courses takes this climb, and awards were given for it. You had to request specifically to take part in the KOM points competition (and pay more). As we approached the bottom of the climb, 5 or 6 of our riders in the lead group took off to get up the climb in the quickest time. I looked at Masaki with the questioning “Do we let them go?” He gave me a look of, “ahhhh… not so sure.” The riders going up the climb were some of the better riders in our bunch and getting over the climb might mean all of them could stay away. So, off we went. It ended up not being so bad, and without having to catch and latch onto our mountain climbers, we kept them in sight knowing we would grab back on with a long descent coming. Coming over the top of this climb, the ups and downs had whittled off any remaining heavy sprinters and we were down to a peloton of around 50, I’d guess.
We hit a “feed zone” @ 1 hr 45 minutes, crawled out of there and took a few minutes to get a steady pace in the 40 kph range. There are a couple of short, steep rollers on an overall slow, steady descent to the base of the second long climb of the day. Hitting the base of the second climb the entire group slowed to a crawl. The climb really didn’t go up fast, but we knew at this point there’d still be 80 km of racing to go after we got over the top. No one seemed anxious to take off up the top, knowing all of the rest of us were still fresh enough to make chase and keep it controlled. We literally crawled up the scenic river valley, 3-4% grade, at a meager 30-32 kph. This would be the hill I dreaded the most – the top is 10-11% for the last 300 meters, but by the time we got there we were all very fresh. The challenge this day would be the fact that road work had completely removed all asphalt, so we were going to climb 10-11% on dirt road. I took the chance to stand once, but as soon as I did the rear wheel lost traction and I was sitting down again. The descent on the other side was no better. The pace car actually held us back to a slow descending pace because the roads were so bad. I envisioned water bottles coming flying out and a pro-style crash on the wet pavement.
When we hit the bottom of the descent onto the flats again, it was apparent that a large portion of our peloton was spent. There were 6 or 7 of us off the front and it took the back portion a good 5 minutes or so to latch back on. There was no use in making the break quite yet with a feed zone coming in about 10 minutes and some strong winds along the coast with some steep rolling hills.
We pulled into the feed zone at right around 3 hours as a roughly counted group of 22, but left the feed zone as a definite group of 15. Now comes the real selection process. Coastal hills. Up, down, flat, wash, rinse, repeat. The composition of the group was: Blue Grass, 3 Hiroshige, 2 Club Athlete (Masaki and I), Oita University, Yoshi (no affiliation), 2 high school, and a couple more folks that ended up being non-players.
--------------------- Consideration later after writing the report, before posting:
About 10 minutes after we left the feed zone, Masaki and I, Club Athlete, lost our opportunity to win this race. One of the two Hiroshige riders dropped off the back, unknown to most of us. The strongest of the two Hiroshige riders dropped back to pick him up – and I noticed that. If we had driven the pace up here we probably could have kept them from catching back on, or at least put them in a situation that they couldn’t push the pace like they did. Had it occurred to me at the time, it would have been extremely difficult communicating my intentions to the others due to the language barrier without just hopping up front and picking up the pace, hoping the others would follow suit when they pulled through.
Once Hiroshige latched back on……
-----------------------
Every hill that went, one of the Hiroshige folks would push up the front to quicken the pace. Each time, one of us would have to respond. They were playing us perfectly. Each of us were responding in part, and it started to feel like I was getting the bulk of it. Looking back on the events that were taking place tells me why. The other folks were done for. Looking back, each of them had been missing pulls and rotating off as soon as they hit the front while the Hiroshige folks, Oita Univ guy, and I were taking 20-30 second pulls.
We were down to 10 riders. As we started to come up one climb, the group spread out two Hiroshige folks started to head up off the front. I was next in line but wanted someone else to make chase. Not realizing they couldn’t, the gap happened. The split ended up occurring with 5 riders vs 5 riders. Yoshi, Masaki and I with the two high school kids chasing the Hiroshige riders, Oita University, Blue Grass and one more unaffiliated rider.
We were down to about 45 kilometers to go. Yoshi piled on the pace, but the high schoolers weren’t pulling through. A bit frustrated, I pulled past them, yelled at them and hopped on the front and made chase. Masaki and the high schoolers pulled through and off leaving Yoshi and I to make the chase. Within a couple minutes of ramping up the pace we dropped one of the high schoolers. We soon caught and spat out the unaffiliated rider that was in the break, with the rest not in sight. By 40 kilometers to go we caught Blue Grass rider and he latched on. It was 5 vs 3, but I think by this point the damage was already done. Highschooler, Masaki, and Blue Grass were pulling through and right off, missing a pull here and there and with 30 kilometers to go the pace dropped below 40 kph with a seeming resignation that the gap wasn’t going to close. I’d like to brag and say I had enough left to close the gap myself, but to be honest, I was feeling pretty toasted myself.
We crested the last hill that took us down to the finish with about 8 kilometers to go and I hopped on the back. Blue Grass and Yoshi were content to pull for now and I figured I’d make a bid for 4th place. Blue Grass hopped on the front and picked up the pace just over 40 kph, enough to keep us together on the downhill run into the finish.
First, it’s important to know that the last kilometer of the race is considered basically “neutral.” The course runs over some very ragged concrete and drops onto grass for the finishing stretch on the peninsula, so basically it’s a sprint to the 1.5 km to go mark, basically being forced single file from that point on.
A kilometer out from the neutral point, Masaki jumped. The high school rider was boxed in between me and the guy in front of him coming off the paceline. He jumped hard into me… literally INTO me. I grabbed his wheel as he closed to the gap to Masaki. As soon as we came side by side at Masaki, I jumped ahead. I got a good 50 meters on them as we turned the corner to the “neutral zone.” We still ran through the tore up side walk at about 20 mph and hit the grass. Race officials waved to us to slow down coming onto the grass and I did. Apparently the high school kid really wanted fourth place so he took off along side of me and crossed the line about 5 meters ahead of me to take the placing. I shook my head and yelled at him, something to the effect of “That was a brilliant sprint!” He looked at me with the obvious “I don’t speak English” look, and greeted his expecting parents happily.
4th place......
5th place...... wasn't even expecting him to come along side.
So, all that to say – end result: 5th place.
Could I have held the wheel of the lead break without getting dropped? No telling. Woulda been nice to find out since I could have taken the free ride on the Hiroshige team’s efforts. I’ll face both of those riders again at the end of the month on the Cannonball Race across the island and back for 250 km.
Racing month is here. Next race, Mominoki Circuit on the 20th. Zenitsuboyama Hill Climb TT course comes Tuesday. Taking advantage of the peak!