Rowan

It pays to pay attention to the attitude, though. This sort of mass of opinion can be enough to influence decision-makers to make fundamental changes to the sport's fabric. It wasn't so long ago that there was campaigning in various quarters to increase minimum speeds/reduce time limits for randonnees.

RR3

Some rusa Brevets offer full support while others have little. 20 years ago I dont recall support offered on any brevet.

My hands went from dead numb to painful like after frost bite to tingling I did 40 miles yesterday and at a cafe rest stop on 50 miler. Time to burn off the last three weeks of sloth. Hand recovery is a pain

rhm

How much does this attitude toward speed, that you mention, affect the routes chosen? I ask because though I've only done two PA Rando events, those routes were uniformly lovely. I could have ridden them faster, but why? In contrast, the routes chosen by the NJ Rando club seem to be chosen for speed alone. I ride through the Pinelands pretty frequently, and though there certainly are many roads I would never suggest for randonneuring purposes, there are much more interesting roads than the ones I saw on the couple brevets I've participated in. You couldn't go as fast, but it would be much more interesting, which (to me, anyway) translates to more fun.

Not that I criticize; I'm all for the 'big tent' approach. Something for everyone, after all .

RR3

I have ridden NJ and PA brevets.

The PA brevets are uniformly hilly with lots of navigation and multiple delaware river bridge crossings that must be done of foot; thus, quick times are difficult. The roads are not conducive to fast riding in my opinion, I tend to just ride moderate and enjoy myself although I tend to only do shorter brevets there. Lots of beautiful, narrow, twisty roads. I love them.

The NJ brevets depend on whether they are down south or up north. The August 2 300K was very hilly and lovely with no fast times. I remember covering the first 25 miles in 2 hours and that was with a tailwind as we noodled along. I did a 200k, 400k, and 600k with the NJ group in the south this year and I thought the route selections were fantastic. I would agree that the NJ group is supportive of a rider wishing to go fast. I had asked the RBA's permission to ride the 600k all out intending to do a sub 22 hour ride and his response was I could ride as fast as I wished as long as I did not arrive at a control before it opened. They also have volunteers at some of the controls to sign your card (this is how brevet controls were done before RUSA as I remember). In short, it is easier to do a fast ride in NJ than PA. I love both.

Why go faster? That is a hard question to answer in a way that will make sense to you. Less time on the road means less time that randonneuring takes from my wife and son. I prefer to minimize night riding for safety reasons; so, I will ride 300k and 400k brevets hard to finish during daylight. For fitness. Lastly, for personal challenge.

intransit1217

I like the RUSA search tool. I might be able to do some out of state if I luck out.

ThermionicScott 

Brevets, you mean? Many of the Great Lakes Randonneurs rides start out of Delavan.

intransit1217

I can dig that but as I be a truck drivin' man......

Machka 

The Alberta Randonneurs were one of the groups who were pushing for higher speed limits back when I was there. There was a very small handful of us who were riding close to the limit, but the rest were all fast riders who just wanted to do the events in some record breaking speed.

The routes held out toward the prairie side of Alberta could be ones you might want to ride as fast as possible because there's not much to see.

But there are a lot of routes in and around the Canadian Rockies. There's a whole mountain series ... in the Rockies. We're talking breathtakingly gorgeous scenery ... an area people come to see from all parts of the world!! And they wanted to ride those routes as fast as they possibly could.

I didn't see the point. I wanted to spend the day in the mountains taking in the scenery, breathing the mountain air, enjoying myself ... but within the 15 km/h limit, of course.

So ... they all rode at their speed, and I rode solo at my speed.

unterhausen

Somehow I don't think the Alberta Randonneurs would have a lot of influence over time limits. Granted, time limits are very generous, but I suspect that the ACP is perfectly happy with them. Times on dead flat courses don't generalize that well, I imagine people are regularly bumping up against the minimum time limit. Probably they were just pulling your chain.
I'm putting together a 100k permanent that is going to be hard to finish in time for most people. Lots of climbing, and you have to go slow on the descents too.

