Randonneuring and Fun: It all depends how and with whom you ride. Having participated in four Paris-Brest-Paris, I have observed the finishers from the fast 50-hour riders until the 92-hour stragglers who arrive outside the time limit.
At the front, the finishers look like people after a bike race: Exhausted, but exhilarated. After the finish, they talk and laugh - too much adrenalin to go to sleep despite having been up for two days straight. In the middle, you get all kinds. Some have pushed themselves to the max, others have taken a relatively easy ride. Almost all look fine. Those who struggle have the luxury to take a rest, and recover. Toward the back, you see more and more riders whose bodies and faces tell of a gruesome ride. First, they spend much more time on the bike. Second, they start to brush against the time limit, so they no longer have the luxury to slow down, rest, recover, etc. Third, riding a bike slowly is much harder on your body than riding fast, because you don't support your body with the thrust of the pedaling forces, so you rest more on your arms and behind. Toward the end of the ride, you see riders with Shermer's Neck, who have hooked a bungee from their helmet to their saddle to be able to see the road, riders who can hardly walk after they get off their bikes. (Of course, there also are riders who finish strong at the end, and who just have taken the time they need.) So depending on where you ride, you will see very different randonneuring experiences. It's also not a good idea to judge a long event from your first experience. Like almost everything, long-distance cycling gets easier with practice. Your body adapts, and more importantly, your mind adapts. You get used to not sleeping and actually enjoy riding at night. I've run one marathon, and man, was it hard. But I won't conclude from that experience that marathons cannot be fun. When I see the fastest runners float across the course, finishing a whole hour faster than I did (which means they complete the run in 2/3 of the time!), I can see that I'd need more training and familiarization to approach that level of proficiency and fun. Distance cycling is all relative - when I told a guy in Texas that I had done a 28-mile race that day, he was incredulous that one could ride that far on a bicycle! Of course, there are limits - I know only one rider who claims that Race Across America was fun. For me, the limit is somewhere around 55 hours. Any longer, and it stops being fun. I have to admit that on most rides over 30 hours, there is an hour or two when I don't really enjoy it, but that is life. Almost every day has an hour or two when I do things I don't enjoy that much. The lows, as long as they are limited, make the ups so much more enjoyable. Seeing the sun rise after having ridden all night is a powerful feeling. Cresting a mountain pass under a full moon is something you won't experience unless you are a long-distance riders. Arriving in Brest as the sun sets, 24 hours after you started the ride, and realizing that you have ridden to the end of the continent, is very emotional. Looking at a map of the world and being able to trace a ride like the Raid Pyreneen gives you a sense of achievement. But most of all, it's living in the moment, riding a bike, and truly enjoying it as the landscape unfolds. Why stop when you are having fun? Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly http://www.bikequarterly.com Follow our blog at http://janheine.wordpress.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
