Populaire(ty) Non-Contest

After nearly a season's worth of encouragement from my friends and riding partners, The Stradas, I finally took my first taste of randonneuring. Granted, it was only a 100K (≅ 62.5 miles) “populaire” – next to nothing for these folks, many of whom hardly consider it worth getting out their bikes for fewer than 100 miles – but it gave me a sense of this type of riding.

We met in a school parking lot in the little town of Princeton, Texas. There, we signed our liability waivers and were each given a small, folded card printed with spaces to have initialed at each of the checkpoints along the route. To me, this seemed like a rather unnecessary bit of bookkeeping, but for the folks who are into this sort of ultra distance riding, the cards used to verify the miles they've ridden so they can earn points and win awards. At the end of the ride, each rider places his card in a freezer bag tucked under the wiper blade of the ride organizer's car so that he can award points – and also so that he has a head count of who made it back to the start.

For me, the ride was not unlike the training rides that I've done out around Celina with The Stradas. Unlike the pay rides, there were no huge crowds of inattentive cyclists to dodge and no racer wanna-bes. Instead there were laid-back ultra distance riders like RAAM veteran Mark Metcalfe who, despite his legendary status around these parts, was as accessible and nice as they come. For these riders, it's not about how fast they can go or how quickly they can ride the legs off the rest of the group. It's about pacing themselves, riding long, and enjoying the camaraderie and scenery along the way.

As recumbent numbers increase, some wedgie riders might start to feel surrounded; but the LSR folks don't seem to mind. (That's me on the far right, bringing up the rear as usual.)

I'm a long, long way from being strong enough for the kinds of distances these folks ride on a regular basis. Heck, I can't even figure out the differences between the types of rides, with names like “fleche”, “brevet”, “permanent”, and “audax”. It's all just so exotic and… well, French. But I'm glad I went out to get a little taste of what my friends are always on about.

P.S. – Some of you may be looking at the picture above and thinking, “See there? Those blasted bicyclists are always out there riding in the middle of the road when they're supposed to be single file.” True enough, but the picture you don't see is the one where the guy in the back has just hollered “Car back!” and the whole group immediately and smoothly merges back into a single line.