If you are ever in the State College Pa area and want to ride, let me know. I am trying to get set up so I can provide cue sheets and brevet cards at the last minute on all of my routes. I have some really nice 100k routes, if that's more convenient. I try to have a selection of easy routes in addition to some ridiculously hard routes.

Machka 

This was quite a few years back now. IIRC, there were a few here and there from other clubs as well making the suggestion. I don't think it was the Alberta Randonneurs who instigated the suggestion, but they were happy to jump on board. However no, thankfully, it wasn't a large group, and although the topic floated around for a few months, it never amounted to anything.


EDIT: It seems to me it might have been a knee-jerk reaction to the DNFs on the 2007 PBP. Every PBP year, there are concerns about the DNFs ... what can we do to prevent them? And so there are suggestions like making people have to ride two SR-Series in order to qualify, etc. etc. ... and the time limit thing came up that year. It seems that the slower riders have a greater chance of DNF-ing because they are riding so close to the limit, so if we raised the minimum speed on the qualifiers to 18 km/h rather than 15 km/h, we'll weed out the slow riders ... and more people will successfully finish the PBP. The thinking was something along those lines.

But as I mentioned, the idea was discussed a bit, but never got off the ground.

RR3

I have come to the conclusion that a randonneur has to ride their own ride on a brevet based upon the simple fact that a fellow randonneur has never, ever waited for me at the top of a climb. On the other hand, I always feel as if I am riding very slowly on the flats with "climbers" and what happens is they sit on the wheels and then go hard up climbs and drop you. I generally do not ride 200k brevets fast....my times normally range from 9-10 hours plus or minus an hour.

I am amazed/bamboozled that the Alberta clan wanted faster control opening times. It is not too hard for a fast group to beat the opening times of the first control or two but for the whole brevet? Impossible for 400K and above. The fastest 600K allowed would be just under 19 hours while the fastest 400k allowed under current limits is just over 12 hours. According to my research, no RUSA rider has equaled these times. Chris Ragsdale, URS Koenig, and Brian Ohlemweir jointly did a 12:35 400K, Jan Heine did a 13:22 and a couple others did a 13:24. These are the fastest 400k times ever that I can find although I know there were faster before RUSA came into play. Ragsdale is the 1000km world record holder. I seem to recall from my search that around 22:24 was the fastest 600K RUSA time done by a team of five at Davis. I am all for someone pushing themselves for a better time but frankly, I doubt any Rando in Alberta could do a sub 12 hour 400k and I would bet anything that a sub 19 hour 600k is not even remotely in the ball park; so, it sounds like something else was going on.

Note: I had typed this before seeing Macka's update...

Machka 

Like I said ... knee jerk reaction to the DNFs on the PBP. Happens pretty much every PBP year. A few people DNF, and out come the suggestions of how we can prevent that from happening again. IIRC, those who were tossing the ideas about just wanted to up the minimum to about 18 km/h on certain brevets (qualifiers mainly) in order to weed out the riders they perceived as potential DNF-ers.

I don't recall there being anything about beating opening times.

RR3

From my quick analysis of outward and inward times at PBP, the inward takes 30-40% more time. Thus, any rider who just finishes a 600K within the time limits and who takes little sleep will have a really hard time making it at PBP. Plus PBP is 1230 km plus it has more climbing than many are used to. I would go so far as to say 37 hours max with at least 14,000 feet of climbing would suggest decent odds of a successful PBP finish. I might have read some data on this but it was not published as I recall. Maybe DC rando or maybe ACP.

I found the 2015 DNF stats by country interesting. All of the warm climate riders had horrible finish rates. I thought the nights were very damp and cold (40 or 41F was my low). I was wet with moisture and am very good dealing with cold but I was shivering uncontrollably leaving Tintineac at around 4 am or so on the return. I had woolens on. I could barely control the bike. I had to jam to hills in the big ring to shock my body into producing heat. I suspect some riders from warm climates just were not prepared with clothing.

RR3

I get it now.

They were not being nice to the full value riders. Why do they care if another rider wishes to take all of the alloted time.

