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longest ride of the year

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Today was another ridiculously hot day, but I decided that rather than spend yet another weekend indoors, I'd hop on my bike and do a dry run for a longish ride I have planned. I want to do a loop of the Watarase Retarding Basin. It's a heart-shaped water management pond well north of here, and aside from fans of waterworks it has only one thing of note: it is shared by Gunma, Saitama, and Tochigi prefectures. My goal is to "get to" all seven of the Kanto prefectures by bike, and this one trip I could claim Gunma and Tochigi, my fifth and sixth prefectures, respectively.

Anyway, so today I set out to do about half the run, and put a pin in my trek at the 42 kilometer mark. This took me to "Hara City Pond Regulating Pond-1", which is a man-made wetland full of what looked to me like Phragmites Australis. I left at 14:30, stopped at a kombini at 15:35 and another at 16:40, and kept guzzling water throughout. I was averaging around 27kph according to Google Maps on my bike-mounted phone, which is pretty good. But then I turned around into the head-wind and averaged only 21 kph for the long slog home.

I enjoyed the trip as a whole. The weather was too hot for a lot of traffic to be on the streets, and on the way home I found myself directly passing beneath countless bats at one point. (That I was doing so because my treacherous phone had sent me down a bumpy gravel path in the dark is another matter.)

I got home a little before 20:30, so nearly six hours to do a 84 km round trip.