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Randonneuring: Randonneuring is long-distance unsupported endurance cycling. This style of riding is non-competitive in nature, and self-sufficiency is paramount. When riders participate in randonneuring events, they are part of a long tradition that goes back to the beginning of the sport of cycling in France and Italy. Friendly camaraderie, not competition, is the hallmark of randonneuring.


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Bill  On The Road

 by: Bill Oetinger  2/1/2013

La Primavera, North Bay style

“La Primavera,” meaning springtime or that first harbinger of Spring, is often applied to certain bike races, most notably Milano-San Remo, the great monument that kicks off the classics season. I'm going to presume to borrow the sobriquet and apply it to a ride I did on January 19.

Clearly, mid-January is not springtime, not even in California. But the name popped into my head, early in the ride, as it felt as if this annual event really did represent the launching pad for a new season. No matter that many a rainy day lies between January and May…this still felt like the rolling away of the cold stone of Winter; that blue skies and sunshine were all I have to look forward to; that my shadow would be my constant companion from here on out.

The ride that brought on this little seasonal epiphany was a fairly humble affair. It was the first brevet of the Santa Rosa Cycling Club’s 2013 season. (Brevets are training or qualifying rides leading up to longer--much longer--rides, such as the epic, 750-plus-mile Paris-Brest-Paris. They are part of that quirky subset of cycling known as randonneuring. I'm not going to diverge into a long disquisition on randonneuring because, first of all, I'm not qualified to do so, and, second, because it's only tangential to the telling of this story.)

The brevet season typically begins with a 200-K (in this case, 126 miles). The season progresses through 300, 400, and 600-K brevets before--sometimes--culminating in a grand 1200-K adventure. I'm not a real randonneur. I have no interest in doing anything longer or more involved that an entry-level 200-K. I'm not alone in this respect. While true card-carrying randonneurs are committed to the whole package, working their way up through the longer events, there are some of us who only dip a toe in the water with a 200-K or an occasional 300-K.

RouteThis first round of our SRCC calendar of brevets is a case in point: of the 100 riders assembled at the start in Healdsburg, I would guess close to half were like me, just in it for the short haul, if you can call 126 miles short. (In the world of randonneuring, you can.) So the corps of hardcore randonneurs was much diluted by all of the wannabe poseurs and ringers. No matter: the more, the merrier, and a crowd of 100 folks on bikes on a nippy January morning looks like a very merry mass of riders.

It was indeed quite nippy: I would guess just over 30° at the start. But the forecast called for a high of an unbelievably balmy 65° later in the day, which would make it by far the warmest day we'd had since sometime back in Indian Summer. With that prediction in mind, I had skimped a bit on the winter layers for the start, not wanting to have to haul all that gear around the course for all the later, warmer miles. So I felt pretty chilly as we set out, especially in the shade, which seemed to be everywhere, early on.

Brevets in general tend to be not too hilly. I believe that's part of the guiding ethos of the rando culture: flats and rollers, but not too many monster mountains. This route is no exception. After a run up Dry Creek Valley and down Alexander Valley, it climbs through Knights Valley and over one big ridge before dropping into Napa Valley, where it runs down the entire length of that famed region to a park in the city of Napa. It then retraces the route--more or less--on the way back. (I know a little about this course. I laid it out. Many years ago, when my old friend Bill Ellis got the Santa Rosa club involved in putting on a brevet series, he asked me to design the courses for all the distances. Although I'm not a true randonnéur, I know enough about the discipline to understand what the routes should look like.)

Because this course is so not-hilly, it has come, over the years, to have a reputation as a very fast ride. Now a cohort of hammers enters each year with the goal of burning up the course at a very brisk tempo. The fastest time this year, set by SRCC member Jady Palko, was 6:02. That's just under 21 mph for the 126 miles. A fairly large group, including two tandems and many of my regular riding buddies, came in a few minutes later, averaging exactly 20 mph. Not pro-race pace, but for amateur cycle-tourists, many of them at least middle-aged, it's a spanking time. And what's more, it's fun.

Well…I assume it was fun. I certainly had fun, but I wasn't in that group. I was a long way behind them at the end. I have averaged 20 mph for centuries, but not in quite a few years. Those days are long gone. But I wasn't off the back or even close to it. My time placed me exactly at the mid-point of the field. That's one of the nicest aspects of brevets: there is room for everyone in the events. Being fast is all well and good, but finishing is the prime directive, the only important goal, and many people take a very relaxed approach to the endeavor.

As we headed north along the lumpy (and frosty) rollers of Dry Creek Valley, the fast folks went off the front right away. Bye! See ya at the finish. But mid-packers like this old horse had plenty of company, as we settled into what would be our sustainable tempo for the duration. Although I enjoyed the whole day, I think those first miles were some of the best. Very cold, for sure, but not quite to the point of abject misery…more to the point of making me feel alive and energized and, yes, a little bit crazy. Crazy in the sense of, "That's so crazy, it just might work!" I mean, you have to be a little crazy to set off at 0-dark-hundred on a freezing January morning to go on a 126-mile bike ride, right? But it's a clever kind of crazy. Most people--cyclists and non-cyclists alike--would think it a crazy notion. But the people doing it--the crazy hundred of us--we felt as if we were in on a delicious secret the rest of the world had missed. If the Blue Meanies had any idea how much fun we were having, they would surely have to figure out some way to make it illegal.

