What is a good beginner Randonneuring goal?

[natasha...@gmail.com]

Hello SF Randonneurs!

I joined you all for the first time on the Women's Sleepy Hollow Populaire earlier this year and had so much fun, and came in before the time limit (not by much though). I love the spirit of Randonnuering and want to do more, yet not sure on how to realistically set goals.

Can anyone share a suggestion now that the draft 2026 calendar is out of like a progressive set of rides throughout the season that may be good targets for a "beginner"? 

I have done centuries and am comfortable with very long rides in the bike, but am overall not that fast and have never done over 6,000 feet of elevation in one ride. 

Sorry if this question is not quite clear, but it really helps me to have something to shoot for and since there are so many rides to chose from, any help in narrowing down a good set would be appreciated. 

Ramble on, 

Natasha Opfell  

[paul]

Hi Natasha,

in the absence of better data, one thing you can do is download the route library as a spreadsheet via sfrandonneurs.org

(you end up here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LO6FfMJeMP_cvnEUtCfBvpmVudLNzWH-dRVv_PWqLqQ )

Then you can sort by either total climb or climb ratio (hundreds of ft per mile ridden). That will tell you for instance, that Del Puerto Canyon 200k is one of the brevets with least amount of total climbing and one of the lowest climb ratios.

Cheers,

Paul

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[Dave]

Hi Natasha,

Check out the RUSA awards page, there are several paths to help incentivize your rando journey.   Like doing a 200km once a month (R-12).  https://rusa.org/pages/awards 

Dave B

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sfrandon/9f823cf1de92dc84e7778664ed44fca654f1fdf8.camel%40pgp18.sbrk.co.uk.

[Kelley Prebil]

Welcome Natasha!

If you're the type too that likes to see ride profiles in advance, you can use that route archive spreadsheet that Paul mentioned before (again: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LO6FfMJeMP_cvnEUtCfBvpmVudLNzWH-dRVv_PWqLqQ) since backloaded and "omfg does the climbing ever lighten up???" may be more difficult for some than frontloaded. Davis Rando rides tend to be some of the flattest given the nature of the Sacto/Davis terrain. Personally I don't like to know the ride profiles as otherwise I'd probably never show up for rides I don't already know as I kinda prefer to suffer and learn the hard way. You don't want to have a ride that's too much climbing so you DNF based on time though.

Don't worry about DNF'ing as all of us have been there too, multiple times for various reasons (including, but not limited to, bikes breaking in half, mechanicals, loss of motivation, crashes, too tired, massive thunderstorms). No pressure and no one cares. Just make sure to tell the DORC and get back safely. Rob won't ban you for any DNF/DNS. We're all adults here (at least in physical ages).

Keep in mind that a lot of the climbing is the "death by a thousand climbs" for anything along the coast and not repeats of Tam, Diablo, Hamilton, or Umunhum.

Or you could just blindly cannonball into brevets like Ioannis Sarkas (Hamilton 200k) and I (Faultline 200k) did! 

If you're a "full value rider" as it's called, Kitty Goursolle and Sandra Myers are great people to ride with (and in general are great people!) and have been around for a long time.

There is also the Permanents program (https://rusa.org/pages/permanents) which may have less pressure than a brevet with it being on your own schedule, but still time limits. You can do a permanent with other RUSA members who are also registered for the same permanent on the same day. Those, like worker rides, are important to stick together if there's more than 1 of you because you should stick together for safety reasons. Dan Pannell (who is much faster than me) told me once "What's the point (of not sticking together) as otherwise we're just doing our own individual rides?"

Just remember that this is supposed to be FUN. Type 2 fun, but still fun! For me that's the spirit of randonneuring where we push ourselves and don't take it too seriously. After all, this isn't a job.

Happy to ride with you sometime too outside of rando rides! Let me know.

Kelley

 

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From: "Dave" <qxf...@fastmail.com>
Sent: 9/17/25 12:13 PM
To: "San Francisco Randonneurs" <sfra...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SFRandon] What is a good beginner Randonneuring goal?

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sfrandon/829fcacc-60aa-43e1-b487-00aabec7dc31%40app.fastmail.com.

[Joshua Haley]

I'm not SF (hello from Ohio!), but I love this question.  I have vicariously enjoyed watching randonneurs hit their goals for the first time, because 10 years on, nothing is quite as epic as that first time!  My opinions below, which have worked for me, might work for you, or be completely off. 

I think "what is a good goal" is going to be highly individual based on your current riding baseline.  You mentioned you have ridden a few centuries, and I'm going to assume you were faster than a touring pace, slower than middle pack, and not completely wiped out at the end.  That is an excellent pace for randonneuring, and up to a 300k, will not hold you back. Speed on the long ones isn't about faster, it's about earning time off the bike. A 20-hour 400k where you get off the bike at midnight and one where you get off the bike at 7am are both legit, but very different experiences. 

When I started, I had two goals 1: Do an R12 (probably wise) and 2: Do a full Series my first year (200,300,400,600) (probably not wise). 

• Goal 1 really taught me consistency.  It lowers the fitness floor of the offseason.  Going from "I can ride a century" to "I can ride about a century every month" really helped me up my endurance, and it also gives you something to lean back on mentally on long rides.  "I only have 200k left" sounds like an insane statement, but if you do the super long stuff, mentally it's a lifesaver. 
• Goal 2 really is a set of goals.  
• First, you learn how to push past a century on the 200k.  I'd say it's "only" 24 miles, but there was a real mental hurdle for me. 
•  300k is where food and hydration really came into play.  You can make a ton of mistakes on a 200k, that will floor you on a 300k. 
• 400k was another mental burden, but if you've corrected the mistakes you had on your first 300, it's actually not that bad
• 600k was peak suck and learning to manage fatigue—no way around that.  Waking up the next morning and doing it again for 200k still isn't easy for me, but if you can finish, this is about as bad as it gets as far as difficulty on longer days.  Day 3 & 4 of a 1200k usually feel easier than day 2 in my opinion. 
• All in all, the other thing is to pay attention and learn what works for you.  I started on a bike that was way too aggressive, which was fine up to 100 miles, but pretty horrible beyond 150 miles.  If I had listened to my body, I wouldn't have ridden my first 600k.  As it was, I took a long time to recover, and I ended up never riding that bike again. 
• I might be wrong here, but don't buy a "forever" rando bike your first year (or ever if you don't have to), a good endurance geometry frame can get you there!  I did my first PBP on an Aluminum mid-range diverge.  It took me about 18 months of consistent riding to pick up the collective wisdom and learn what works for me.  If I bought the bike I wanted on day 0, I would have wasted a whole lot of money. 
• Like I said, for me, this wasn't a wise goal my first year, but the beauty of the SR series progression is that you aren't jumping straight to the end.  You should know after the 300k if you think a 400k is doable with a bit of grit, etc... 

So pick your goals, schedule out how/when you are going to do the rides to accomplish them, and then let us know how it goes!

Josh Haley

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