I was talking to Pat Lemieux a couple days ago.  He was just calling to catch up.  From Spain.  Pat is super good at keeping in touch with friends.  He and his wife, Gwen Jorgensen are flying over to RIo just 5 days before the Olympic Triathlon , which is August 20th.   Here is  a nice article on both of them.    Anyway, Pat was saying that Gwen is now saying she is going to compete until the next Olympics in Japan.

That got me thinking about racing in Japan and how much fun it was.  The culture is so different that it makes the whole experience extraordinary.

I’ve raced in Japan 3 times, twice MTB and once on the road.  I did two Specialized Catus Cups, which were off-road mini stage races, plus I did the Shimano Cup, which was an international road race.  Japan is the only country where I’m an undefeated.  I won both Catus Cups overall and the Shimano race.   I’d better not got back there to race my bike.

The first year I went, it was just me and Ned Overend racing the men’s race.  The course was at a ski resort somewhere outside Tokyo.  It was a pretty short cross country course for the day, maybe 3 miles around.

The cross country was called the Ned Cup and there were signs all around the course with arrows directing you that said Ned on them.  There were 1000’s of riders at the race, but Ned and I were the best, by far.

Ned wanted to win the race and I didn’t have any problem with that.  He was pretty much the reason that I was there, plus he was the star.  I had already won the downhill and fatboy, so was way ahead in the overall.

The day of the cross country, it had rained the night before and the course was pretty soupy. The course went straight uphill for a bit and then it was a technical descent, followed by another short climb, then down to the bottom and a access road back to the finish.

We started and only one guy stayed with us up the first climb. Over the top, I dropped Ned and the Japanese rider on the first muddy descent and then started the next climb.  Towards the top there was this super thick section, like mid-calf deep mud for about 50 meters.  But there was a line on the right that was about 8 feet above the mucky slog that was totally rideable at speed.

I took the upper line and coasted to the bottom and started climb back to finish the first lap.  I keep looking back and Ned wasn’t on the climb, which was a long ways and a lot of time.  I got up to Trudi, who was running the Specialized MTB at the time.  I asked her where Ned was and she said she didn’t know.

So I proceeded to start the next lap, riding super slow.  But it was hard going too slow because of the mud.  You had to keep a certain speed to stay on your bike climbing, then descending in mud, speed is your friend.  I finished the next lap and got to Trudi and she said that Ned was mad and I needed to wait.

I couldn’t believe that Ned was mad, I’d really never seen the guy too angry, but when Trudi told me that, I took it seriously.  So when I got to the top of the first climb, I got off my bike and pretended I was having a rear wheel problem.   There were so many spectators, I was having a hard time seeing down the hill to know when Ned was coming.

After a little bit, I could see Ned climbing up, so I put my rear wheel back into the frame and got going after he passed.

We did the next descent and got up the next climb to the bog at the top.  I was just catching up to him by the time we got to the mud bog.  I took the line to the right and there was Ned, slogging through 12 inches of super sticky mud,  I yelled down to him to ask him what he was doing.   He had missed the line and had been going through the bog each lap, which was probably a minute slower.

That pretty much explained the whole speed problem he was having.  Anyway, we rode another lap together and towards the bottom of the last descent, I asked Ned how he wanted the finish to play out.  We were riding side by side up the access road towards the finish and Ned is saying that we should just ride up together and then sprint.

All of a sudden, the dude takes off sprinting.  Like super hard.  We still had 500 meters of climbing to the finish, like close to a minute.  I stayed on him about 1/2 way up, then just bagged it.  I wasn’t going to win anyway, so didn’t see the reason to kill myself at the end.

When I got the finish, I was pissed.  I asked him WTF.  He said that he had looked back and the rider that was in 3rd was catching us and that he panicked and took off.   I said, wow.  I told him the guy he saw we had just lapped at the bottom of the hill.  And I really appreciated that he told me that we were getting caught and just took off, leaving me to fiend for myself.

It was all good though.  Ned was a god to all the fans.  I won a full XTR high-end Specialized MTB for overall, but for some reason, I’ll never understand, I had to give it to the spectators by playing a game of rock, paper, scissors.  It is famous in Japan.  After the race, we went to Mt. Fuji and hiked up to the top, which was really hard in October or November.

