国内最大級の市民サイクルロードレース
「中野浩一Ｖ10メモリアル　ツール・ド・ジャパン２００８」

This is my favortite race of the year and my sixth attempt to win it. The Nakano Koichi Memorial Tour Du Japan 2008.

Friday:
I picked up my brother Friday night at Tokyo station and we went down to Kawaguchiko and stayed at the
Kawaguchiko Station Inn An old but nicely located hotel a bit like the one in Faulty Towers. Will probably stay there next year too.
Friday night we hit a local izakaya and downed a few too many beers and sake. Met, I thought was the local town drunk who turned out to be from Matsudo the same neighborhood I used to live in. He was in town for his Mum’s 102nd birthday.

Saturday:
Saturday we went to the bat caves, had lunch over looking lake Saiko, registered the bikes, did 2 laps of the course, then back to the hotel for free internet, free tea, coffee and not a bad little restaurant where I got my last pre-race dinner in of pizza, spaghetti, a bottle of beer and some chocolate cake. After making good use of the onsen ( 3 times) and getting an afternoon view of Mt. Fuji the clouds rolled in for freezing race day.
We didn’t notice this noise due to medicinal ear numbing booze on Friday night but there was a traffic signal outside the hotel that had two of those brain numbing chiming tunes that help blind people cross the road. Seems that they turn them off at midnight till 6.am. They made it almost impossible to get an early sleep as we went to bed early Saturday.  They may give me bad dreams like Freddy Kruger, they will chime in my head at night. 1,2 na na naa na na na ni na naaa coming for you…. 3, 4 better drink more beers…..5, 6…. it’s 6? Wake up!!!!!!

Sunday:
We checked out at 6:30 a.m.
Although it was freezing it was not raining like last year so not complaining about the weather. Warmed up for 20kms on the roller. Kept warm, worked up a sweat. Drank 2 Red Bulls and two SUPER VAAMS. Thoroughly recommend this form of doping. Had some 3600mg Amino super water in my drink bottle too which was almost empty by the end of the race.

The race: The first lap was torture with one guy (I think it was the 16 year old I had marked as DANGER on my form guide) attacking from the start and 3 or 4 others bridging across to him, to form a little break away group. They were flying and looked like pros. I thought they were going to succeed too, but I was not going to take part in any attempt to put in any effort to reel them in. I had to have faith in the peleton and eventually we did get them all. Although I only saw us catch two of them. Very difficult to see ahead due to all the ‘S’ bends.  My heart rate was about 165 in critical stages on the 1st lap which was quite acceptable. 180 and I get dropped. 195 call an ambulance.

When I fail at Saiko it is usually because of getting dropped at the 8km hill where my weight:heart rate ratio conflict. It’s a tiny hill but right at the beginning of a hard left hand turn, so you can’t put any momentum into the bottom of the hill. It’s almost a dead start. This year I was feeling fine and motored up the hill quite easily. (Doing that a few times on Saturday was a good idea). On the heart rate chart below it looks like I went into the hard corner at close to 49kph. We did drop a few here but I didn’t look back to take a head count. I managed to sit in for the next 2kms with the pack as we passed the start-finish line. Normally I’ll give the crowd a wave and pose for cameras here, but today it was head down and serious business.

Lap 2: This lap was easy compared to lap 1. (You can see this in the heart rate chart below).  I remember we caught 2 of the breakaways at about the 12km mark. Possibly they were the only two left.  All was going well, at least till we got to the 15km mark and the ‘Official Race Director’s’ car came by, blowing it’s horn. The ‘S’ class had a few escapees that were trying to pass us. That caused a bit of confusion as the tail end of our peleton was trying to tell the leaders to let the ‘S’ class pass but the front end was still motoring along. I got stuck at the back and watched as the chaos unfolded. We were already stretched out in almost single file.

More ‘S’ class escapees were trying to move up through our winding snake like peleton and they should have kept to the right, but as we were all over the course, the ‘S’ class guys started to weave into and out of our peleton.
With 1km to go there were pink ‘S’ and orange ‘D’ caps all intermingled and it was unsettling. No time to think, I just did my best and passed about 10 guys up the 500m to go hill and then made my best attempt to motor along to the finish line.  I remember hitting the brakes at one stage as 2 ‘S’ class guys were in my way. At about 50m to go I could count 8 orange caps on the right hand side and I was motoring down the left hand side. But not motoring at great speed. I’m sure my Polar heart rate monitor will be embarrassing to look at. (edit; yep, it shows that I had a very jittery sprint…never getting into a crescendo rhythm.)
Realising I wasn’t going to pass anybody and feeling a little pissed off with the chaos I cruised over the line only to hear about 5 beeps at the same time from people who were drafting off me or just finishing stronger. Maybe a few of them sneaked in before me. I ended up 14th about 2.9 seconds away from 1st.

I was happy with how I went but did not get into a good position in the last 5km. I don’t think the ‘S’ class chaos helped me but the other riders had to deal with it too, so it is not an excuse. I failed to make that one bold move that puts you in a winning position. The ‘S’ class interference was not in my race plan for the finish but it will be for future races. I thought they were going to get us in the 1st lap. This is the second time a JCRC race I’ve been in has had 2 races (different classes) on the finish line at the same time. I thought they (JCRC) had learned their lesson by now. I should have just jumped behind the 1st ‘S’ class trio and cheated. The ‘S’ class race was 40km and this was the 30km mark for them and the finish for us. Therefore we were sprinting and they were going at regular race pace. This is why I ended up running up the back of a few of them and also the cause of the crash that I heard to my rear right.

My average speed for the race was 39.543kph (less on my monitor as it also includes the waiting at the start and a bit after the finish line).  The 2nd lap must have pulled the average down but for D class 39 or 40 is about average.

Congratulations to M Kraehe (Positivo Espresso Team) who did the D1 race and won (secured) the yearly points championship and came 2nd in the Tour Du Japan series..

Here are the official times for my race.