I thought they were worried about their own business and wanted to be able to ride faster themselves.

(I had typed out the earlier message before going to an appointment and forgot to send....I sent it upon return before seeing your update.....I get it now)

unterhausen

I suppose the conversation about how to reduce DNF's on PBP will continue. It seems like this year the weather was perfect, but they had a very high DNF rate. It would be nice if someone would do another survey like BQ did for 2007. Funny thing is, I did a difficult version of the Taste of Carolina in 85 hours after having a pretty bad SR series. And that 85 hours included stopping a lot and getting all the sleep I wanted, taking a 2 hour lunch the last day, etc. I would say that ride was much, much harder than PBP, except for no jet lag. I find it very easy to peak for an August 1200.

I had to get used to this behavior, drove me nuts for a long time. When I was a teenager and we had dropfests while training, we knew what we were doing to each other was annoying. Randonneurs don't seem to think that way at all. I always wondered why people would put out 75 watts on the flats and then to to 600 watts on climbs. Then I had a down year where I was too sick to feel like training and learned that I liked to ride slow. I'm trying to reverse that now.

RR3

I personally think a high failure rate on PBP is acceptable; failure is an individual pain to suffer in one's gut; success at any easy task is meaningless-PBP is hard and success is assuredly not guaranteed. Is that not part of the allure? Who flies to PBP with any intention other than to be an 'Ancien"???

I can say for certain that my past failure at PBP was a major life event despite the fact that my then cycling buddy and Orthopedic surgeon said I would not have been able to finish even if I had had narcotics to kill the pain. A ghost that haunted me for two decades. My failure. Not RUSA (wait...RUSA was not in existence). Maybe my experience makes me appreciate and respect someone who gives all just to make time limits. If I have a mechanical, I always have time in the bank to rectify it. Plenty of full value riders are just one mishap from hors delay.

The notion of a small minority who seem to bully DNFs and shaming them is silly. Any normal human cannot come close to wrapping their heads around what we attempt. Naturally some riders do heroic efforts like the Polish rider who crashed right next to me on PBP. Bloodied, he clawed his way back and finished. His wounds were ugly. He had no warm clothing. His performance astonished me. I think he just missed cracking 50 hours but not 100% sure. The fact is.....nobody would look at his bloody hip, arm, and shoulder and say.....YOU....you should not have abandonned. As a kind of early finisher, I had the chance to meet several who DNF's back at the velodrome area and without exception, they held back tears. Nobody said they winged it. The pain of failure cloaked their very being. No need to shame them

Four factors seem stick out as contributing factors to DNFs....

1. 30 extra km...think about it, this is like 2 hours when wiped
2. hills
3. acclimation to time zones and adequate rest
4. cold and/or rain

unterhausen

I am sure that slow riders have a higher DNF rate than faster riders. Although I am pretty good at hitting controles in time if I'm running behind and I think a lot of riders that take full advantage of the allowed time are like that. I really have a difficult time riding harder than my comfortable pace if I don't have to. But I'm pretty good at going fast if required.

I just looked, in 2011, I rode my 600k in 39:11. Granted, I barely finished PBP in time, but I slept many more hours than I do on a typical 600k. And the thing that made my finishing questionable was that I got something like 6 hours of sleep in the last 100 miles. Actually, I don't know how much sleep I got because my last nap was untimed with the notion that I might not be alive to finish if I didn't take a nap. It's possible it was 3 hours, which would mean I got almost 8 hours sleep in the last 100 miles. That's the difference between an 82 hour finish and a 90 hour finish.

I agree that a DNF on PBP is no shame. Sometimes I wonder, like the guy I met in 2011 that seemed perfectly fine. However, he was going to sleep in some town between Villaines and Mortagne. I know I had plenty of time, unless he started in the 80 hour group, he must have had plenty of time. Then I read other people's stories where they have multiple equipment failures, etc. The really heartbreaking stories to me are the ones where someone waited for a friend and didn't finish as a result. The reason I would like to know these stories is the implication (recently made on the randonneuring email list) that some people don't take it seriously and plan to fail. I really don't think that people want to figure out how to navigate back to Paris by train, although that probably would be a neat memory after you forget the negative parts of it.

