On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 13:04 -0700, bfd wrote: > I don't get it what's with all the randonneur worshipping? I know > people here consider "racing" to be a bad word as it represents all > that is supposedly wrong with bicycling. Yet, randonneur is consider > good?!
Yes. There's very little resemblance between racing and the riding most of us do, and almost no correspondence between the values of racing and ours. Racing, remember, is a sport where there is one winner and everyone else is a loser, and a sport where it seems to be well known that the top performers -- elite athletes who have no resemblance to us at all -- all cheat. Randonneuring is done by people just like us, sometimes in fact us. It's riding like we do, taken out to the limits. It rewards self reliance, and everybody's a winner. So, which of those two extremes is more worthy of respect? > > What I don't understand is both racing and randonneuring require > massive amount of time, commitment and training. You can't do either > well without putting in the time. Yes, but if you put in the time, it's possible for an ordinary rider like me (as opposed to naturally gifted athletes) to do it. In fact, I've done it. I'll do it again. But on club rides, I ride with the CCs. Faster than the CCs are the Bs, the BBs, and the As. And this isn't a racing club; most of the A riders aren't fast enough or trained enough to race, even at the lowest levels. Put it another way: anybody here who can do a 100 mile ride could do a 200K brevet, if they were interested. But in the context of this discussion, you're confusing the sport with the equipment. When we're discussing bikes, we're discussing the equipment. Why the interest in this type of bicycle? For one thing, bikes of this type make it much more comfortable and much easier to do the sort of rides we do. A bike that's designed to be comfortable and easily controllable when you're very tired is a very pleasant bike to ride on a century. A bike that's designed to be ridden in severe weather is a pleasure to ride in the rain. A bike that's designed to be able to carry enough to sustain a rider on a brevet is equally capable of carrying everything I need to carry on a winter's day, when it might be 28 degrees at ride start time but it might get up to 45-50 before we're done. What is there to not like about all that? And for another, these bikes actually look like a bicycle. Unlike just about everything you find in a LBS today. > > Further, it also appears to require bikes that can be costly. There are quite a few Kogswell P/Rs - configured with drop bars, the "R" in the name means "Randonneur" - that have been ridden on brevets. Even fully tricked out with a top of the line lighting system and the best handmade wheels money can buy, a P/R cost less to outfit than the cheapest Madone. So too will a hand-made custom from most of the builders you see over at the VSalon. > *True* > racing bikes can cost in excess of $5K to 10K or more, i.e., think top > of the line Trek Madone, Specialized S-Work Tarmac or even something > like a Pegoretti Love #3...OK, the last is suppose to be a joke as I > know there's a bunch of controversy about it :_P. Similarly, a *true* > rando bike can be just as costly, especially if you ache for something > French like a Herse or Singer. You can spend as much as you like on a bike, that's certainly true. It doesn't mean you have to. These days, a crankset on a high-end racing bike is a thousand bucks, and I'm not sure that includes the bottom bracket bearings. I've seen ultra-lightweight racing brakes that cost more than five hundred bucks a pair. Wheels go for upwards of a couple of thousand dollars. So by your standards, shouldn't you be griping about club riding bikes, the sort of thing you see posted on the Serotta forum every day? By contrast, randonneuring equipment is dirt cheap, even top of the line equipment. A top of the line randonneur wheel set will be more than a thousand dollars less expensive than a racing wheel set -- and it will be far more durable. You probably won't find carbon bars and carbon stems and carbon seatposts on a randonneur. Spending big bucks to shave grams doesn't make much sense when you're planning to carry a 10 lb load of clothes and tools and supplies. > Is the attraction that you can ride a bike that is custom fitted for > things like racks, lights, fat tires and fenders? Couldn't a cross > style bike with fenders, lights and racks work just as well? After > all, you can race/train/rando on just about anything, right? Thanks! Why would I want a bike intended for cyclocross racing when I don't do that type of riding, and nothing that makes a bike especially suited for cyclocross makes it specially suited for anything I do? And what's wrong with a custom frame? I ride centuries, sometimes even 200K brevets. And on those long rides, I get plenty tired. I'm sure there have been centuries where I've been as tired at the end of the ride as some randonneurs are finishing a 600K brevet. I see a lot of benefit in a bike that's comfortable and that is easy to control when I'm that exhausted. I sometimes ride at night. I ride when the weather is dodgy, and am willing to risk getting caught in the rain. I like to be comfortable, and I like to be self sufficient. That takes a certain amount of stuff. I don't have a team car following me with supplies, and if I called my wife to come get me because I had a mechanical I wouldn't ever hear the end of it. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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