Bike Diary 1-26-2011 and First Brevet Completed

I did the SFR Lighthouse 200k Brevet on the 22nd and everything went nearly perfectly.  207km in 9 hours 22 minutes was well below my goal and knocked off two of my goals for 2011 (any 200k and any 200k under 10 hours).  I rode in to the office today on my road bike, seventh ride in for the year.  Annual mileage is up to 928km, and it's still January. 

Bike Diary 1-19-2011 and First Permanent Completed

On Sunday the 16th I did the Contra Alameda Permanent Populaire. 

Contra Alameda -- The name of the route
Permanent -- a ride you can do anytime, you just contact the owner of the route and they'll set you up
Populaire -- any RUSA sanctioned ride between 100 and 199km in length

It's a 110km loop through Lafayette, Castro Valley, down to Sunol, up through Danville, and back to Lafayette.  I filled out my little brevet card fastidiously, hit all the controls on-time and now have it in the mail for certification. 

I did the ride in to work today, the 6th time of the year.  Total mileage for the year is now at 653km.  I made a couple of personal bests in speed today.  Average riding speed was 24.3kph.  Total time to the door was 2 hours 21 minutes.  My next speed target is to get to the Piedmont Pines sign in under 1 hour. 

I received my cue sheet and info package for the Point Reyes Lighthouse 200k event this Saturday.  The weather forecast looks perfect.  Sunny and in the mid to high 50s.  I couldn't ask for anything better for a January brevet. 

Weekly Bike Diary Entry

I did the 58km ride in to the office last Friday the 8th, this Monday the 10th, and today, the 12th.  That's five times for the year already, 10% towards my goal of 50 times in the year.  I also did the bike/BART miles on Thursday and Tuesday.  The highlight, though, was last Sunday the 9th.  I followed the route of a permanent I found on the San Francisco Randonneurs website, and ended up doing 135km which topped off a 320km week.  Maybe just as important, I got some good practice following a cue sheet, stopping at controls, logging my times, etc.  Doing that gives me substantially more confidence that I can do the 200k on the 22nd.  Total km for the year works out to 465km.  Very good for as cold as it has been.  320km a week is a 10,000 mile year, which I've never ever even sniffed before.  This can't keep up when things get busy, but it's a solid start for sure.  I feel great.

This Sunday, I am going to do another Permanent and actually shoot for getting credit for it.  What you do is

 1.  Decide which one you want to do.  Pick your date and start time.
 2.  Sign up and pay the owner of the permanent.  The route owner sends you a brevet card and a route sheet
 3.  You do the ride, stopping at the stops instructed, which usually means getting a receipt at a store
 4.  After the ride, send in your card and receipts to the route owner, and they get it authenticated with RUSA

It's pretty easy.  This will be my first one.  It's gotten me thinking about two RUSA awards that I could use as goals.  There's the R12, where you do at least one brevet a month for 12 consecutive months.  A brevet by definition is at least 200k.  Then there's the P12, where you do at least one populaire for 12 consecutive months.  A populaire is by definition between 100 and 199k.  I might end up shooting for both. 

Bike Diary entry

One of the other measurable goals I think I'll shoot for is to ride in to work 50 times in the year, and to log a total of 5000km for the year.  I rode in to work today, which makes twice this year and a total mileage (kilometerage?) of 124km.  I've adopted metric in deference to the French founders and overseers of the whole thing, and also just that I'm working up to this 200k ride in 2-1/2 weeks. 

Today was windy and cold, and I didn't feel as strong as I did Monday.  Whether that means that I'm still recovering from Monday, or the cold affected me, or I didn't sleep as well or if it was just in my head is unknown.  I've never been good at understanding much less controlling that kind of thing, and when people say that they do, I tend to be skeptical.  When I hear a rider say "I skipped todays ride.  I don't want to overtrain and peak to early in the season." what my brain thinks is "I was totally hung over/too lazy/stayed up too late playing X-Box so I skipped todays ride."  I came really close to staying in bed this morning.  I felt sluggish, and thought maybe I'd feel better tomorrow.  I've been working hard on the house, etc.  Once I'd decided that I was going to stay in bed, though, a guilt/remorse/panic of underpreparedness kicked in, and it was still before 6:00, so I got up and did it anyway.  Up yours! laziness!

