Yesterday I rode the 2008 Berkie Brevet. This was my second experience doing an Oregon Randonneurs ride, having previously done the Snoozeville Populaire. Someone on my team has been into Randonneuring for a while, and others on the team decided to join him for a few of these to see what they were all about. This is likely the last one we’ll do. It was 200km (about 124.27 miles) and they only get longer. The next one is 300km, somewhere around 186 miles. Way to far for me to be riding given my current goals. Well, that’s a pretty good excuse. Actually, it is just plain too far to be riding a bike.

The ride started at 7am from the McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove. That meant being up at 4:30 (FWIW, the 300k ride starts from the same place at 6am. You do the math.). I left the house roughly on time, and got to the start a little after 6 and got everything ready. My teammates and some other friends (Terry, Phil, Michael, Steve, Hemi) got together, listened to the pre-race announcements (which were mostly doom-and-gloom: basically we were told to expect dogs running out at us around every corner and roads covered with enough gravel that we should be on our mountain bikes), and got rolling right at 7.

Now, before my first Randonneuring event, I had a lot of questions about what this sport was all about. I came to the conclusion that it was a mass start time trial in which drafting was legal. Then I realized that is basically a road race. Phil set me straight, explaining that there is no real winner, and the only thing you get for being first back is bragging rights. Randonneuring is really about supporting yourself during very long rides and being able to find your way around the course. He lied. As we rolled out of the parking lot I was thinking along the lines of a team ride. Go out easy, double pace line, nice and relaxing. Other people had other ideas. Sam took off right from the start, Terry hopped on his wheel, and we were off from a cold start to 24mph in a single line. I guess I should have brought my trainer to warmup before the start.

Going out of Forest Grove there are stop lights. I’m guessing Sam was hoping that by starting out fast he could get ahead and make lights that others would have to stop at. We all got stopped at the same lights, so if that was his plan, it didn’t work out. Only a few miles out of Forest Grove and we had a good size group working together. Early on Hemi wasn’t feeling it and dropped from the group, leaving us with about eight riders. We settled into a reasonable pace and turned on the cruise control. The time and miles were flying by. I kept drinking and eating a little at a time, but was pretty surprised when we rolled into Vernonia almost two hours into the ride. I thought we’d been gone about half that time, and was definitely a bit behind as far as eating went.

I have a Gel Bot bottle that I haven’t used much. For fuel, I like to mix Hammer Nutrition’s Perpetuem into a paste and put that into gel flasks. I tried putting this in my Gel Bot, which didn’t really work out. The paste is too thick to push it out easily – part of the reason why I didn’t each as much early on as I should have, and a great reminder of why you should never try anything new on the day of an event. Anyway, at the first control I decided to finish off the paste in the Gel Bot. As I was squeezing it out I put enough pressure on the bottle to push the valve out all the way and ended up almost chocking myself with the water that suddenly burst out. What a mess.

After getting myself under control I managed to finish off the paste, and then we rolled. I’m not one of those people that can recount every single detail of a ride. We followed the route sheet, found the mailboxes on Keasey Rd, and continued on to Birkenfeld. Somewhere between Vernonia and Birkenfeld Sam broke a spoke, and left our group. As we neared Birkenfeld, I was starting to bonk a bit. I took a pull and Terry mentioned that we were done with the first 100k’s. At that point I was wishing we were doing a 100km ride instead of 200. Shortly after that Terry took to the front, and I started hurting real bad. I clearly hadn’t been eating enough. I ate a bar before we got to Birkenfeld, took electrolytes when we got there, bought a Snickers bar for later in case things got really bad, and we rolled. I was feeling much better, but never really felt 100% again for the rest of the ride.

For most of the way back to Vernonia I sat on the back of our group, letting everyone else rotate through. As I began to feel better I started taking short pulls again. My teammates shouted encouragement, telling me how great I looked and how smooth I was pedaling. I don’t know if they were sincere, since on a ride like that if someone isn’t feeling good you always tell them they look great, even if it isn’t true. Whether they were telling me lies or not, for the most part I had no trouble hanging onto the back, and contributed when I could. From Birkenfeld it took a little over an hour to get back to Vernonia.

I ate and, more importantly, had a chance to just sit down for a few minutes. About 10 minutes after leaving Vernonia it started to rain. We had had dry roads and no rain up to this point, which was unexpected given the forecast. We were lucky to have dry weather for the first 90 miles of the ride. I was worried about the climb out of Vernonia and back to Timber. I shouldn’t have worried. I don’t know if everyone with me slowed down for me on the climb (we took this climb slow on the way out too), but I had no problem staying with them. From the top it was mostly downhill to the last control at Glenwood.

While in Vernonia I realized we had only covered 88 miles. I was still hurting (maybe not physically anymore, but certainly mentally), and was wishing we were closer to home. The 22 miles between there and Glenwood went by pretty fast though. After that last stop, we only had 12 miles left – less than an hour! The road was rolling all the way, and I did struggle up a few of the rollers a bit. I got into real trouble at one point. I had just taken a pull and gone to the back. As I went back, Michael went to the front to put in another monster pull. He had been doing this all day – going to the front, putting in a huge and super-smooth pull, and then dropping back. This time when he brought the pace up a bit I had to accelerate to stay with the group, which hurt. I had to stay with them though, there was now way I was getting dropped now. I could see the blossoming cherry trees at the top of the next roller, which I knew was Forest Grove.

Back into the city, we got stopped at a few lights, and then made it back to Grand Lodge. We made it to the last control at 1:55, 6:55 after we had started (6:29 actually spent pedaling), and we were the first riders back. Apparently a sub-7 hour time over the 200km distance is considered pretty good. I was glad to hear that the guys I was riding with felt about the same as me at the end of the ride. Personally, I’ve never ridden such a long distance at such a fast pace. It was a hard but great day out with good friends. I won’t be riding a distance longer than this any time soon, but I can definitely see the appeal of doing these challenging, long rides.

Here are the details from the ride on MotionBased.

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