Herding Cats

Under the auspices of the PCHRandos randonneuring group, I organized a night time audax style brevet last Saturday night. I had never ridden an audax style brevet before, let alone tried to lead one. It was a little like trying to herd cats. In an audax style brevet the riders ride as a group and stay together. As this is antithetical to the American ethos, where individuality is encouraged, I think we did pretty well.

There's a 200k permanent that I host that has almost 100 miles of bike path. The 24 miles of road are generally very quiet. I decided to reverse it as that would make almost eveyone's drive home shorter. However it is a very hot ride in the California summer so I decided to make it even more interesting by riding it at night. Instead of highs in the 90s our high was about 70F with lows around 60F. As the route goes through some sketchy neighborhoods for night riding it made a lot of sense to ride audax style.

Only David Nakai had any experience with audax riding so I relied on him for advice. Apparently in Europe the group actually stays quite compact, although not necessarily pace lining. We had twelve riders and we tended to break into two or three smaller groups and regroup every 10 miles or so. Some sections of the route have a lot of turns so we stayed together through them and I'm glad to say I didn't lose anyone. Fortunately I can still count to twelve even when sleep-deprived.

Unfortunately the rest rooms at the start were locked. I gave everyone a 5-hour energy drink and we set out at 7pm. The pace was frantic because it's a fast route and we had a tailwind and we're Americans and Vickie needed to use the restrooms. Instead of the 15-16 mph I had promised, we were holding 20-22 mph. We made an quick pit stop at some restrooms eight miles into the ride. Then another at some restrooms 13 miles into the ride! As we rode along the bike path we could see the traffic on the 91 freeway was stationary even at 8pm - it felt good to be on a bike.

As we ducked under the gate to the upper SART Mel noticed he had a soft tire but he rode it to the turnaround at In-n-Out burger in San Bernardino. I announced that I would be paying for everyone's meal and everyone was very pleased. There's only one thing better than burgers and that's free burgers. I couldn't believe I fed 12 people for only $73 - seemed like a good deal to me. Mel tried to find his flat but couldn't find the hole or anything in the tire so he had to put a new tube in and hope. Just as we pulled away David noticed he had a flat tire too so we had to wait for him. No problem - we're riding audax and that's what we do. We started the return leg around 12:45am.

Heading back there's slightly more downhill (about 2250' climbing on the outbound leg, about 1250' on the return) and the wind had largely died down so we held a good speed on the way back. We tended to split up even more as the weaker riders started to get tired but we still regrouped at all the important turns. David stayed with the back group and I stopped at a few turns to make sure he saw which way to go.

The street section through Norco was almost completely car free at 3am. It was really nice. I think on the entire 62 mile return leg we were passed by maybe 10 cars total. At the Arco at the 94 mile mark Martins found he had a flat. I really should have allocated time for flats, but it didn't occur to me. Fortunately everyone had the good sense to have their flats at scheduled stops. Surely thats a sign of an experienced randonneur :-)

I managed to bonk about seven miles from the end. I did have food with me but as it takes about 15-20 minutes to take effect it didn't seem worth stopping to eat it. I just slowed down a bit and came in with the last group about two minutes behind the others. We all finished within a few minutes of each other at 5:20am - slightly later than I had expected, but then I hadn't allowed for any flats. It seems everyone had a good time and several people said they would like to ride more rides like this. There's a good chance we will see this one or something similar on the schedule for next year. Please let Greg Jones know if you would like this.

Congratulations to those who set personal distance records and thanks to everyone who came. I really enjoyed riding my favorite route with my friends.

PS. There a rumor going around that Willie Hunt rode this in his yellow submarine. I do recall seeing a yellow flash going the other way on the bike path just before we got to the turn-around point.