I hung in with my self-selected gruppo through all the early miles, feeling comfortable. It was a good group. I think we had about 15 people in our little gang, dropping the occasional rider off the back and scooping up a few at the front, as they dropped back to us from the faster pacelines ahead. I almost lost our group when we went over the county line ridge the first time. (Look at the profile in the Ride With GPS file: the two big spikes standing up like Satan's horns are the two times the route crosses the Sonoma-Napa county line, north of Calistoga. It's not really much of a hill in either direction, but it's just enough to put some of us into difficulty.)

In the same ride last year, I was gapped a bit on this climb. Same thing this year: I was about 100' behind the nearest rider over the summit, with the rest of the group already streaming away down the hill. But with a determined descent, I managed to get back on just as the road flattened out near Calistoga. That extra effort on the downhill allowed me the luxury of remaining comfortably within our smoothly-working group for another 35 miles, all the way to the turnaround controle at mile 70.

There were two nice women in our group, with whom I chatted almost constantly, all the way down Napa Valley: Becky Berka and Theresa Lynch, both on fixes. I rode this same section with Becky last year. I found it amusing to see the different ways we handled the many mid-sized rollers along Silverado Trail: both of them spinning madly on the 30-mph descents, while I sat in, with my freewheel buzzing away, loudly announcing my easy coasting.

We encountered the front group about a mile or two from the turnaround, as they were setting out on their return leg. Not really so far apart, although they had already made their stop for food and we had yet to do so. As noted above, that gap would grow to well over an hour by the finish. I ran into so many friends at the controle, it was like a big party. My buddy Donn King, a veteran of three PBP's, was checking riders off on his big list. I hooked up with several of my club mates to start the return trip. They had all arrived at the turnaround before me--that is to say: they were faster--so I knew it was a bit of a stretch to think I could hang with them on the way back with my legs starting to feel a little heavy. Sure enough, I only lasted with them to the first of the jumbo rollers on Silverado, heading back up the valley. I had just taken a big pull--maybe too big--when my legs cried uncle. The mind was willing, but the flesh was weak.

But that's okay. Wish I could have stayed tacked onto that group, but…so be it. Later, after hooking up with a few other strays, we were reeled in by Becky on her fixie, with a few others in tow. We formed another good group for the balance of the run up Napa Valley. As we passed Calistoga at mile 100, I noted my time was under 6 hours. Okay, that was just about the time the fastest riders were finishing the whole ride, 26 miles ahead, but for me, a sub-6 century is pretty good these days. It means I'm still within an hour of my best century times from over a quarter-century ago. I'll take it!

As we hit the county line climb for the second time, I noted we had exactly 20 miles to go. Just a few yards later, as we settled into the slope, I realized I wasn't going to be able to hang with Becky and the rest in our group of six or so. It's easy, in revisionist-history retrospect, to say I should have just dug a little deeper to hang on, as I had done on the outward-bound pass over this little summit. But "should have" really doesn't matter. If I could have, I would have. So I watched them ride away from me and resigned myself to carrying on alone. In the end, 20 miles later, they finished nine minutes ahead of me. I stopped twice in those 20 miles…once for a pee and once for a splash of water at the Jimtown Store (after stupidly leaving the turnaround without two full bottles). The two stops probably accounted for four minutes, so Becky's bunch took about five minutes out of me on the road: three on the climb and two by virtue of their nice paceline vs my solo run. The exact same thing happened to me last year: I lost the wheels of two nice women--Sarah and Andrea--on the same climb and finished eight minutes behind them, 20 miles later.

This year, Sarah was working the finish controle, logging us in, and Andrea was quite a few minutes behind me. I see in the results that Theresa, the other fixie, was given the same finish time as mine, but I never saw her, ahead of or behind me. We must have been pretty close, though. I felt great at the finish. In spite of the fact that my legs wouldn't allow me to hang on to those nice groups in the closing miles, I felt fresh and even kind of exalted by the day. What a cool way to spend a mid-winter Saturday…or should I call it an early spring Saturday? My own, personal Primavera.

One of the best parts of this brevet is what happens afterward: a big beer fest at the Bear Republic brew pub in Healdsburg. The tired but happy riders take over the entire outdoor seating area, right next to the brevet finish line, and keep the waiters running back and forth with pitchers of Racer 5 and baskets of fries. This is one of the things I like best about longer-distance rides: that sense of community, of family, that pulls the group together. I sat and ate and drank and yakked with, among others, Donn King, back from the Napa controle, and Craig Robertson, one of the captains on those fast tandems. I've known these guys for so many years--decades--and we have ridden so many miles, have been through so many long-distance adventures together. That means something. There is a shared understanding, a complicity. As you chat and trot out your old war stories about past rides, you know you don't have to back up and explain anything about it all: you're all on the same page. The rest of the world might look askance at you; might wonder at your sanity or your values, but those of us curled around our pints of IPA, we know things the rest of the world doesn't know. And we don't really care if they ever figure it out. We are happy with our lot in life, with doing these rides that are so crazy, they just might work.

Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net



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