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It hardly seems like a year has passed, but it has. Time as come round again for the San Francisco Randonneurs overnight 200km brevet to Davis and back. A write up of last year's ride his here. On that ride we had several riders drive up from Southern California just to participate. We had 17 riders then and this year we have about 10 more than that signed up. I'm guessing we'll have about 25 riders this year. Given the attendance on other brevets this year, 25 riders sounds really small. Well, it is, but there are reasons. One is that the brevet starts at 8pm, not 7am. Pretty much all but a couple/few hours of the ride will be done in the dark. That puts people off. That said, though, there is something quite special about riding through the night.

The route and time of day were chosen to not be too much of a physical challenge but to offer great practice time for navigating in the dark but while still fresh and without the looming knowledge that there are so many more miles to go after sun up. I've done 600km brevets that started at 8pm and on this ride it will be nice to know I'm done by 7am.

It's often impossible to re-live any experience, but I'm hoping to have just as much fun on this year's version as I did last year. It was great to ride into sunup with Jaime and Jim, and before then it was a blast to hammer through the darkness and catch that lead group on the flats between Vacaville and Davis.

Comments

Jaime said…
I wish I could join you on this ride again since I really had a great time and met some really great randonneurs and randonneuses. It was my first true night time ride and I was a little nervous but I would recommend it to anyone who wants a safe way to see how they respond to night time riding. I hope you will continue to offer this ride in the future.

My goal of completing an SR series is almost complete with a 300K ride this weekend:San Diego Randonneurs' Coronado 300K worker ride this Sunday.

Cheers,
Jaime
June 12, 2010 at 5:25 AM
jim g said…
Rob, I'm super-bummed that I wasn't able to participate in this ride again this year! I was hoping to channel the experience learned from last year into an improved ride this year, but getting sick the week before just didn't factor into my plans! ARGH! I'm looking forward to the Permanent next month, though!
June 14, 2010 at 12:17 AM
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