Hassan 400, my first brevet, a ride report

[santosh kumar]

https://santosuren.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/hassan-express-400-22-july-2017/

Cheers
Santosh

[Prateek Srivastava]

Read your blog santosh , very well written !! It was nice chatting up with you at the flyover !

On Thursday, 27 July 2017 17:37:42 UTC+5:30, Santosh wrote:

https://santosuren.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/hassan-express-400-22-july-2017/

Cheers
Santosh

[Opendro]

Good ride followed by a good write. Congratulations on your first official 400k though it hardly means anything to you if you had already done 500k before on your own.

Sorry about your loss of the brevet card. All that is excused as you will eventually do longer official rides later ;-)

Hey, about the BITH, I had a few basic sanity test I put across people which can help them decide if they are ready. Sleep is one part which you can manage if you pass this simple test. The test is - run a 50 km or climb Nandi 7 times in a stretch, probably with small breaks of drinks and snacks. If you can manage either of these depending on your preference, with a single cramp or exhaustion, you are ready for BITH. Climbing is what challenges BITH. If you are decently good in it, you can spare time for your naps. It will be a boring test, but it will save you the time from a real ride.

BITH however throws another challenge in the first half due to the afternoon start. The city traffic plus initial need for covering distance without a buffer over the day means that you hardly have the time to nap in the first night. Most riders end up riding all the way till Kalpetta, often chasing the cut off time, without any sleep.

It is also helpful to improve downhill ride as BITH has very long downhills on very good roads. Virajpet to Iritty, Doddabetta to Metupalayam via Kotagiri, Yelagiri are all very good roads and are all fast downhills with very less traffic.

You still have two months time before you decide :-)

I keep promising Chiddu that I will support him to run the BITH every year, but I always end up being not so helpful. We will anyway try to make this even happen every year. In fact, I want to this to evolve as a PBP kind of a ride - it has both beauty and challenge and a perfect loop.

[Chidambaran Subramanian]

I will be trying and doing something about the city part this year. Have already taken off that day, so I can start at a point where they don't have to plough through traffic.

I don't think sleep is a trivial part. I disagree with Opendro on this aspect. I think though that each one of us are different. I was able to climb all the climbs post Kalpetta even though my rear gear shifter broke and I was stuck at 3-4 , and i don't consider myself a great climber 

What I suggest people to do is to go to Krishnagiri at night and try the climb to Hosur after a night of near sleeplessness (save very short powernaps). If  you can climb without too many issues you should be okay.

I can't motivate myself to do hill repeats. It is really boring. An Anchetti ride is a better option. Repeats without the route repeating

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[Jayaprakash E]

Congratulations Santosh!!! Nice writeup. Keep it up!!

[O p e n d r o]

Either the boring and short hill repeats or a long ride to Yercaud... it is your choice. BTW, I didn't really say that sleep is trivial. I said, if you are strong, you can spare time to sleep.

[berkeleydb]

Congrats Santosh. & nice write up.; thanks for sharing.

-{db}.

[santosh kumar]

Thanks guys for the kind words. Now, you have all put a thought in my head to do the BITH this year! :D

Opendro, the 500s I had done before were all done in 3 days or more, with no pressure to finish in time.

On 30-Jul-2017 1:24 PM, "berkeleydb" <dha...@gmail.com> wrote:

Congrats Santosh.  & nice write up.; thanks for sharing.

-{db}.

[berkeleydb]

From your write up of the 400km Hassan brevet, seemed like you were going pretry strong. Atleast can go for a 600km brevet, IMO.

(Disclaimer -- I have done only a 200km brevet; nothing longer.)

-{db}.

[santosh kumar]

May be that will be my next target! :)

Cheers
Santosh

-{db}.