We stayed in Tokyo for the next week for the Japan Bike Show.  Neither of us could walk we were so sore from coming down.  It was a really fun race trip.

*Oh, I forgot the best part of the story.  I remember out riding this afternoon.  Trudi told me that she thought that Ned was mad because he said to her -“Tell Steve this is my race.”  But, after the race when I was taking to Trudi and Ned about it, Ned said she heard it wrong and what he really said was  – “Tell Steve this is my pace.”  Big difference there.

Here are some of the Catus Cup jerseys from the past.  I have a ton of them.

I’ve always liked taking baths.  I liked it when I was a little kid and I still like it now.  Maybe it was because when I was small, we didn’t have a shower, I don’t know.  All I know is that a hot bath is sometimes is the difference between getting by and suffering.

I’m been taking a bunch of baths since I crashed.  I am having a little trouble controlling my thermostat.  I’ve been getting really cold, even if I’m dressed right, so the only way I can figure out how to get back warm is to take a hot bath.  The first couple weeks I was taking maybe 10 a day.  I know that sounds weird, and it is, but it worked.  Now it is down to a couple.

I’ve had a few odd bathing situations over the years racing.  When I was first going to Europe, many times it was hard getting hot water.  Even when I was living in Switzerland, racing cross, my super nice apartment in Aigle had a small insulated water storage tank and every morning around 6, it would fill full of hot water.  That is the water I had for the day, which wasn’t really enough to wash dishes, clothes and shower.  I definitely needed to prioritize.

The first time I went to Europe, we were racing a stage race that started in Rome and finished in San Marino.  The weather was sort of bad early in the race and I got dropped by myself.  It was raining pretty hard and I was worried I was going to miss a turn and get lost.  I was riding through a small Italian village, going up short steep climb, and this big man, without a shirt on, smoking a cigarette, is standing on the sideway yelling die (sp), which I was, but he was cheering.

When I came by, the guy, shirtless and barefoot, steps into the road and starts running behind me, pushing..  Man, that guy was talented.  He pushed me at least 50 meters up that hill and then promptly, stopped and fell on his stomach, laying in the road as water streamed down it.  I didn’t realized how passionate Italian cycling fans were until then.

Anyway, I could see the finish town and I was wondering if there was going to be hot water at the hotel, it was that sort of day. The previous hotels didn’t have hot water.  I was the last American to finish and made my way to the hotel.  When I got there, I was a mess.  Sort of bonked, soaked and covered in road grit.  It turned out we didn’t have a hotel, but an apartment.

The other guys were already clean.  I walked in and they said they had some good news, and bad.  The good news was there was hot water.  The bad was that there wasn’t much, so they had filled the tub and had all cleaned up.  I walked into the bathroom and the tub was full of, what looked, like muddy pond water.  I reached down and it was semi hot.  So I just took off my cycling shoes, left my shorts and jersey on, shut my eyes, and got into the tub.  I was so cold and it was great.  I thought about how much better muddy hot water is than cold clean water, in certain circumstances.  This was one of those circumstances.

A couple years later, I was racing the British Milk Race.  Phil Liggett was the promoter and there was a lot of riding in wet conditions.  I had a gotten a cold on the flight over and wasn’t feeling that great.  The first stage was hilly and I was dropped towards the end of the race again.  It was raining hard, windy and cold.  I finished, pretty blown again,  and was told to ride to the local gym to shower.  I rode over there and virtually the whole race was there.  Bikes stacked everywhere and when I went inside the whole peloton in the showers.  I was freezing and it was going to take forever for a shower to open up.

I wandered to another room, opened a door and in that room was an antique bathtub, free standing in the middle of the room.  This tub was huge, maybe 7 feet long and a couple feet deep.  It had a cutout on the back where you could put your neck and relax.

I turned on the water and it came out super hot. I was stoked.  I stripped down and got in.  It was heaven. And that was it.

A while later, the coaches were asking where I was.  They went to the gym and my bike was the only one there.  So a coach checked around and saw some water coming out from under a door.  He opened the door and there I was, floating in this huge tub, nude, with water running over the edges.  He thought I was dead.  He came over and shook me and I woke up.  It scared the shit out of me.  He was mad.  And I was embarrassed.

I had been there for over 30 minutes.  It was weird, but I felt pretty good, quite warm, so I can’t say that I regret it.  Just another bike race/life memory.  I’d like to have that tub.