449 km

Certain hills are forever defined by your first experience climbing them by bike. Try as you might to overcome this, each subsequent climb of that hill is (at least a little) ill flavored if that first experience did not go well. Irony is often best illustrated when the hill in question is a simple one for fresh legs but fate always provides you with a set of tired ones. Dixon Ridge, the final climb on Nicasio Valley Road, a feature of so many San Francisco Randonneurs brevet routes is a case in point. I never know if that mere bump will crush me. The Santa Rosa Cyclists brevet calendar for the last three years has featured a ride affectionately known as the 'Hubba' that is nothing if not heavy on long climbs, traversing twice the mountains that separate the Anderson Valley from the middle landscape of the Russian (nee Slavyanka) River Valley. Upon first hearing of the new route from Bob, the Santa Rosa RBA, I felt more than a little intimidated. The first two versions of th...

Photo above copyright Jim Hsu Additional photos by Patrick Herlihy With a longer sweep of time as a yardstick, perhaps the second most popular brevet route for the San Francisco Randonneurs is the Russian River 300km, an event and route hosted every year since 2003, and first held as a RUSA brevet in 1999 and there is reason to believe the route was used as a Paris, Brest, Paris qualifier before even that year. The 300km distance is the first level of selection, where most but not all of the riders successfully completing the introductory 200km events move up a notch on the difficulty scale. Half again as long as the 200km, that third 100km tests riders in a way the first two do not. The route the Russian River 300km follows is not in and of itself a difficult one, with barely more climbing overall than some of SFR's 200km routes have. Instead, the late February or early March date when the ride is held often has dished up weather that can severely challenge riders. Most not...

Photos courtesy of Patrick In the gentle landscape between the growing town of Petaluma and the coastline, there is a small, and perhaps mostly forgotten community named Two Rock, CA . Two Rock never became a commercial center, never became the western seat of finance, and in fact the road doesn't even widen as you pass through. Most people can travel along the highway here and never realize they've passed through a town, and never even notice the three rock outcroppings that gives Two Rock it's oddly singular name. An oft quoted American author once commented on the attributes of cycling and the resulting understanding of the true contours of the landscape, and should you be riding west on Petaluma-Valley Ford road in the early months of any year, you'll have time to look around at the rolling green hillsides and wonder what it must have been like 100 or 200 years ago, and if this is where the photo for the Windows XP desktop was taken. (No, but darn close .) Each...

All photos courtesy of Megan To date, the 2013-2014 winter in Northern California has been a very dry one, and with only one or two notable exceptions January was dry in a worrisome way all month. By the end of the next month, February 2014 would be saved from being the driest on record, though barely, by what has now become rare rainfall. So, what then would be the odds that the 'R' word would be in the forecast for the date when the SRCC would hold it's second 200km brevet for 2014? As the day drew nearer, the forecast (though not the weather) became clearer: Overcast, fog, with the chance of rain spiking around 3pm. So the plan now becomes: Ride, of course, but do what can be done to be near the finish not long after 3pm! Despite the irony of rain during a drought not one of us participating in this brevet, it should be pointed out, would ever begrudge the rain if it came to be. While the rest of the country dealt with prolonged cold spells, huge snowfalls and all ...