Why ride Brevets? (Presentation Suggestions)

[Jake Kassen]

Hey NERds-

This Saturday @ 5pm at Wheelworks in Belmont, MA I'll be given a short presentation on Randonneuring and Brevets. This
isn't an official NER event but it is open to the public and I hope a bunch of the local NER riders can attend. Wheelworks
plans to show off a Peter Mooney 650B bike but my presentation will specifically mention that equipment is the least
important aspect of the sport. That said, thanks to Wheelworks for the invitation to proselytize about the sport.

According to Wheelworks, Light Refreshments will be served -- I assume that means expensive carbon based food.

My question to this group is, why do you like riding brevets?

Also, what (if anything) besides time limits and distances do you feel separates brevets from the normal club centuries?

Jake

[Steve Wimberg]

For me, brevets are mostly about the challenge, and the opportunity to ride really long distances.  

After 8(?) years of doing them, there is definitely no guarantee that I will not DNF any given ride.  That specter of the control closing time is always there, and that is something that makes brevets different from normal rides.  Time management is a significant part of riding brevets.  I’m not such a fast rider, so completing a difficult route in the time allotted adds an additional element of urgency to a brevet.

The distances we sometimes cover on brevets also make them unique.  There is something to be said about the meditative qualities of spending hours on your bike, just riding.  I mean, you could always ride those routes, but for me I would not be as inclined to ride 375 miles over the course of a weekend if there wasn’t a few other people doing it as well.

However, now that I’ve ridden a bunch of these things, I am really starting to think about what motivates me at this point.  In the past, I was motivated to push myself to see just how far I could go - (turns out the answer is about 1200k), but now that I feel like I’ve gone far enough, I'm starting to think things like “why am I riding my bike in the rain and cold at 2AM?”  Eh, you’ll probably see my ass riding somewhere around North Adams in the early morning of July 15, anyway.  Crazy, right?

Now here’s a question.  Does randonneuring make you crazy, or are you crazy to begin with for becoming a randonneur? 

I’ve always thought that one of the great things about randonneuring is that you can make it what you want.  Want to ride fast and see if you can beat your previous time?  Go for it.  Want to ride slow and take in the scenery?  That’s good to.  Want to ride for 24 hours straight?  There’s a ride for that.  The sport allows you to take in little bits, or a whole freaking mouthful.

Jake, I totally agree that equipment is the least important aspect of randonneuring, but I feel like one of the most important aspects is to make sure that your equipment is up to the task of the ride in question.  Ensuring that your bike is in good working order, and being able to fix any issues that arise during a ride are paramount to being a successful randonneur.

See you tomorrow!

Steve

[Tsun Au Yeung]

To answer your question Steve with your own words, 'randonneuring provides the meditative qualities of spending hours on your bike, just riding'... to be less crazy.  

All joking aside, I like the aspect of finding places that I otherwise wouldn't know about if I wasn't riding a brevet, places like The P'sham country store or Sandy's Book and Bakery just to name a few.  

Tsun

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[Ted Shwartz]

Once I learned to ride, the world was my oyster. Apologies to Shakespere

I have always enjoyed being outside, whether it be walking, hiking, bicycling, skiing or sailing. I could just go farther from the back door via bicycle and not be so weather dependent. 

Brevet rides are just a natural extension of where my bicycling has been taking me all my life. 

Most people think of bicycle rides as a physical journey and that is true. Brevets, however are all about the metaphysical journey. What we experience, and how we experience it during a Brevet is so much more than a simple bicycle journey. 

Often Brevets bring me to new roads, new places and new people. Brevets pull me out of the ordinary. Starts can feel very wondrous and very intimidating at the same time. Food never tastes better. Water never tastes so sweet. Getting off your saddle never felt so great. Returning never felt so much as an accomplishment.

The very act of riding into the night, and back into the day is a pleasure so few people experience and I deeply treasure

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[gvoysey]

"Hey, why are you banging your head against the wall?"

"It feels so great when I stop!"

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[Jake Kassen]

Thanks to everyone who's commented so far on the list and directly. Emily had an additional reason to ride which I
suggested she should post publicly....

Regarding Equipment: My comment about it not being important is a bit more nuanced then I implied. It's extremely
important that people ride with gear they find comfortable and is reliable. Lights and reflectors are required by the sport for
riding after dusk.

If you read some magazines and blogs (particularly one published in the pacific northwest) you'd get the impression you
*need* an expensive "Randonneuring" bike and components to be successful in the sport.

