Thursday 4 June 2015

Nagoya - Day 1

Well we are here. Safely in Nagoya, site of the Centrair 70.3.

Safely, but not quite completely. I say this because whilst we managed to arrive this morning, my bike has not. Rather my bike is currently sitting in Changi airport in Singapore.

Really with the amount of travelling away I have done this year, it is amazing that this hasn't happened earlier. I have certainly had a couple of nervous moments before, but the bike has always turned up in the end. Not this morning though. We started at the:

  • the Over size stuff always come out last Stage
  • moved to the Any second now Stage
  • slid into the I am sure it will be fine Stage
  • and finally got to the It isn't coming, is it Stage.

Still, the staff at the airport have been brilliant and if everything goes to plan the bike should be with me by tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Other than the mishap with the bike, the trip up to Japan went very smoothly. I had my concerns about flying overnight, but in the end it worked fine. The second leg of our trip was on a very empty plane which allowed us to get enough sleep to get through today functioning as humans.

I originally had some plans about putting the bike together and heading out for a spin today, but that hasn't happened for obvious reasons. The body isn't quite up for other forms of training yet, a bit of sleep is needed first, so instead we spent today doing some recce work.

We have now fully checked out the airport, which is the site of all the race administration stuff, like rego etc. There is nothing there yet, but it looks like it will all work fine. When I was first told that everything, including us, would be based at the airport I really wasn't sure how it would work. But seeing it unfolding, it looks like it will work quite well.

After our recce of the airport this morning, this afternoon we jumped in a taxi with Stef Puszka and Billy Lynch from Daryl's squad and headed out to check out the course.

The course, well in one word, interesting. In two words, interesting and confusing. If I added a third word, it would be challenging. The bike in particular is quite convoluted, to the point where it totally confounded our taxi driver a couple of times. Still we were able to see enough of it to get a good feel. The bike should be interesting, and depending on the wind, could be quite entertaining. The run will be tough.

I mention the wind because right now it is absolutely howling and by the number of wind turbines I have seen around town, I get the impression that this may not be the first time they have had a bit of a breeze here. The wind as it currently blows would be a tail wind for much of the bike leg. However, it would also be a block headwind for the run home. Combined with the hills, which are rolling on the bike, but stubbornly solid on the run and you have a tough day out. Time will tell what we end up getting on race day, but either way, this won't be a walk in the park.
What about Nagoya itself. Well from what I understand we haven't actually been into Nagoya proper yet, that will happen tomorrow. But we did get a good tour around a lot of the surrounding districts on our recce. One of the nice perks of doing races like this is that you end up spending quite a bit of time just seeing a place. Not doing tourist stuff, rather just being in a place. Finding where to buy coffee and bananas, that sort of thing. Always very nice. The tourist stuff is fun too, but it can be nice to just come and be part of a new city for a few days.

Driving around on our recce hit home a thougt that reoccurs to me every now and then. In many ways country boundaries are quite arbitrary divisions implemented by the human race. Driving around the district today, once you were out in the country side, we could have been in any one of a number of different countries. In many ways the differences between our countries are possibly not as great as we make the out to be. Hmmm, very deep thoughts for a Thursday, I must be tired.

What else. Well this is just my ignorance showing, but the bits of Japan I have seen so far are much more urban that I was expecting. I know from talking to friends that live here, that in big cities a lot of people are in apartments etc. But what really surprised me today was just how many houses are around. For a small country with a lot of people it doesn't feel as jammed packed as other high density countries I have been to. The people have been wonderfully friendly too, with a couple of people really going out of their way to help us out today

I will have a much better impression once I have been into Nagoya tomorrow. But so far so good.

Now for some sleep.

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