Chase The Sun has the simplest format in endurance cycling: start pedalling at sunrise, arrive before sunset. It has run coast-to-coast across the UK and Italy for years, and now there's a new one: Chase The Sun Japan, 29 May 2027. And no edition has ever fitted its name better - Japan is literally the Land of the Rising Sun (日本, "origin of the sun"), and this is a ride you can only finish by outrunning the other end of the day. Sunrise over Tokyo Bay, a sunset finish over Suruga Bay around 18:45, roughly 210 km on the standard route (270 km+ for the extended option) with 3,000-3,300 m of climbing through what the organisers call "the mythical mountains of Japan". Late May, not the solstice, because June in the Japanese mountains mostly means rain.
The actual route? "Being kept under wraps" - registration opens in autumn 2026, and the route will be revealed to registered riders in early 2027.
We couldn't wait that long.
So we drew our own
The announcement gives you more to work with than you'd think: a harbourside start "within Tokyo district, overlooking sunrise over Tokyo Bay", a finish watching the sunset over Suruga Bay, ancient shrines, mountain roads, and "iconic views of the majestic Mt Fuji" near lakes before the run to the coast.
So we plotted a guess: from the Fuji Television building on Odaiba (as harbourside-Tokyo-Bay as it gets) west out of the city, up into the mountains, past the Fuji lakes, and down to Cape Koibito - "Lovers' Cape" - on Suruga Bay. Our version came out at 232.6 km with 3,542 m of climbing. The official brief says ~210 km and 3,000-3,300 m, so we're in the right country, probably on some of the right roads, and definitely climbing the right amount.
To be clear: this is not the official route. It's a plausible corridor for answering a question we care about: what would a rider actually find out there?
We loaded it into PitStopper and searched everything within 500 m of the line. The answer: 5,017 places to stop. But 500 m each side is a generous net, so for the stops that matter most we tightened the radius right down to 50 m - the places you can practically see from the bars. Here's how it breaks down.
The konbini index
Japan's convenience stores - konbini - are the best resupply network in world cycling. Open 24 hours, hot food, cold drinks, clean toilets, and they are everywhere. Along our 232.6 km there are 129 of them within 50 m of the route - genuinely at the roadside, no detour at all. That's one every 1.8 km, on average. (Allow a 500 m detour and the number balloons to 518.)
But look at where they are. 92 of the 129 sit in the first 50 km - the ride out of Tokyo. Once the road tilts up, the picture changes completely:
| Dry stretch (no roadside konbini) | Starts at | Where you are |
|---|---|---|
| 36.5 km | km 189 | the final leg toward Izu and the cape |
| 27.7 km | km 81 | into the mountains proper |
| 26.6 km | km 54 | leaving the Tokyo sprawl behind |
Thirty-plus kilometres without a konbini doesn't sound like much until it's 15:00, it's the day's fourth big climb, and the sunset deadline is doing arithmetic in your head. The lesson is the classic one: leave the city full, and treat every mid-mountain store as the last one for an hour.
Four million vending machines (429 of which are on the map)
You cannot write about riding in Japan without mentioning vending machines. There are around four million of them nationwide - roughly one for every thirty people - humming away on mountain passes, outside rice fields, in villages with no shop for miles.
PitStopper doesn't have a vending machine category. It didn't need one: the Custom Tags feature let us add OpenStreetMap's amenity=vending_machine as a searchable category in about thirty seconds - type the tag, pick an icon, done:
Result: 94 mapped vending machines within 50 m of our route - one every 2.5 km on average, right at the kerb.
An honest caveat, the same one we made scouting the Transcontinental: the map records mapping effort, not machine density. Our data shows a 62 km roadside vending machine "gap" from km 171 - through exactly the kind of rural Japan where the machines famously outnumber the people. That gap is almost certainly OpenStreetMap coverage, not thirsty reality. Treat the 94 as a floor, not a ceiling.
We spot-checked ten of the mapped machines on Google Street View, and five were plainly visible from the saddle. The other five hid behind hedges, down side alleys or inside an expressway parking area, the usual Street View lottery. Half confirmed, all plausible, and every confirmed one in the rural half of the route: for once the map probably undersells the truth.
The five we found are pure Japan:
Water, the real number
Back out at the full 500 m detour radius, dedicated drinking water points are the sparsest resupply on this route: 134 taps plus 22 fountains in total, and the gap table is the one worth respecting:
| Dry stretch (no mapped tap) | Starts at | Where you are |
|---|---|---|
| 74.0 km | km 59 | the whole first mountain block |
| 54.8 km | km 178 | the high country before the descent |
| 29.3 km | km 139 | between the lakes |
A 74 km stretch with no mapped tap would be alarming on a European ultra. In Japan it mostly means "buy bottles at a konbini or vending machine" - but it's still the number that should size your bottle strategy for the middle third of the day.
The rest of the picture
- 285 public toilets, and the longest stretch without one is 22 km. Japan's public toilet game is unmatched; this might be the most toilet-rich 232 km in world cycling.
- 70 train stations within 500 m. For relay teams swapping riders, or for anyone whose day ends early, the route is never far from a way home - except for one 55 km station-free stretch from km 177, which is exactly where you'd least want to abandon anyway.
- 30 mapped viewpoints, clustered where you'd hope: the lakes, the passes, and the Izu coast. The 199 memorials, 20 monuments and 5 castles along the way back up the organisers' promise of "ancient shrines and monuments" - and OpenStreetMap doesn't even count most shrines in those categories.
- 93 fuel stations for the support crews, and 234 pharmacies for the sunscreen you forgot.
Racing the sunset
The defining feature of Chase The Sun isn't the distance, it's the clock: in the country that takes its name from the sunrise, your whole day is spent fleeing the sunset - and it arrives at the cape around 18:45 whether you're there or not. PitStopper's Clock Time feature is built for exactly this - set your start time to sunrise, and every POI shows an estimated arrival time, so you can see before the day starts which konbini you'll hit at breakfast pace and which climb you'll summit as the light goes gold. It will even place sunrise and sunset markers on the route itself.
When the real route drops
Registration interest is open now, full registration opens in autumn 2026, and the route goes out to registered riders in early 2027 - with priority for those who've finished two or more Chase The Sun events. A confession: PitStopper HQ has ridden Chase The Sun exactly once, in 2024, so the two-event rule leaves us on the wrong side of the priority list. We'd still love to ride in Japan someday - and if you're one of the double finishers who gets a place, consider this post our contribution to your day.
The moment the official GPX appears, this whole survey takes about two minutes to re-run: load the file, tick the categories, read the gaps. Our guess route will be wrong in the details - but the shape of the day is already clear: a fast, dense, everything-everywhere start; a beautiful, sparse middle where planning matters; and a finish where the only thing you need within 500 m is the sea.
Draw your own guess. Load it. Search. And keep an eye on that sunset.
Event details from chasethesun.org/japan. POI data © OpenStreetMap contributors - verify anything you'll depend on. Hero photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash.
