saru, sento, yugen
This weekend was the Oodaigahara hill climb. some of the guys had talked about the climb and how brutal it was, which only made me more keen to race. the mountain is in deepest nara - towards where nara meets wakayama and mie prefectures, south of osaka. it's real middle of nowhere country which added to the sense of mystery.
when we arrived at the ryokan yesterday I realised we were in a 'family room' for the whole team - the room was a spacious double bedroom by western standards, but last night it slept 12 absolutely comfortably. we headed off for a practice run of the climb as I had never been and wanted to know what was around each corner for today. there was a hellish section of about 10km's where you were in top gear just hanging in - brutal indeed. the start and end were attack territory which made it quite satisfying. the top was raining heavily with thunder, so I grabbed a coffee and headed back down - heating my rims up to dangerous temperatures on the descent with the amount of braking that was going on. a beautiful hot soak later in a communal bath and we were ready for dinner and bed. the location was beautiful with little sign of man outside the villages.
this year we were racing 2 teams from the club and I was in 'everwin B' with the young boys (of which I was almost the youngest). the team category set off with the elite riders (who soon left us) and we started with a modest pace quite aware of what was to come. when it became obvious no one was going to mix it up, I pulled off the front and started laying down a gap which would remain. as I headed up the lonely road I got nearer and nearer to the clouds until I was in them - some times breaking for one of those incredibly mysterious japanese views of steep, steep mountains crammed with trees, being softened by lines of clouds. my team mate told me later that that sort of view can be described as yugen - a suggestion of something mysterious. something very subtle and hard to define.
what wasn't so subtle was the family of macaque monkeys sitting around the next corner - they were more surprised than me though and soon scurried off: they looked almost embarassed with their wee red faces. a few corners later and, having been caught by some of the cat 2 riders, I passed a drinks stand and shouted ahead for water. when I approached the guy started undoing the cap fo a bottle. I'd almost stopped and soon sped off ignoring him - I couldn't believe he was fannying about so much in a race. I was really angry and found that the adrenalin did me good. the next stand had girls holding water, arms fully stretched to grab as one would expect in a race.
the small crowds did a good job of keeping us going and I kept in a small group which finished at 1:28:48 with a final lung busting sprint. our team managed third place and we got on the podium which was very satisfying. my time was 61st overall out of around 400 riders which I was happy to take -21st of 98 in my age category.