I've received some advice from San Francisco Randonneurs members to pay special attention to the Route of the Point Reyes 200k.  Sometimes people get confused and lost, especially on the return leg.  The ride starts at Crissy Field, at the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge.  It heads across the bridge, up around Marin and then west to the coast and to the Point Reyes Lighthouse.  Then it heads east through Marin towns that are a jumble in my mind (Inverness?  Ross?) but eventually loops back through the same city streets and back across the Golden Gate Bridge.  The time limit for a 200k is 13.5 hours.  The start-time is at 7AM, so I have until 8:30PM to finish.  Last year the average finish time was 10 hours 11 minutes.  It all sounds do-able, but still seriously challenging.  I turn 42 in a month and I haven't ridden over 120 miles since I was 30. 

2011 Bike Diary entry #1 and the first objective

I did the long commute into the office today to start off my 2011 workyear.  58km. 
The ride that I am preparing for is on Jan 22nd.  It's a 200k (125miles).  My plan is to ride in to the office 3 times this week and do a 100k on Sunday the 9th of January.   Next week I'll ride in 3 times and on Friday the 14th I'll ride both ways (116k).  Monday the 17th I'll do a 150k.  2 more rides into work the week of the 18th through 21st and I hope to be ready for the 200k.  Rain or shine.

I got a new rain jacket and gloves and tried those out this morning.  I need to do some work on my lighting situation.  

It's all about Paris...now that I'm down with the ACP

This kind of distance cycling that I'm undertaking is a governed sliver under the big tent of cycling.  The sport began in Paris in the 1890's and is still governed by a single cycling organization in France: the ACP, or Audax Club Parisien.  Translating ACP to English, I've got no problem with Club or Parisien, but what's Audax?  Does it mean bicycle?  In fact it translates to the English word "bold" and shares the same root as "audacious".  So the worldwide governing body of this strictly cycling endeavors is called "The Bold Club of Paris".  Something about that strikes me as either really cool or really French.

So, there's the club of Audacious cyclists.  They are all about long distance bike rides, rides that are done essentially in one go.  It's not a race, you aren't on a team, you are on your own.  But in this structureless, get it done kind of event, there is structure everywhere.  The rides are almost exclusively in 5 different distances:  200k, 300k, 400k, 600k and 1200k.  Each distance has a specific maximum time limit.  Finish in time or you didn't do it.  Each ride goes through time check points that you must pass, in order, and on time. Finish your card and the ride organizer will send it in to the ACP in France for you.  Weeks later, the card will be returned to you authenticated and recorded in a big book in France for all-time.  It's kind of like scavenger hunt, but generally with more butt-pain. 

There's a non-competitive machismo about the whole thing.  These rides are something you are supposed to prove you can do, but the results are completely binary.  You either did it or you didn't.  There is no ranking for who did it best (the finishing list is recorded in Alphabetical Order).  It's about pushing yourself to the limits of what you and what a human being is capable of.  It's kind of audacious, to tell the truth.  Staying awake for 45 hours straight is a daunting challenge.  Riding 375 miles (600k) in 45 hours is flat out intimidating.  Audacious.

Wait....you want to do WHAT???

It's coming close to Christmas time, so I find myself at a lot of gatherings with people who I know reasonably well.  I'm finding it extremely difficult to provide a concise description for what I'm doing.  What I'm realizing is that I could walk up to a randonneur or randonneuse and say "I'm gonna shoot for PBP2015", and they'd nod, smile and say "great goal...good luck with that".  At a cocktail party or a christmas gathering or on a phone call to my mom, there is no brief way to say what any of that means.  I'm just beginning to learn the jargon for myself.  I'm going to practice getting the description down to something that gets the message across without seeming like a completely stupid endeavor.

I have a buddy who told me about a man he knew, who decided he was going to walk across California.  He was retired, and he just up and decided that was what he was going to do.  It's an odd impulse, but his particular definition of walking across California struck me as truly bizarre.  He had two cars that he brought with him.  He would drive Car A some distance down the road, and then walk back to Car B.  He'd then drive Car B past Car A some distance, and walk back to Car A.  He'd eventually drive past a motel, and he'd stop and sleep.  He took trails whenever he could, but didn't camp.  He'd always take care of food and shelter by driving.  In this leapfrog pattern he'd work his way West to East across California, but he'd always be walking East to West.  When he got tired or bored, he'd go home for a few months and pick up where he left off later on.  Eventually he finished and had completed a series of a few hundred 5-10 mile strolls or hikes that formed an imaginary continuous line from the west coast of California to the eastern border.

One of the things I want to do when I describe to people my cycling goals is to avoid overwhelming them with a massive avalanche of self-absorbed pointlessness.  On one hand, yes, this is mainly about me.  I'm not doing some epic ride to raise awareness for a charity.  I'm not raising money.  There is definitely a "because it's there" aspect to what I want to do, but I hope I can be reasonably convincing to others, and to myself, that there is a "there" there (and that there is an "it", there).  We'll see how that goes......