The Down-Jones Index

Yesterday I made a mid-range, run of the mill ride from my house to Onekan, Tank Road and further on to the North Tsukui lake road. So far nothing special.

But on the map I had discovered, that the road around Tsukui lake is actually continuing from the point where we normally make a left turn and fly downwards towards the suspension bridge over the Tuskui lake. So I continued to stay on the small road and after crossing two barriers I found myself completely alone on the abandoned road which is much the same as the beautiful North road itself. I fail to understand why this road was given up a long time ago, as this seems to be an extremely important trunk road connecting the suburbs of Tsukui with those of the villages in the shadows of Otarumi. Road conditions were very poor, some landslides, a lot of debris on the surface and most of the time I had to walk. But after a while I came to a second barrier and I continued on the normal road up to the point where we are normally, coming from Otarumi, take a right turn and cross the bridge first, followed by the tunnel on the way to Tsukui.

A very nice distraction but perhaps better suited for MTBs or cyclo cross bikes.

It was a beautiful,warm, almost-spring day and on the top of Otarumi I thought it would be nice if we would have had lists for downhills as well as for the uphill time trials we are doing. As Otarumi from the Takao side was the first uphill TT we posted on the blog, the opposite downhill would be the appropriate start for the downhill TT which I called for ease of reference the Down-Jones Index (DJI); an expression commonly known to riders from the PE team.

To achieve a good downhill time can also we a nice consolation if your uphill time isn't that good.

So, I went down in 7:05 min which is probably not very good, but at least a time to start with. See the list on the right.

This corresponds to about 45 km/hr average speed. Please feel free to beat this. But be careful, Otarumi was not the first time I thought about the DJI. The first time was on Yabitsu two weeks ago and then I crashed pretty badly.