That's complete bullshit. Almost any bike can be suitable for long distances. There's nothing inherently wrong with using a
"racing" bike or even a bike with suspension. Some of the strongest riders use old 3-speed hubs, fixed gears, fancy DI2
systems, etc. Steel, Carbon, and Ti -- one is not better then another. Recumbents and folding bikes are fine. Simply put,
there's no correlation between DNFs and hardware. Longtime riders have seen it all.

I hope no one avoids brevets because they think they have the "wrong" bike or feels pressured to invest in stuff they don't
otherwise want. If you like your bike, ride it.

Jake

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[Bill Murray]

Well put Jake!  Hope you are going to include this point in your talk tomorrow.

See you at Wheelworks!

Bill

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[gvoysey]

on a related note to Emily's thought: https://semi-rad.com/2018/02/the-joy-of-wearing-out-a-piece-of-gear/

It's easy to throw dollars at fancy bike parts, but i'm happier when i grudgingly replace worn out bits instead.

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[Andy Bailey Goodell]

I started riding brevets because I was going farther each ride and wanted venture into new territory. I also prefer to ride with at least a few people, and randonneuring was the only way I knew of to go very far and not alone. (This started for me in Ithaca, NY which is a little light on randonneuring though, but after moving to Seattle, the group aspect was something I really looked forward to.) I personally don't care about fitness or exercise, it's really just about spending the day outdoors on these adventures.

To the second point:

- Pace - I can often pick a pace and hope that some others also are going about the same speed, whereas club rides tended to be one fast and relentless group and difficult to keep up when I don't have the ability to ride enough miles a year to fit in. 

- Rules - It was daunting at first that brevets had rules I wasn't ready for. I thought unless I had dyno lights, spare bulbs, more spare lights, special reflective vests & anklets, and some way to carry extra layers ... it wouldn't be possible. At least in the north, a 200km or above probably requires having some of this, and that just wasn't something I was ready to go spend hundreds on in the beginning. At least now with LEDs, the lights are significantly cheaper than when I started riding in 2008. I had no idea how queue sheets, controles, and time limits would effect a ride and mistakenly thought that this would make rides difficult. I still think most of the rules are silly - can't we just ride a route and skip the gas station signatures that don't prove anything in a sport where cheating gains nothing? I wish I knew about permanents prior to brevets, but I don't think there were many (or any?) where I was - it would have been nice to learn these rules in that setting first.

- Bikes - I love that many randonneurs have really classy bikes. Riding among purposely built-up machines is a great (if minor) reason I like randonneuring. While comments about "you can do this on any bike" have merit, I also think randonneurs tend to know a lot about their bikes, have chosen parts on them for a reason, generally understand how to adjust or fix them, etc. I wouldn't be saying "just show up on any bike, it'll be fine" to someone that hasn't previously ridden a bike very far, but that also doesn't mean that any style of bike isn't capable of randonneuring on.

Andy

[Sarah B.]

On Thursday, February 22, 2018 at 1:01:39 PM UTC-5, Jake Kassen wrote:

My question to this group is, why do you like riding brevets?

The first, facile answer: I like long rides.  The longer one: I like the sense of accomplishment that isn't tied to a race, or winning; merely to finishing.  I dreamed when I was younger of doing an IronMan, but did one sprint triathlon and didn't enjoy racing, especially since I am not genetically predisposed to going fast.   My accomplishments in randonneuring aren't diminished by whether I finished first or last (both of which I've done, albeit the former only on a small winter 100k where we all rode together).   I can be good at randonneuring just by plugging away at it. 
 

Also, what (if anything) besides time limits and distances do you feel separates brevets from the normal club centuries?

The pace and the style of camaraderie -- club centuries are often designed around 6-hour finisher working in tight pacelines, and while other speeds aren't disallowed, they're not what the ride is designed for.   On brevets, people riding the same speed will work together, but everyone is on their own ride, and that's respected. 

And they're differentiated from the big charity rides and Grand Fondos by both price and the emphasis on self-sufficiency -- you're not going to pay an arm and a leg (either for charity or just for...extra beer? IDK what some of those rides spend it all on), but you're also not going to have an aid station around every corner.

(I will note that I feel like sometimes we make too much of an emphasis on self-sufficiency in particular ways -- I felt like I needed tools (and the knowledge to go with them) and other things at my first brevet, but yet I was completely comfortable training for that same ride by doing 80+ mile rides out into the countryside by myself, and all I really needed to bring on the brevet was the same things I needed to feel safe on those rides.  And ankle bands.  Yes, I carry more tools now than I used to as I've learned to fix more things, but that's to avoid DNFing, not to avoid being stranded -- the roadside assistance plan and the credit card will do.)

