The Wildwood 400K this past Saturday was run in near-perfect conditions—sunny skies, mild temps, flat roads, light and mostly favorable winds. All the planets were aligned to give any rider (who managed to avoid an accident or mechanical failure) a terrific adventure with record time in the bank. And such was the case with me. All cylinders were firing in perfect synch; I felt strong, was keeping up a good pace, had no physical issues at all (aside from the normal sore points of contact with the bike—feet, hands and butt). 

Perfect conditions have a dark side, too, though. They remove all excuses and show you your true level of preparedness. By contrast, if I were to go out and suffer through a rain-plagued, flat-tired-epidemic of a ride, and do poorly, I would extrapolate (and compensate) in my mind: Well, if conditions had been better—and surely the next time they will be—I would have been fine. 

Saturday's ride showed me the best I could expect—from my body and from the Brevet Angels. And I judged that, given how I was feeling and performing on such a perfect day, it just wasn't good enough when one factored in: triple the distance (at PBP), the likelihood of some rain and flats, lack of sleep—PLUS hills, hills, and MORE hills.

So with the stats gained from Saturday's ride, I have decided to put PBP off for another 4 years. Watch this space.

New Jersey Randonneurs scheduled eight rides this year: A couple 200Ks in April, followed by a 300K and a 400K in May, a 600K and another 400K in June, ending with a 200K/300K day in July. 
     The first 5 rides were planned for Southern New Jersey, where it's extremely flat—the thought being that people will appreciate these easier rides for PBP qualification. These are followed up with a very hilly 400K and 300K for those that want to follow up their qualification with training, the distances tapering as we head towards August, and Paris.
     I thought that being RBA for New Jersey would make my qualification a breeze. After all, I would have the freedom to pre-ride all the brevets, and being flat, I wasn't worried about finishing.
     But life has a way of getting in the way of the best made plans, and my weekdays and weekends quickly booked up around the brevet dates, limiting when I could pre-ride (especially if one is looking for good weather). 
     I never found the time to pre-ride the first 200K, and because the ride had 80 people registered, I felt there was too much for me to do at the start of the ride to pack up after the last rider departed to go do the ride myself. Besides, it was cold and raining, and my serious Raynaud's Disease makes riding in sub-65F difficult, if not downright painful. So I skipped this ride altogether.
     The second 200K had almost as many starters, but the weather was more favorable and I was able to ride that one after the riders departed, caught up with a group my speed at the first controle and finished with them 12 hours later. Not necessarily pretty (the wind was excruciating), but it served its purpose.
     The 300K fell on a date that I had to be out of town, so I couldn't ride the day of the event. (I handled the registration the morning of the ride, and once the riders departed at 5am I hit the road to Upstate New York.) Instead, I pre-rode it several days earlier, on what was predicted to be a lovely day, weather-wise. The first 175 miles went just fine, I had two hours in the bank, and then the rain came. A cold pouring rain—the temperature must have dropped 20 degrees—which created a foot of fog on the hot roads. It wasn't so much that I was freezing and numb—which I was—but that I couldn't see a thing. The rain was blinding and the roads were in total, smoke-covered darkness. Having broken my neck on a pothole eight years ago, I decided to quit just 10 miles from the finish.
     So, now, in addition the the flat 400K coming up in 10 days, I'll have to ride the flat 600K and then the hilly 400K—to be counted as my 300K qualifier. Oh well, I always intended on riding it anyway, for training purposes. The only difference is, now I can't DNF or my plans are sunk. Watch this space.

It was 5:59pm in Montclair, NJ. I sat at a table in the back of the local Starbucks, one eye on my laptop, one eye on my phone's clock, finger poised over the trackpad, cursor positioned over the REGISTER button.

