Pier Review Brevet – January 21, 2023

We had a spectacular showing on Saturday’s PCH Randonneurs Pier Review 200k ACP Brevet with 30 cyclists riding out on an extremely chilly morning, with 28 finishers and two DNFs due to major mechanical issues. Randonneurs from as far away as Washington, Alaska, New Jersey, and New York joined this brevet.

Unbelievably, the weather cooperated in spite of temps in the 30s for the morning, with light winds and a screaming tailwind home from the Queen Mary in Long Beach! The visibility was extraordinary on Saturday, which was fantastic for a ride with mountain and ocean views for its entirety. In addition to Santa Catalina Island, we could also see San Clemente and Santa Barbara Islands, 40 miles offshore!

Greg and I are so very proud of everyone on this ride. Some cyclists rode super fast, some of them struggled with major mechanical issues, most met someone new to ride with, others were on their first or second 200k, so many wonderful stories!

The Tough Cyclist of the BrevetAward goes to Peg Miller and Pete Eade. Both rode with major mechanicals and neither would quit until their wheels could no longer physically turn, requiring a 1.5 mile walk to a safe place to get a ride home. Major props to you both. Can’t wait to see you both rock PBP in 2023! 

The Spirit of Randonneuring Award goes to Jeff & Lori Arita with their Roadside Randonneuring Service to assist Peg Miller with repairing her mangled derailleur. The repair lasted until almost the end of the ride. This is what randonneuring is all about, camaraderie and self-sufficiency!

We had one teenager on the route, the amazing Connor Klies flew from Seattle with his pop, Paul Klies, arriving at LAX at 8pm the evening before the ride. Fantastic ride Connor & Paul!

We had several first time randonneurs on the ride, all of whom were unbelievably strong cyclists, coping with major mechanicals or 10 bonus miles due to GPS issues. 

Congrats to our newest randonneurs, I can’t believe RUSA IDs are in the 15,000 range now, that’s 10,000 more randonneurs than when Greg and I started in 2010! 

Laini	Sunkavalli
Abner	Hornedo
Cherminne	Hornedo
Brian	Cullen
Francis	Avecilla
Jakob	Gollwitzer
Connor	Klies

Please consider joining us on our PCH Randonneurs 300k ACP ride “C’est Parti” on February 18, 2023. It is another scenic route covering much of the same ground as this route.

Major thanks to our riders for keeping us posted about their ride. They made it easy to ride sweep and keep track of everyone throughout the day!

Allons-y! C’est Parti!

Stacy & Greg Kline

Stacy’s Ride Report on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/8431446229

Stacy Completed PBP 2019!

Stacy finished Paris-Brest-Paris in good form, still smiling and riding strong.

Chapeau!

There are two special categories that American Randonneurs can attempt to achieve. We each got one.

Stacy arrived in 89 hours 14 minutes which qualified her for La Société Adrian Hands.

My time of 55 hours and 11 minutes qualified me for La Société Charly Miller

Paris-Brest-Paris update 2

Stacy is about an hour out from the finish with plenty of time to spare.

Paris-Brest-Paris update

I (Greg) was able to finish PBP last night in 55 hours and 11 minutes. That meant I was able to achieve my goal of being able to join La Société Charly Miller.

Stacy is riding strong and is currently inbound from Brest. She is doing a much more sensible ride and will use much of the 90 hour limit to complete the ride. The slower pace allows her to sleep, and more importantly to interact with the other riders, the support volunteers and the local people along the route who come out to cheer and support the riders.

She also has time to take some great photos.

At the start in Rambouillet

The volunteers at PBP were easy to spot in their pale blue shirts

At the bridge in Brest

100 Cols 2019 – Completed!

Stacy & I finished our unsupported 100Cols Tour of over 100 of the major Cols in France on August 7th, a day earlier than we had planned. We had a great time, it went even better than our 2015 tour since we knew what we were doing this time.

You can read about it on the 100 Cols Reports day-by-day page.

Now we are relaxing in Paris for a week before Paris-Brest-Paris.

 

100 Cols Tour – 2019

No crowds cheer us lesser mortals up the big climbs, but the mountains are open and mountains are rarely if ever finished with you. No matter how often you climb them, you never beat them: each time you start at the bottom, from scratch. Reputation will not take you up a climb. The physical battle has always to be repeated. Through every repeat, mental strength accumulates.