The routes are different, too, although both have some pluses.  Randonneuring routes, due to the constraints of control placement, tend to Go Somewhere -- they really range across the countryside. It feels even more epic to say that you've ridden to Portland and back than just that you've ridden 250 miles straight.  On the other hand, club centuries/charity rides often meander on all the pretty roads of an area, since letting riders not quite up to the challenge shortcut their way back is a feature, not a bug.  Both have their charms. 

Finally: there is nothing quite like the feeling of getting a second/third/seventeenth wind in the middle of the night, alone on a country road, and just letting your legs carry you along like you were flying.   Crossing your second state line before 8am.   Looking at the cue sheet and realizing you only have a hundred miles to go -- what was once the grandest ride you could conceive of is now the home stretch.   Putting your head down and sprinting like there's no tomorrow after something got you pushed up against the control time limits and making it, at speeds you didn't know you could dig deep and find after that long on the bike.  

Sarah

[Emily O'Brien]

One thing that I have always found striking about brevets is that by and large, the people who ride them are a really great bunch. Lots of people (especially women, and especially younger women, but certainly not only by any means!) complain about the attitude of people they encounter on group rides: a perception that people are snobby or patronizing, or excessively competitive, or do stupid things that are dangerous for the whole group because they are so determined to beat each other to the next stop sign. 
Randonneurs are not like that. I have never felt patronized or "mansplained" to on a brevet; in general, people assume that if you showed up to this crazy, quirky ride, you basically know what you're doing and have a modicum of experience. Once on an organized century, a guy saw me pedaling up a hill in my very low cadence and condescended to explain to me all about how the gears work and why I should shift to go faster up the hill. I was riding a fixed gear, by the way. I've never, ever had that kind of experience on a brevet.

And while some riders may be competitive, they're mostly smart enough to be level-headed about it. They might sprint for town lines, but only the ones where that's safe and reasonable. They don't act like it's the East Cupcake Championship Cat 6 crit. 

 Randonneurs may be quirky and a little weird, but only in the best way. There's also something about being out doing some ridiculous ride at all hours of the night that strips away all the BS. 

And like others, I appreciate that there's not only one kind of bike that's good for brevets. Regardless of what you might see on the pages of BQ, the range of what people actually show up with is pretty diverse. We see it all, from fixies to 3-speeds to people still running 8-speed to Di2. At PBP 2007, I remember one guy who did the ride on a basically stock Bianchi San Jose - a steel singlespeed that retailed for about $600, and he was comfortable and satisfied with it even aside from the fact that he was kind of out to make a point that you don't need a $$$$ bike to be successful. 

And I really like night riding, even if it's occasionally a struggle to stay alert when it's dark and a time when I'm usually asleep. The peace and quiet and lack of traffic go a long way toward making up for the lack of scenery. 

I started riding brevets because I always liked long rides; I liked being able to go someplace far away, leaving from my house. I liked being able to take in the kind of distance one might do in a three or four day camping trip, even when I couldn't take the time off to go on a three or four day camping trip. I liked the challenge, and the big adventure. 

It doesn't give me the same butterflies-in-the-stomach excitement that it did back in the Bush administration, but I still love the experience of a long journey. It's like a mini-vacation, where I'm unplugged and out of touch, don't have to answer the phone or email or do anything except eat and pedal. 

Emily

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Dill Pickle
... gear for the extra mile

www.dillpicklegear.com
-----------------------------------

[Dan Shinnick]

About 3 years ago on the 300k to Petersham I remember getting ready for the ride and looking at a spare folding bead gatorskin I bought for the ride.  It was the first time I'd considered ever needing a spare tire.  I looked at it and said; 'I've NEVER ever needed a spare tire on any of these rides, do I really want to carry it? Well maybe someone else might need it."  And so I took it.  Later that day in Northfield, I sliced open my sidewall. First time I'd ever carried a spare tire.

It was on that same ride the year before when it was 68 degrees at the start.  By the time people made it to the lunch stop it was 90 and humid.  When I rolled in it looked like Omaha beach!  Bodies and bikes were everywhere and people were drinking ice tea by the pitcher full.  Trying to get some shade.  That ride was my first experience with the unique properties of chamois cream, because I specifically didn't have any.  I recall riding the last 50 miles from Petersham standing in the pedals except for the descent off of Wachusett which is like jumping off a cliff for 5 miles or more (only in the dark praying there are no potholes).  I remember coming home on South Acton Road trying to force myself to change focus on what I was looking at every few seconds just to stay awake.

