My experience with Brevet – 200km – Night ride from Bangalore to Mandya and back
While reading about cycling, I
came across the term randonneuring. Randonneuring is long distance cycling
ranging from 200 km to 1200 kms. A person is called a randonneur if he
completes any one of the long distance event and a Super Randonneur if he
completes 200km, 300 km, 400 km and 600
km within the same calendar year. The randonneuring event is also called
randonee or a brevet. I will be using the term brevet here.
I was intent to complete my first
brevet at the earliest and registered at Coimbatore in the first week of
March’14. However, I was not able to get leave and had to cancel the plan. I
was lucky enough to find another event planned in Apr’14 in Bangalore during
which we had an extended weekend off. I registered for it along with 2 other
friends Gopi sir and Ram, former my office colleague and regular cyclist and
the other my college friend who is a hockey player but new to cycling.
Brevet was scheduled at 8.00 PM
from BTM layout near Silk Board on 12th Apr’14. We had made plans to
reach Bangalore by afternoon, take rest and then head fresh for the brevet.
However, the plans went awry and we never had an opportunity to take rest.
Also, Gopi sir had to drop out of the brevet due to personal reasons. Now Ram
and I, completely new to the city, were left to accomplish the task. We had
transported our bikes in car and hence we had to do assemble our bikes which
took us time. Finally, when we were off to the start point, we were running
late. We arrived at the start point at 8.20 PM and the brevet had already
begun.
We were at a disadvantage on the
route, as traffic routes in Bangalore were something that we had no idea. We
kept asking the motorists and shop people for the routes and kept going. Alas,
we had overshot a left turn by certain 5 – 10 kms when we realized the folly.
It took sometime for us to get back on the route and at 10.00 PM, we had
covered 18 kms of the official route. We had a task in our hand now, with a straight
route ahead of us we had ticked off the route issue.
What began as an easily doable
target, seemed to be excruciatingly painful. We had minor gear issues in both
of our cycles which took less than 5 minutes to put it back. The road was like
the snake in a snake and ladder with lots of ups and downs, the downhill were
fun for us which made the uphill even more difficult, this continued on till
the half stop. We had set us cut-off for the distance that had to be achieved
every 25 kms mostly coinciding with the towns that were along the path.
The first set of cyclists we
could see was in the 70ish mark and we were relieved to have actually closed
the gap. Somewhere near 100ish mark, where we had only 3-5 kms to reach the
half way mark, Ram had started having muscle pull in his leg which was giving
him a tough time. However, with ample glucose, electral, fresh juices and water
we managed to reach the half way mark at 2.15 AM. We were happy that we had
reached the half way mark and happily relished the parattas given by Gopi sir’s
sister family who were magnanimous hosts.
In the half way mark, during the
interaction with our organizers, we came to know that when compared to the
first half, second half is even more tougher with more elevations than drops.
This was the last thing which we wanted to hear and was really difficult.
We started our return at around 3
AM after the control point had closed and were focused to complete it. This was
the time when I enjoyed the night ride with cool weather and little traffic.
Night rides are something which I hadn’t thought of before and kudos to the
organizers for arranging this ride. Although we were in a divided carriageway, the
high beam from the vehicles in the opposite direction was causing some
discomfort. This and cyclist’s best friend, the street dogs barking at us
whenever we stop were the aberrations. Please ensure to have good lights and
take adequate safety precautions while doing night rides.
The dawn proved to be a blessing
as with the light available we could progress faster. And also, all my cycling
long rides were in the morning, it was like getting into my comfort zone. As
was customary in morning rides, we stopped at a coffee shop, and it was bliss.
Rejuvenated with a coffee, we pedaled faster hoping to complete the ride 1 hour
prior to the cut-off. However, we had surprises on the way. Ram was famished
and was finding it difficult to pedal further, that was when we had stopped in
a roadside eatery to have our breakfast at around 7.15ish. After that, I had
overeaten and found pedaling very tough, however, having worked the entire night,
we were not willing to stop at all. With the sun coming up, it was getting
difficult, but what made it more difficult was the route once inside Bangalore.
The city route was confusing and we had get trouble finding the correct route.
All is well that ends well and
hence, we reached the end point in the nick of time.
