The first brevet of the season here in Minnesota was held on Saturday
May 15th. We're probably one of the latest scheduled 200K brevets in
the US, I suspect. Heck, Seattle did theirs in, what, January or
something? Trying to do a 200 K around here in January would probably
lead to an unacceptably high mortality rate and/or civil commitment.
The hosts of the brevet series in Minnesota- for many years- are the
Rochester Active Sports Club in Rochester MN. The routes meander
through southern Minnesota into northeastern Iowa. The 200K route
serves as the base for the 300K, the 300K as the base for the 400K and
in turn most of the 400K serves as the base for the 600K. Martin is
the organizer for the brevet series. He does such a good job of
marking the course that it is possible to complete all of the brevets
without looking at the map or cue sheet once. The terrain is rolling,
fairly similar to much of the terrain between San-Quentin-en-Yvelines
and Loudeac; northeastern Iowa, known as the "driftless area" is very
rolling with practically no flat riding at all. The 600K has over
18000 feet (over 5600 meters) of climbing.
Start-time temperature was about 40 deg F with an expected high of 64.
The possibility of rain was predicted for late afternoon, after 4:00
PM. This offered some incentive for riding reasonably expeditiously.
About 15 people turned up for the ride, which is about half of the
number that turned out last year to try to qualify for PBP. There
were some returning faces and several new ones. The bikes were, as
usual, mainly race bikes with perhaps some racks clamped on to carry a
truck bag. Few had fenders. Since the weather was predicted to be
dry for the time I'd be riding, I opted to ride my Ritchey road bike
(fillet brazed steel, Campy Chorus 9sp with Superbe brake calipers,
MA2 rims and 700 x 28 Conti Ultra 2000s, Brooks Pro, and the most
comfortable big-guy drop bars ever made, the Nitto 175s). If rain had
been likely, I'd have ridden my Katakura Silk Road with a mongrel mix
of parts and fenders. My goal was a sub-eight hour ride.
We rolled out of the WallyWorld parking lot at 8:02 into a light
southeast wind. The ride starts with a bit of a climb, so right away
the groups sorted out. I was with the front group of 6. Over the
rolling terrain I realized these guys were going faster than I wanted
to over the rollers without a warmup, so I let 'em go. Even though
this is the shortest brevet, it's still a long day on the bike. It
was a beautiful morning with a crisp blue sky showing off the spring
green to good advantage. About 6 miles into the ride, a wild turkey
ran across the road in front of me.
I was enjoying riding with solitude, in between the front group and
the rearguard, for almost all of the first two hours. I saw a single
rider ahead of me and was slowly catching up to him. I saw no reason
to hurry, as it was such a nice day and I was enjoying the quiet. On
the other hand the wind was slowly picking up, so eventually it would
be nice to have some help. Just after Salem Corners I caught him, and
a few minutes later we were joined from behind by another rider and
then another, making a group of four. Thomas, who had also decided to
drop off the lead group, was stronger than me up the hills whereas I
tended to be a bit quicker on the flat (such as it was). Mitch, an
ultramarathon runner, had just taken up cycling last year and found he
was lacking in confidence in group riding (no lack of skills, he rode
just fine). Tom was new to brevets and the idea of PBP, and was along
to test the waters.
We rode together into the first controle in Stewartville MN, at about
10:10. The leaders had been through about 20 minutes earlier. We
didn't rush the controle, and as we were leaving the organizer rolled
up, having been delayed by some administrative stuff. He hassled us
good naturedly about dawdling. We left and rolled onto the least
interesting stretch of the ride, a long easterly, pretty flat run to
Chatfield. This stretch goes on for a bit over an hour, I guess. We
tried a paceline that didn't work so well, due to Mitch's lack of
confidence and my tendency to push it along the flat bits to make up
for my slow climbing. In short, we lost Mitch and then I managed to
drop the other two until I noticed I had rolled away from them. Oops!
A fast, rough downhill presages Chatfield. The route goes therough
the "Chosen Valley" which is very pretty and offered a nice view of
what appeared to be a sharp-shinned hawk hovering over a field. We
again didn't rush the controle, and spent some time getting rid of
extra layers as the temperature was now near 60 deg F. Martin rolled
in after us and was out of the controle in about two minutes.
From Chatfield, the next controle is Wykoff which is also the
turnaround. The ride from Chatfield to Wykoff is a lovely valley on a
relatively quiet road, which finishes with a nice climb up to the
plains of southern Minnesota. Thomas and I caught up with Martin and
rode into Wykoff with him. At the controle, after further adjustment
of clothing for the temperature, Martin, Mitch and I took off. Thomas
and Tom decided to rest a bit at the controle. We lost Mitch again
between Wykoff and Chatfield, and I decided to stick with Martin. He
has done four PBPs and many brevets, so I figured I could learn a lot
from tagging along with him. I was right- I learned a lot about
pacing, efficient management of controles, etc. Martin, being
shorter, much lighter and a more natural athlete than I am, dropped me
on the larger hills and I'd have to catch up on the flats and
descents. His enthusiasm for riding was infectious. He also admitted
the possibility that he might not stick to his plan to do no more
PBPs...
As the day went on, clouds moved in until the skies were mostly
overcast. The winds picked up, shifting to the southwest so that we
had a quartering headwind much of the time. Mammatus (sp?) clouds
were evident, suggesting the possibility of real weather. However,
this was mostly ignored as I asked Martin questions and heard some of
his stories about PBP (three times on his regular bike and once on a
tandem). The controle at Stewartville appeared and Martin showed me a
way around a rather inconvenient busy intersection and road. We were
about 45 minutes behind the leaders at that point, and calculated that
the last rider was about two hours behind us. From there we expected
to be back to Rochester a little after 4:00 PM. A few miles out of
Stewartville our route turned so that we had a tailwind again, which
was quite enjoyable- and much appreciated as the fact that my longest
ride this year before the brevet had been 65 miles was becoming
evident. The next controle was Byron, at which point it was 12 miles
to the end, including the hill near Oxbow Park, a tough and fairly
long hill that's not so much fun at the end of a brevet (and is much
worse on the 300K and 400K, in particular).
Soon WallyWorld was in sight. We got our cards stamped and went back
to our cars. Clock time was 8:35 to complete the 200K with about 4000
feet total climbing. This compares to last year's 200K of (I think)
10:32 when I was having a lot of knee pain from riding too-long
cranks. Thanks to tagging along with Martin, my total time at
controles was about 38 minutes- a vast improvement over last year! We
had a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant before getting in the car to
drive the 90 minutes back to St. Paul, a few sprinkles starting to
fall just as I pulled up in front of the house.
My wife's adventure for the day had been her first fly fishing lesson.
She caught four trout on a stream in Wisconsin- one of which she
caught on her second cast-so we both had a really nice day. Pizzas
from Punch Woodfire Pizza in St. Paul (the best pizza for about 400
miles in any direction) and a bottle of red to celebrate!