Populaire

It has been a while since my last blog entry - I've been busy virtually cycling from Lands End to John O Groats. I just arrived at Chester after 600k of riding. There's about 1200k to go.

I finally got to ride with my wife last weekend. She's trying to get back into shape after being hit with breast cancer last year. We rode 22 miles along the beach at Santa Monica. It's sad to see a woman who used to ride double centuries being challanged by a flat 20 mile ride, but she'll come back - I'm sure of it.

To help her, I just registered a new populaire ride with RUSA. A populaire is a brevet style ride between 100k and 200k in length. They are intended to attract new randonneurs who might consider a 124 mile ride too extreme but would consider a 62 mile ride "doable". It's a slightly extended version of one of my favorite rides and it goes from the Panera in San Bernardino to the Lucky Greek in Corona and back.

I hope that Sherry will be able to ride it with me by the end of the year. I'll sign her up with RUSA and we can work on our P12 award together. The P12 award is given to members who ride a populaire for twelve consecutive calendar months. I also plan to ride it once a week after work to help me accumulate miles towards a mondaix award.

The mondaix award is given to a RUSA member who rides a lifetime total of 40,000km of sanctioned rides. I currently have about 17,000km so I have a long way to go. By the way, 40,000km is the approximate circumference of the earth (mondaix is French for world or something).

Hopefully the populaire will be accredited soon so I can start riding it. The temps in the evening are finally starting to cool down to the point where I could squeeze a 100k ride in after work.