Cemeteries are great ... they're dead quiet!

I've slept on restaurant benches, on floors here there and everywhere, on the cement pad outside a church, on the steps of a church, on the lawn outside a church (churches are also good places to find sleeping quarters), on a sidewalk, in the middle of a parking lot, in a train shelter (like North American bus shelters), in a bus shelter, in ditches, and once in the middle of a gravel road. On the occasion of the gravel road, I noticed a dead snake on the road next to the ditch, and so I didn't want to sleep in the ditch in case there were more snakes, so I slept on the side road instead.

However, I will echo what the others have said ... sleep is only required on rides over 400K. I might, on occasion, take a very brief nap on a 400K or 24-hour race, but most of the time I ride right through on those. Ideally on a 600K, 1000K, or 1200K we arrange somewhere to sleep ... a tent, a motel, our own homes, or something, but it doesn't always work out to do that.

As for roads, speaking as a route planner, we are encouraged to plan the best routes possible. Routes with minimal traffic and decent roads, but lots of challenges. In other words, where possible, we include hills ... but preferably no more hills than would be on the PBP. So the PBP has something like 30,000 ft of climbing over 1200K, therefore a 200K should aim for about 5000 ft of climbing. If we can't incorporate that amount of climbing, we might include roads which we know will be windy.

When I planned my SR series, I drove and cycled all over central Alberta. There is hardly a road from the BC/Alberta border to the Alberta/Saskatchewan border acrosss central Alberta I haven't been on. I set out with some ideas from maps, and revised and modified those ideas based on what I saw in terms of: 1) Road condition, 2) Traffic density, and 3) Availability of supplies. In fact, I had my 600K route planned on a map, then re-did the whole thing when I got out there and discovered that there were no supplies to be had for many, many kilometers. I will be modifying my 300K route this year too. When I first mapped and rode it, and then when I rode it officially a bit later, one particular section of road was fine. But I guess we must have had a rough winter because when I rode it again this past year, what shoulder there was had pretty much vanished - all broken off - and the traffic was really heavy. It has become quite a scary section of road.

Planning a full SR series is quite challenging! I take my hat off to anyone who has planned a successful, challenging (but in a good way), and enjoyable set of routes!! There are a number of rules regarding route planning. One is that there cannot be paved shortcuts. If there is a place where a cyclist can take a shortcut, there needs to be a real control or an information control situated in such a place to prevent the cyclist from taking a shortcut. Trust me on this ... that rule is not as easy to adhere to as it sounds!

So when you combine the rules with the nice things to have on a route, we route planners do our best to come up with something that works. But yes, I have been on routes where I strongly wished for better roads! I've been on my own routes muttering to myself, "Who planned this thing!!"

But there's something about the challenge of it all that makes it appealing ... and there is something about the way Randonneuring reduces life down its basics (food, clothing, shelter) that makes it appealing as well.