449 km

Each year, as November becomes December I begin to refine my cycling plans for the coming year. RUSA and ACP brevet calendars are already approved, and the California Triple Crown site has all of the coming year's double centuries listed. Looking back from that point, I could tell why my riding was in fine tune. 2010 had started off slow, but April and May of that year launched me on a run of really enjoyable and successful efforts on the longer brevets in the Super Randonneur series. Riding that wave of good results, I looked out on the coming year and imagined I could complete a double Super Randonneur series in 2011. NorCal brevet clubs listed as many as seven 200km brevets, five 300kms, four 400kms and four more 600kms, all roughly within an hour's drive of my home. Ah, but it is not as simple as showing up, nor even as simple as planning to show up. The day I completed my first 200km of the year, I knew with little doubt I had caught a head cold after I stopped riding. L...

Water is a chemical substance that is vital to life. Without it, humans and all other terrestrial life forms fail. Applied to seeds planted in the ground it promotes growth. How vital is it though to the sub-species of humans known as randonneurs? Is it really necessary to apply water to a randonneur to promote 'growth'? More to the point, on last week's Santa Rosa 300km Brevet , was it necessary to apply so much of the stuff to all the participants? In 2005, as a freshly minted randonneur, I enjoyed a wonderful run of spring weather when I completed my first SR series . In fact, all those brevets were definitely on the warm side as spring weather goes. Ah, but in 2006, right from the start, things changed. The first brevet of that year was the 200km, and I chose the San Francisco Randonneur's 200km for the first time. To put it mildly, that 200km was wet . Along the way on that ride, I doubted many times that I was doing the right thing by continuing. Each moment of...

(Photos courtesy of Masayoshi Kobayashi) In looking back over 'recent' postings to this blog, I noted that while entries became sparse after last summer, on top of that the last entry that had to do with a specific ride was in early October, and the ride it chronicled was a month before that. I began this blog as a way to record and ruminate on my preparation for Paris, Brest, Paris 2011. So before I provide a new entry that recounts my most recent brevet, I might as well at least mention all those brevets I did do but didn't write or comment about. The cycling year 2010 for me was a very good year. There was room left for it to have been great, but very good is still a lot of progress. High points for 2010 were the longest rides of the year: The Flèche Norcal, the Fort Bragg 600km and the Central Coast 1000km. On all those rides I had a great appetite, and energy through out the ride. Those rides only take me through the first half of the year though. I filled out the r...

The San Francisco Randonneurs 2011 brevet schedule is online here . Our first event is on January 22nd. If you have interest in riding this event, you might want to hurry. For this ride only, there is a rider limit (due to NPS rules) and while we aren't full yet, we will fill up before the date. Registration can be done online or via paper/mail here . Note too that the calendar below is just the start. We are in the planning stages to add four more events for 2011, two of which will be at the 100km distance (Proposed Populaire dates under discussion are June 25th and October 1st. Check the SFR website soon for exact dates.) 2011 Schedule Event/Distance Date Start Time Time limit Point Reyes 200k Sat, 01/22/2011 7:00 AM 13.5 hours 2 Rock/Valley Ford 200k Sat, 02/12/2011 7:00 AM 13.5 hours Russian River 300k Sat, 02/26/2011 6:00 AM 20 hours Healdsburg/Hopland 400k Sat, 04/09/2011 6:00 AM 27 hours Fleche (360k +) Thu, 04/21/2011 8:00 AM 24 hours Ft. Bragg 600k Sat, 05/07/2...

I'm way behind on the postings I intended to make, and further behind on the ones I should be making to this blog. Still, this one is pretty easy to throw up there and is no less meaningful for it's ease in composing. In late 2007 I applied to become the Regional Brevet Administrator for the San Francisco Randonneurs , replacing Todd Teachout who had served in that role since before 2003. The learning curve, as in most things, was steeper at first, and the 2008 brevet season was a modest success even if it was smaller in comparison to 2007. There often is a big drop off in participation in the year after PBP, and for SFR this was no exception. That plus bad weather for our first two dates kept participation low. Nevertheless, I was glad to be contributing in a more meaningful way to the sport I loved. 2009 was a big step up, with many more rides listed and new routes added. Participation picked up noticeably, and with successful runs of a 400km, 600km and Fleche, I was pleas...

There is a hook that catches us all, and pulls us into randonneuring. It isn't just being on the bike. There are many things that pull me toward riding brevets, and there are many things that have delivered rewards for having joined the paceline. I certainly love pushing myself to complete longer distances, or to overcome a headwind, or to defeat a hilly course in a time I only dreamed of a year or more ago. Of all these things, however, the biggest draw, the surest hook, is the camaraderie I've found between the start and finish controls. On the 2009 Davis Gold Rush Randonnee, I had been riding alone for a bit more than 50 miles. The water stop at mile 50 was busy in a way that the road leading to it had not been. I wondered where all the riders had been and how it worked that I couldn't gain on them and they could not gain on me. I left the water stop alone and in just a mile or two noticed a rattle that was more than annoying. After fixing a problem that verged on bu...

(Note: I started this blog entry nearly two months ago. One thing that makes it ok that I waited to actually finish it, is that well, what I was trying to say is pretty much true for me.) As I approach two decades of living in the Bay Area, I've seen enough of the change of the seasons to have a working, rough idea of what each season means, and sort of when to expect it to arrive. The transition from summer to fall to winter here is nothing like what I knew back east, and there can be years when you never know if is truly fall or if the fall season happened overnight, and within less than 24 hours summer has morphed into winter. Winter living within the California version of a Mediterranean climate of course means not drastically colder temperatures but still colder temps. More obviously though, there is a greater possibility of rain. Rain is something a Bay Area local just does not think about from sometime in May until sometime late in October. After October of course, rain ...