Jake you'll recall the Portland 400k two years ago when I double flatted about 10 miles into the ride and realized I'd, in my haste to get ready, brought the wrong sized stems for my super fast deep section carbon clinchers (lot's of good it did me) this was a week after double flatting on the same wheels on the B2VT.  It was like 5 am and when you came up to help me patch my tubes amidst the black flies and mosquitoes (because where else would one double flat but in a swamp, right?) and I was ready to kick my bike. you calmly informed me that there was a bike shop on the route (albeit in Kennebunk) and pushed me off on my way.  Anyway I made it to the shop and later the lunch turn only to find my rear hub was separating.  Turns out a bearing was damaged and the cone wasn't seating correctly.  I managed to limp it home 100 or so miles later stopping every once in a while to tighten the thing with my fingers.

What do I like about riding brevets?  Finishing.  And the stories like these.

I also get a lot of thinking done.

A lot of thinking.

Dan

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-----------------------------------

Dill Pickle
... gear for the extra mile

www.dillpicklegear.com
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[Sarah B.]

On Friday, February 23, 2018 at 1:56:31 PM UTC-5, Emily O'Brien wrote:

Once on an organized century, a guy saw me pedaling up a hill in my very low cadence and condescended to explain to me all about how the gears work and why I should shift to go faster up the hill. I was riding a fixed gear, by the way. I've never, ever had that kind of experience on a brevet.

I typed out and then cut my similar story from my previous reply but yes, this is very true.   I did that century a month before my first brevet; the difference was refreshing.  With randonneurs, I was instantly treated as "one of the gang".  

Sarah

[si little]

with both diamond frame and 'bent rides behind me, the joy of looking around and guerrilla camping on the the long ones.  and when younger (<60) on the 'bent and riding with the rest of the pack....ymmv

On Thursday, February 22, 2018 at 1:01:39 PM UTC-5, Jake Kassen wrote:

[Eric Nichols]

Why ride Brevets? 

Or, what randonneuring has taught me:

 

• It has made me a more efficient cyclist. Really long rides reward economy of effort and movement.
• It has made me a more resilient cyclist.  No sag, no support means sometimes you just have to get on with it.
• It has made me a better problem-solver. Each brevet poses a series of challenges to be analyzed and overcome.
• It has pushed the boundaries of my capabilities. Who knew that riding beyond the horizon and through the night could be so much fun?
• It has changed the way I look at bikes and riding equipment. I have learned that fenders are worth a layer (at least).  
• I have learned that on really long rides, comfort equals speed.

Eric Nichols

[Charles Coldwell]

Eric put it really well.

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Charles M. Coldwell, W1CMC
Belmont, Massachusetts, New England
"Turn on, log in, tune out"

[Jan Peter Dembinski]

Wow, Jake.  Maybe I can answer this question--after my next brevet. Meanwhile, with this question why does Monty Python's Philosophy Football sketch come to mind? 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E_8EjoxY7Q

Then again, Jake, your asking this question kinda reminds me of the host of this Python sketch: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ9myHhpS9s.

:)

Until then--well, it's just unfair to be asked this question on a snowbound, sleety day.  

[Steve Smith]

Haha that's Monty Python skit is great Jan, I hadn't seen that for a long long time and it made me laugh all over again.  I had sent this note to Jake but sending it here to as I love the community aspect of all these answers:

1. Why do you like riding brevets: I like the challenge of the longer distances, the self-reliance aspects, and the camaraderie of spending a long day in a saddle with a small group of friends and acquaintances.   I like the rhythm of the season, from permanents to populaire to the big rides.  I like the group of people that are drawn to the sport.

2. What sets it apart: the self-reliance, the need to prep, to know how to navigate; and associating with other people that value and develop these skills.    Smaller group sizes, less of a competitive atmosphere that club rides.

I agree with lots of what other's wrote as well!

[Phillip Stern]

I sent this to Jake, but want to get in on the rando-comraderie so am resending to the whole group. 

Nothing that hasn’t been said before... Basically I like the longer, less competitive rides, and I like the people.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Phillip Stern <philli...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 4:00 PM
Subject: Re: [NER] Why ride Brevets? (Presentation Suggestions)
To: <li...@jkassen.org>

I like brevets because 

1) they are beautiful routes that I don’t have to research (thanks Jake)

2) longer distances than club centuries so no pressure to go fast

3) fewer people more spread out over the route so doesn't feel crowded

4) see many of the same people each ride so a sense of comraderie amongst a band of people with a shared (but peculiar) passion