26 October 2008

Takao Attack

Thoroughly enjoyable Sunday ride, Takao and back, thanks to David, Bryon, Ben and Dominic.
Left home just after 6:10am, met Ben in Hiro-o, Bryon and Dominic at Ebisu, then off out to David's house. Straight down the Tama as usual, said bye to Dominic around 7:30am who was on kid watch duty and had to get back home, an hour later we were at the Seven-Eleven in Takao, not too shabby at all. Raining however! We set off to do the Otarumi TT. What started as a half-hearted attempt became far more serious as Ben took on the pacemaking at the halfway mark providing an excellent wheel to hold onto. I only fell away in the last few metres, but we both held our own against a couple of local (and much lighter!!) domestics. I timed both from the Family-Mart at the Takao Crossing and at the Seven-Eleven further up the road, stopping the clock at the brow of the hill. 20:09mins 7.39km or 15:20mins 5.35km. We re-grouped and headed back to Takao. My brakes are really rubbish in the wet, scary almost, the 'cork' blocks on carbon rims give me no confidence whatsoever, but made it back down with no drama, if a tad more slowly than my companions. After another quick pitstop in town, we headed for home. One final quick stop for more fuel at the Tama Seven-Eleven and then back along the river. One flat for David, quickly changed in just a few minutes and we were back at his house before you knew it. Back up Komazawa dori for the rest of us, I was home at the strike of midday. Perfect.


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2 comments:

mob said...

Impressive.
With so many competitive guys in the field it must be fun to storm up Otarumi Toge.

I changed the Toge Baka column on the right side of the blog to the new Family Mart start point and put James in as the rightful Togebaka holder after his glorious attempt today.

Ludwig told me that you might not be able to see it if you use other browsers than firefox, i.e. IE, chrome or opera. Safari?

Manfred von Holstein said...

All browsers seem to work again fine.