h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So I have successfully completed my first Brevet Randonneur.

Or in English - a 200 km bike ride organised by Audax UK. And thanks VERY much to the organisers as they had to attend (and partly organise I think) the funeral of the guy who invented the ride I did today.

Turned out to be much easier than my new year horror show - mostly due to a lack of hurrican force winds and rain.
In fact it was very nice weather

Highlights included seeing a (peregrine I think) falcon up close and personal - it flew out of a hedge I was passing. And finishing the blooming thing without being in major pain or trauma.

Lowlights included nearly getting killed by doing an 80 mph+ undertake on the A48 in Newport within about 3 inches of my elbow. And getting a near disastrous puncture on the A40 near Ross on Wye. The lessons from that are (on such an event) bring two NEW inner tubes as replacements, old, patched ones might not cut it. Also, if your CO2 pump has rusted - GET A NEW ONE! As I had to anyway once I'd limped to Monmouth on a semi-flat using the cheap Tesco pump I had as backup (and very fortunately found a bike shop). Getting a puncture 50 miles from home and in a remote place isn't funny.
Also just buy decent stuff - I have a front handlebar bag that cost about £8 on amazon. You can tell how cheap it is and it's a real pain in the arse - it dangles down and rubs off the front tyre to I have to really concentrate on holding its straps up all the time rather than doing stuff like looking where I'm going, steering, braking and changing gears.

Anwyay, I also didn't come last. There was one rider slower than me which is mildly gratifying.

Met lots of other nice cyclists including joining an incorrect bunch at one point. I met a few fellow cyclists at the canal equivalent of a level crossing and asked 'Are you doing the Audax?" To which they replied yes.
This was the incorrect question. What I should have asked was "Which Audax are you doing" Utterly bizarrely there was another event on that shared a little of the same route as ours and I ended up riding with them, including getting my Brevet card stamped at the wrong control point (which is when I found out what was going on). Bizarre but highly amusing at the time.

Right so that's on 200k done - next stop a 150 km grimpeur at the end of Feb. This involves CLIMBING. Ouch.

Great stuff! Well done.

Deke

Its been a long long while since I did any cycling.... for various but one main reason
But I do remember what a differnce strong winds make.....

I used to cycle, mainly with friends, and occasionally sort of not quite but almost as part of a cycling club, round bits of East anglia... nice and flat... yeh... apart from all the hills, and the wind, on the flat bits, was worse than any of the hills, when it wanted to blow, in that flat landscape, there wasn't anything to slow it down
We'd sometimes do a hundred miles or more, over a couple of days, cycling out to somehwere and then camping (useually next to a pub) and cycle back the next day... Actually I'd imagine counter to any other reasons, my lack of fitness would probably be the main* impinging factor thesedays running to the bar, on last orders doesn't, apparently, count as exercise
so, how far is 200 K in old money? and well done for doing it

Nice, sounds like fun.

200 km is about 120 miles. I did 126 in all yesterday. But cycling seems to be controlled by the French - audax UK is affiliated to the official organisers in France so everything is metric.

The holy grail of audaxing is the 1200 km Paris-Brest-Paris audax which is held every four years. To do that you have to complete a 'super randonneur series' in the previous year. That's (at least) one 200k, one 300 k, one 400 k and one 600 k ride in the same season. They also have to keep the french organisation sweet - so everything has to be metric

And thanks Deke

You certainly deserve a medal or some sort of recognition. As does everyone else who even took part in a gruelling ride like that in January. When is the Paris-Brest thing? Presumably not in high summer, either, or it would clash with the TdF.

The next one appears to be in August 2015. Gets riders from all over the world apparently and I think it's actually older than the TdF - not a race though - oh no.

They also do London-Edinburgh-London time limit 90 h. That's the British equivalent, that's running this year and is oversubscribed already - not that I'm thinking of doing it - that's a little too crazy even for me.