RR3

I probably read similar accusations out there on the internets that really rubbed me the wrong way. Who has the wherewithal and free time to do the SR, fly to Paris, and just go halfway to Brest just for the heck of it. No doubt that there might be a single rudderless trust fund baby out there but it seems to me that anyone committing the time, resources, and family time to qualifying is darned serious in their attempts. I was going to finish in under 80H if it had nearly killed me and was prepared to deal with any pain. Fortunately my only inujry is to the wallet to fix the broken bike.

Melinda Lyon's 2015 PBP ended early because she was throwing up and she returned back to Guyencourt but as a former PF, she obviously had had time in the bank to go back out onto the route and finish after recovering for probably 12 or more hours at her hotel. A regular 90H rider would NEVER have the luxury.

I am not sure that faster riders have higher finish rates although I would not be surprised to see the opposite.

In case anyone reads this 3 years hence, it is bloody cold in Brittany in August especially when you are tired. Make sure you have warm cycling clothes. Macka warned that and I listened. I vaguely remembered how cold it was from my last visit BUT it feels much colder because it is damp. Wool saved my bacon on night 2 when I was wet and cold coming into Tintineac. When you are acclimated to 90F and suddenly you are thrust into 40F....quite a shock. I suppose that is why the Brits did so well or the ethanol running thru their veins.

unterhausen

I think the dnf rate among the really fast riders is fairly high relative to what logic would dictate. But, like you in your earlier attempt, a lot of that is injuries. I talked to someone about why they dnf'ed in Brest with 60 hours in the bank, and he said his knee hurt really badly and he just couldn't see riding back. Who can argue with that? I sat across from someone in the cafeteria in dreuex in 2011 who obviously had made the call of shame. Young guy, looked perfectly fit. If it weren't for the language barrier, I would have asked what was up with that. I looked through the rider progress numbers from 2011, and there were a lot of people that dropped out with ridiculous amounts of time. I saw one guy who had 2 days to finish the final 50km. I probably would have walked.

My thought about the perfect PBP is to ride to Brest with enough time in the bank that I can ride back and stop at every cafe that looks good to me. Or Lon Halderman's method of sleeping 8 hours every night. Not sure which appeals more. I actually am really happy with 5 hours of sleep, so that leaves 3 hours a day of sitting in cafes

Machka 

The thing is, there are always going to be DNFs, no matter what preventative measures you (or your club) take. DNF's happen, and they happen for a long list of reasons.


But I suspect (and this is just my guess) that the suggestions for preventative measures like increasing the minimum time limit, or requiring people to ride 2 Super-Randonneur series in a year, or whatever other ideas have floated about come from a sense of pride and competition.

I suspect clubs compare themselves with other clubs and realise, perhaps, that they had 1% more DNFs than some other club and they get the idea that they have to improve their score next time.

clasher

I've found my two DNF this year to be very good learning opportunities, if nothing else they've increased my desire to ride more brevets next year and keep improving my fitness. I don't know if I would have tried out randonneuring if the speed limit was any higher.

intransit1217

Still reading. Damn important stuff here.

unterhausen

the thing about the 2007 PBP is that the weather was so bad, it's amazing how many people did finish. So trying to extrapolate from that experience is really worthless. I think the year that Endless Mountains 1240k featured 3 days of cold rain, there was something like 50 percent dnf rate.

9606

Where can one get the most comprehensive 2015 info on entries and DNFs by country, finish times by age groups, sex, etc..?

intransit1217

I am nowhere near ready for one of these things. I did 79 miles yesterday over a span of 10 hrs total, 5:51 actual riding time. All flat, broken into three blocks, 30 miles lunch and rest, 20 miles dinner and rest, 29 miles group easy ride, home.

But. I don't feel beat up today. Though my knee kept me awake most of the night aching like a sob. Moving around today it's much happier. Hats off to you randos !