Category: Cycling

Maybe we should say more pictures ‘of’ the BBA lunch (not from).

Fantastic lunch with some Brommie brothers in the BBA in Nihonbashi Today. The ultimate city dweller bicycle. ;-). Join us next time even if you can’t fold it. (There’s parking for the restaurant).

Five riders left Olive No Sato grounds to head back to Nikko station and up the hill to Lake Chizenji. It was a 1,200 meter ascent up one of Japan’s famous mountainsides to visit one of Japan’s most famous lakes.

Everyone rode from around Tokyo, Saitama, and Chiba from the Edo River and took on the mountain the next morning. The second day we discovered hills to the hill. After stashing some luggage at Nikko station, we hit the hill.

The best part, the ride down!

Discovering fitness through running, riding, and swimming, most people want to track their status. There are many ways to do it with options from Garmin, Wahoo, Polar, Fitbit (now Google ‘spyware’) , Samsung, and many others. The biggest competitor is probably Apple with the Apple Watch and it’s amazing display, and not so amazing battery life.

For most athletes, Apple is just not an option as when the GPS goes on, the battery goes out quickly. Garmin is probably the world’s leader in sports watches as well as other GPS devices.

Tracking your progress is a great way to see how you are improving whether it be running, riding a roadbike (or mountain bike), or swimming indoors or out in open water. GPS helps you see how fast and far you’ve gone in your workout. But is sharing your locations such a good idea? Some believe it’s better to protect your privacy. Below are some suggestions from one of our group on how to use your GPS but keep a bit of privacy at the same time.

1. De-link your Garmin (or other device) from all other applications including Strava. For example, both Garmin and Wahoo let you do this.
2. Start recording your ride away from your home and stop recording before reaching any destination you want to keep private, like your office. We start and stop recording at the river where we work out, not our home.
3. Set your Strava (or other service) so that your home is not recorded. (other apps let you do this).
4. Don’t share rides that include your home or office or any other private locations.
5. Set all your rides to private so that they are not shared with anybody unless you explicitly share it to yourself.
6. Consider giving up following other cyclists so they don’t follow you, although if you’re careful about not recording your home or any other private locations you might be able to get by.

By far, the most popular service application for athletes is Strava. It is a freemiun model sercice with millions of users around the world. It’s free but you pay to get more features. A paid subscription is about $60 USD a year or 6,000 JPY. We believe in supporting the services you use so paying is probably better than just using free versions. However, when using an athletic social media service like this, where the vast majority are not paying, chances are you are giving more information about yourself to outsiders then you should.

Based on the suggestions above, the best thing may be to just use Garmin, Wahoo Fitness, or Apple (if you can tolerate only 3 hours of GPS) to track your progress. Eliminate any outside uploads to Strava, Komoot, RidewithGPS and so forth from your device to minimize your personal data on the internet.

Is there truly privacy on the internet? Probably not, but this may get you thinking about how much of your personal data you share.

Great food for thought!

Check out this helpful page on what to take on a bicycle trip here.

By the way, on my ride journey last weekend, I took very funny picture of traffic sign. 3 kilometers to the Moon! The nearest place to the moon on earth! lol

First 100 km on a Titanium road bike from Litespeed. Is Titanium better than Carbon Fiber?