Zwift Traning

Because of long winter in Tokyo (just compared with Singapore), how I can keep road bike ride was concern. Once I tried to ride in night time after work in weekday, most of day’s temperature  was around 0 – 5 ℃. And I couldn’t move smoothly due to cold and available distance and speed was not good. 

I got aware that recently “Zwift” is getting popular in road bike community. User on Zwift can enjoy vulture ride with real bike by connecting trainer, not only for that, available to join some race and ride with friend. It’s kind of e-Sport as recent trend.

I sometime found my friend recorded ride record by Zwift on Strava. I looked for trainer which is machine to do Indoor ride by assembling with my road bike. Actually there are some types of trainer. and range of price was so wide. Based on my research on internet, I decided to buy below trainer.

Setup with this was easy, just removing rear tier and attached to trainer. It takes only 5 mins to be ready for ride as below. iPad was put on music stand I used for Violin lesson.

As my impression through several ride on this, I felt some hardness on this compared with real ride, because trainer pedal is very heavy so it requires more power and stamina to ride same amount of distance. 

Also difficulty to feel slope because it’s hard to recognise it on monitor before starting slope. Only degree of slope was displayed with small font.

But it’s better than no training in winter weekday. So I can keep some training. Hope can make good body with this.

 

 

2021 Target

Last year I completely forgot to write my personal target for new year as I had written it for over a decade. I was busy or losing mind for new year. but let me resume this habit because a whole year plan should be made at first day of the year, it comes from Japanese traditional legend story. From this year, let me use “KPT” method to set target.

Keep

  • Finally found good exercise way, Riding road bike with camera.
    because of pandemic, almost spent time in home to work remotely. And I strongly felt risk for my health due to less movement in a day. Actually my iPhone showed one tenth reduced steps per day. And luckily got road bike from my colleague. And started to ride periodically, at same time, I noticed that it let me go anywhere in Singapore. by riding road bike, I could go to many place in Singapore where I have not never been and could take some beautiful scenery photo in Singapore. it’s good motivation to keep riding by visiting photogenic. Because whether changing in four seasons make me hard to keep consistent riding pace comparing with Singapore, but I should keep this activity in all season in Japan.

Problem

  • Couldn’t spend time to practice violin.
    needless to say, this is fact and no thing to say more, I didn’t take enough time for violin practice since I spent time for road biking after time. there were two issue, first one was time allocation balancing between riding bike and violin, second one is missing target to violin practice. I need to write done practice menu / list for violin for the new target.

Try

  • Try to learn new challenge to be main work.
    Since I have been working online advertisement service development for a decade, and I already found new area what I want to try, but it requires additional learning to earn money as main work. it’s possible to learn by myself if I can keep motivation. This will be definitely valuable for my future.
  • Write my progress on here or Note
    To record my these target, will keep post in here or Note.

 Wish happy new year!

 

Road Bike in Tokyo

From 1st Dec, I officially relocated to Japan by terminated renting room in Singapore. Gradually resuming my daily some activities in tokyo. One of those is riding road bike in tokyo. Actually my ride life was started in singapore from July 2020. So no experience to ride in tokyo so far. Through last two weeks, I’m getting aware of some difference between tokyo ride and singapore ride. So let me share my impression.

 

 

1. Weather

Needless to write, the biggest difference is weather condition. In singapore, mostly keeps around 25-28°C at morning and after sunset throughout the year. Day time reaches to 32-35°C with strong sun light if no cloud/no raining. So conformable time to ride in singapore are between 6pm to 9am. Not recommended to ride in day time.

But in japan, it depends on season. As I just backed to Tokyo in winter, so in this month, mostly under 10°C, so I needed to buy winter jersey for 0-10°C and gloves, because Jersey I wear in Singapore were only for summer short sleeves and short pants. And I may need to buy more for other season… It’s costly…

2. Road condition

This may be only for Tokyo or urban city in Japan. Recently local administration is trying to make lane for  bicycle on car road since side of road should be prioritied for pedestrian. This movement is definitely good for bicker, But issue on city is that there are so many parking car on the bicycle lane on the road and blocking bicycle. Also critical issue by parking car is driver suddenly opens door to get off from car without any check. So I faced those situations during first long ride in Tokyo. In Singapore no clear lane on the road, but no any parking car on the road, then I didn’t feel any risk to ride on road in last six months, it’s very safety for rider.

This is just first impression in two weeks. I will update if if find more.

Domestic Trip by RoadBike

After pandemic, Work from home culture has been becoming standard for work style in IT industry. My company is also strictly adopting this style to daily life. As result, my daily steps which is counting by iPhone/Apple Watch, has been dropped to half of past averages.

I wanted to ride bicycle in my daily life, but not so motivated because here Singapore is always hot and humid, I thought it’s very tough condition for bike beginner. But now realised that it’s wrong, since temperature here is stable and no need to care about season changing. So it’s good to run before sunrise and sunset.

And I luckily got used roadbike from my colleagues. So started my roadbike life after backed to Singapore and ended SHN(Stay home Notice 14days in home). Singapore is very compact country, it’s available to everywhere by bike. Now I’m enjoying domestic travel by bike with taking photo as below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work From Home

My work from home has been started from mid of Feb 2020. Because in Singapore, there were some infected person by covid-19 who came back from china. It seemed earlier than another countries. After beginning of March, another countries in the world wide had faced covid-19 difficulty.

And due to private matter, I temporarily backed to japan from mid of March, have been staying in tokyo for 1.5 months under this situation. It means mostly over 2 months, i work from home. 

So how i can make comfortable work place in my home is getting important to stay long time. I tried to enrich some equipment in my room.  Let me briefly explain what i brought in recently.

First one is PC stand for MacBook Air. Angle for Laptop display is always lower than natural eyes position, it means neck got unnecessary load and makes stiff upper back. To adjust angle, stand for laptop is needed. I found best designed stand for MacBook Air, it’s completely thinner when folded and no issue to store it on case without removing.

Majextand
https://amzn.to/2y7TyC4

A bit expensive but it’s worth to buy.

 

Another one is sub display to extend MacBook Air’s workspace. There are many type of monitor recently, but to care about future’s flexibility, I selected mobile monitor which is enable to be attached with monitor arms, also can power by only Type C without AC adopter. Upon on the condition, Below one was bast and price when i bought was around 30,000 JPY, but no ups to 40,000 JPY because it may be by many work from home. 

It’s not big size among no mobile display with same price zone. But it’s ok as second display and 4K is well matching with MacBook Air’s Retina quality.

モバイルモニター EVICIV 15.6インチ モバイルディスプレイ 4K Adobe100%色域 HDR 薄型 IPSパネル USB Type-C/標準HDMI/mini DP スリーブケース付 EVC-1504

Actually I bought more product to make comfortable home desk space. So sometime i may write this kind of article in future.