Book of Chad

I think everyone who is into endurance cycling should do a ride with the Randonneurs. I have enjoyed the routes, the atmosphere and especially the stories. I started as most people do, I joined one of their Populaire rides. A Populaire is where the club puts on a ride for members and the non-members to experience a Randonneur ride. They have distances ranging from 50k – 160k. Since completing my first Populaire I have ridden several 200k Rides and worked my way up to a 600k ride in 2020. one of the great things about the Randonneurs is that every ride you complete you receive a pin. For more information about the BC Randonneurs visit their website. https://randonneurs.bc.ca

Last week I rode the Vancouver Island Early Bird 200 and I even managed to rope my friend Adam in to give it a go. In 2020 when I was completing big rides, while working up to the 600k, Adam showed interest in trying a 200k ride. Lindsay and I brought adam on a great 200k ride just for fun and we all had a really good time.

I drove to the start since it started early, in the dark and quite far away from my house. I started the morning loading my road bike onto home made roof rack for the first time. With my tiredness and the darkness I managed to leave my detached front wheel on the roof as I drove away. I heard a noise and looked back at my wheel on the gravel parking area behind my car. I went back and put grabed the wheel, gave it a quick look over and threw it in the car. When I arrived at the start I put my bike together, gave the wheel a spin and checked in. As I waited to get going I rocked my bike back and forth. I heard an awful noise and the wheel stopped abrubtly when I rocked it backwards. After closer inspection I found a fin on the disc break rotor was bent. I bent it back by hand and the wheel spun freely.

The time to start passes and off we go a group of 14 of us heads out. Fairly quickly Adam and I make a large gap from the rest of the riders. We ride side by side for a while and chat. My favorite memory of our chat was when Adam asked how many watts I was doing, I looked down and replied “160,” His response was “Oh, man I am in big trouble.” Adam had brought his allround training bike, basically a gravel bike. I on the other hand had choosen to ride by aero road racing bike.

As we got 30 minutes into the ride by broken disk rotor was starting to make some louder noises. At times it would be pretty quiet and other times it would get very loud. Adam mentioned we were going to be going very close by the bike shop. So we decided to rush in and get a new rotor. I think that might have been a F1 worthy pit stop and just like that we were on our way again, this time with a little more confidence on my part.

Despite getting a little confused on the routing through one area of the ride we had a pretty uneventful 50 – 150k. With 50k left every climb we could feel in our legs. This is sorta how it goes on these rides, the first thing you notice is the climbs. even the slightest incline feels like you’re climbing. The last 20k got a little bit worse, well probably worse for Adam than me, my somach started to not agree with my nutritional choices on the ride. At least we were close to the finish.

We finished the ride, ate chilli, packed our bikes in the car and didnt see anyone else finish.

RACE: VI Early Bird 200
Distance: 201 km
Time: 7h 45m
Avg Speed: 27.8 kph
Avg Power: 160 watts
Place: N/A its a ride not a race…