My wife and daughter love Natto Gohan, a dish of fermented soya beans, usually served with raw quails egg and soy sauce on rice. Brown and sticky with little tendrils of goo that cling to the beans as you lift them out of your bowl. To me it smells like death and my brain is often unable to suppress a gag reflex when I catch a waft. It’s an acquired taste apparently. The same can be said for cycling in Tokyo at the height of summer: “People don’t cycle during August”, I’m told with great authority, “its too dangerous because of the heat – people die” my wife informs me over a bowl of the aforementioned bean. She has a point: The hottest English summers start with a comfortable, if not slightly chilly morning but Tokyo couldn’t be further from this. To beat the heat, a five o’clock start is not unusual but its still 28 Celsius and 10km in I have already drained the best part of one bidon.
I’m meeting Al, a University Professor, some 30km from my door along the Tama River. He’s an ex Olympic level cross-country skier and has been climbing the hills in Japan for 12 years. Strong as hell and despite his insistence that we ride together because “we have the same level of fitness”, he leaves me floundering on most climbs. We had met one of the Tokyo Cycling Club’s early morning hill climb sessions lead by Jon: a wiry mountain goat with a lid held together with gaffer tape. Within a minute of our meet up we’d hit the insane ramps and switchbacks on the Tama hills just outside Tokyo. The recovery sections were at criterium speeds and Jon would never be off the front, often racing further ahead to record our suffering for his Instagram account. The highlight of the “Tama Tuesdays” ride is an insane sprint up a thin ribbon of concrete through an allotment. The narrowness of the path means that you can’t zig-zag, overtake or fall back. You just go up and just hope that no one is coming down. Finnish lad, Tom, is another regular and the next time I see him, he is mixing it up with the pros at the Taiwan KOM. But its early in his training and I’m managing to hold his wheel most of the way up and doing a decent job of keeping my breakfast down too. I’m proud of my 11th Strava position on this climb – a massive victory as far as I’m concerned.
As I follow the river out of metropolitan Tokyo, the pristine high-rises of the shopping district Futako Tamagawa are replaced with the rusting chain link fences of baseball courts and cement factories. Its early and although there is a cycle path, its shared use and used by the seniors for their morning constitutional. Like me, these wily old athletes are up early to avoid the heat and the crowds: by mid-morning the paths, especially on the Tokyo side will be heaving with dog walkers; baseball teams; at least two 10k fun runs and of course, cyclists. You can pretty much follow the path to Saitama without hitting a gradient above 1%, so its perfect for a leisurely ride – or winter base miles when the air is crystal clear and Mt. Fuji dominates the skyline: a perfect volcano capped in white against a cold blue sky. Its lovely. But now its Summer, and thanks to the humidity, I can barely see the Tama hills on the other side of the river.
Our ride eventually takes us away from the river after which we follow the Tama monorail for a few kilometres. Even in the countryside you never escape the touch of modernism and development. Apparently, Japan has the best concrete technology in the world and after the war whole villages were employed to smother the mountains and rivers in this monotonous grey, protecting the population from land-slides and flooding. The Japanese have learned to live with nature and these brutal interventions: indeed it has become part of the language of the Japanese countryside.
After we reach the the ride’s goal – a nondescript road summit of Mt. Takao we are rewarded with long and fast descent on a perfect piece of tarmac – and quite possibly the longest bit of road without traffic lights in Honshu. This doesn’t last long as the return to Tokyo is punctuated with traffic jams: It’s hot and everyone has their air conditioning on. Sitting on a bike at a junction is unpleasant enough: high noon with empty bidons is something else.
Cutting through town takes an age, I end up on a ramp to the expressway at one point and I resolve that its safer to take the pavement: its illegal, but everyone does it including the police. Riding a bike here seems to absolve you of any traffic violation and every main road here is like London’s North Circular: fast and dirty. You just wouldn’t cycle on it. No one stops for a pint – not that you’d find a pub anyway – but it is just too hot and I’m too filthy and tired. But I’ll be up at 4am on Tuesday for hill repeats.
www.6amcycling.co.uk 