– Graeme Fife

This summer Stacy & I will return to France to ride the 100 Cols Tour once again.

This ride is over four thousand kilometers and climbs all the major mountains of France, over two hundred cols and côtes, with over 260,000 feet of climbing.

A col is a mountain pass, and a côte is a high-point on the road such as a mountain-top.

We chose to ride this tour again because it is so beautiful and challenging. This ride links the most famous climbs in France with mostly quiet back-roads and forest lanes through small picturesque villages.

If you’ve ever watched the Tour de France, you’ve seen the cols: Ventoux, Tourmalet, Iseran, Grand Colombier, Puy Mary, Peyresourde, Galibier, Izoard, Iseran, Mont Aigoual, etc. On the 100 Cols site is a complete list of the cols, sorted by difficulty.

Here are a few photos from our last trip:

Paris-Brest-Paris 2019

“Your biggest challenge isn’t someone else. It’s the ache in your lungs and the burning in your legs, and the voice inside you that yells “CAN’T”, but you don’t listen. You just push harder. And then you hear the voice whisper ‘can’.  And you discover that the person you thought you were is no match for the one you really are.”

This summer Stacy & I will return to France to ride Paris-Brest-Paris. This will be our second time riding PBP, we rode it when it was last held in 2015.

We wrote a short blog post about our 2015 PBP experience.

First, as preparation, we will ride the 100 Cols Tour.  This 4,100 km ride which includes all of the major climbs in France, has been described as the hardest bike tour in the world. And the most beautiful.

Having ridden it in 2015 we can say that the description is 100% accurate.

The 100 Cols website has a great description of the ride and instructions for those who wish to ride it.

After completing the tour, we will once again ride Paris-Brest-Paris, the world’s oldest and largest ultra-distance randonneuring event.

Paris-Brest-Paris, or PBP, is a 1200km (750 mile) ride that is held every four years and that must be completed in 90 hours or less. It is older than the Tour de France, and attracts thousands of riders from around the world.

This short video by Brooks is a great introduction to the event:

 

Women in Randonneuring

Deb Banks has an excellent article in the Summer 2019 edition of “American Randonneur” titled “Women Who Go Long” about the participation of women in randonneuring events.

I was surprised to learn that women make up fewer than 6% of the finishers of Paris-Brest-Paris and that Stacy is one of only 136 women who have completed a 1200k brevet in the United States.

The first PBP in 1891 had seven women register, but they were barred from riding. The first woman rider, Juliette Desvages, did not complete PBP until 1921 and the first American women, Annette Shaffer Hillian and Harriet Fell did not complete PBP until 1975.

Harriet Fell’s account of her 1975 PBP ride, which I found on Sheldon Brown’s website, along with Emily O’Brien’s account of her 2007 PBP ride on a fixed-gear were both inspirations for Stacy & myself to challenge ourselves with ultra-distance riding. We decided to try randonneuring even before we had ridden our first century, and to attempt to ride PBP after our first 200K.

There’s a great YouTube video of Harriet Fell telling the story of her first PBP ride:

And there’s a video of Emily O’Brien and Jake Kassen explaining the basics of randonneuring as well:

 

BTW, Emily runs DillPickleGear.com and she made the fantastic handlebar bags we use on our Fusos.

PBP Controls and pronunciation

I’ve posted a short clip from the official 2015 PBP video that names the controls.

The clip is in French and might be helpful for those who, like me,  want to learn to pronounce the control names correctly.

 

Eroica California 2019 with the Old Velos

This year Eroica California, the vintage bike festival and ride,  was held in Cambria on California’s Central Coast.

Our friend John from Wales rode with us again this year, and we were joined on the ride by Nial, Alec and Bart of the Old Velos, Irish friends we met at Eroica Britannia in 2018. In the video you can see them wearing their classy “Toin le Gaoth” jerseys which means “Wind at your ass”, which is every cyclist’s dream.

There are some great pictures from Eroica California and an entertaining writeup on the OldVelos website. Someday we hope to visit Ireland and enjoy the OldVelos Vintage Classic ride and festival.