At exactly 6hr 00min 00sec pm—midnight in Paris, the 10th of February tumbling into the 11th—I softly tapped on the pad, tripping a cascade of screens and metadata fields and buttons and decisions. When it was all over, and the pounding from my racing heart subsided, four minutes had passed—and the waiting that had gone on for months was over. I was IN!

by Paul S. Kramer

In my last post I wrote about the retirement of my Q-Box. I thought of that piece of invention as 'Cue Sheet 2.0' because it improved on the sheaf of pages handed out to a rider by my joining them into a continuous roll of paper and encasing them in a waterproof box.

But I didn't want to give up on written cues entirely, depending only on voiced instructions whispered in my ear before each turn by my ridewithgps app. I find that the notes the route creator provides on a cue sheet often prove to be life savers, e.g. "Bike store, R at intersection, 2 mi off route" or "Port-a-Potties on L."

After removing my Q-Box from the bike, I filled the new-found void in front of my bars with a terrific​ handlebar bag from Dill Pickle Gear; and seeing the clear plastic map pocket on its top gave me an idea—since it looked the exact size of my Kindle!

I devised a way of reformatting a cue sheet's Excel file into a multi-page PDF, with each page containing a single cue (plus, for added measure, the previous cue above and the next cue below). And in this way, I now have a backlit, waterproofed (via a Zip-Lock), light-weight, rechargeable, easy to read cue sheet—I simply need to tap the right side of the screen after each turn and the next page appears, showing the new instruction in the center of the screen in white-on-black type. With each tap, the "next" cue moves from the bottom stripe up to the middle, black position, the "current" cue moves up to the "previous" position, and the "previous" cue moves up and off the screen:

It's been a great ride!

Back when I first started riding brevets I had a real problem following the cue sheet. Even if I reformatted the file ahead of time so the text was large enough for me to read, I couldn't seem to get the hang of things: Riding along, I would glance down to see what the next turn should be, and that's when the trouble began . . . my eyes would glaze over at the long list of instructions as my brain tried vainly to remember what road I was currently on—in order to find myself on the sheet, to then read the next row in the array and follow its command. I would scan the document, hoping a street name would jolt my memory, but Elm and Maple and Oak streets each sounded plausible (I did seem to remember turning onto some sort of "tree" street), and at times I'd remember it was "Chestnut," only to see Chestnut Street mentioned in several places on the sheet! My head would bob up and down between looking where I was going and looking at the cue sheet; it was a mess.

So that was the problem the Q-Box solved (that, and the necessity of keeping the pages out of the rain). It was a great solution that even won me a contest: snapguide.com/guides/get-the-most-out-of-your-cue-sheet/

​But that was then and this is now. And now I, along with almost everyone else, use a gps that displays the route, tells me where I am, tells me when to turn, alerts me if I'm off-course, allows others to follow my progress from the comfort of their homes, and provides a record for posterity (or perm owner) of my progress through space and time.

So I'm going to bid my Q-Box farewell. I'll put it on a shelf in the garage, next to my Halogen headlights, toe clip straps, and freewheel puller.

And next time out, I'll carry the provided cue sheets (sans custom formatting) in a ziplock bag, safely tucked into my handlebar bag, to be referenced in case of phone failure, or the need for detailed info about a controle, or in hopes of finding a note about nearby port-a-potties.

by Paul S. Kramer

Step One: Decide to go to Paris in 2019 and take part in Paris-Brest-Paris Edition #19
Step Two: Reserve an AirBnB for before and after the ride
Step Three: Book a round-trip flight between New York and Paris
Step Four: Complete at least a 400K to better insure registration
Step Five: Train
Step Six: Pre-Register
Step Seven: Qualify by completing an SR series (200, 300, 400, and 600K rides)
Step Eight: Register
Step Nine: Train some more
Step Ten: Depart . . . 

by Paul S. Kramer

​by Paul S. Kramer

PBP happens every four years, and four years ago, right about now, I was thinking the same thought I'm having now: How can I squeeze in a long ride before the season's over in order to secure a better chance at being able to register for PBP in a year's time. Which means history is repeating itself in more ways than just this one thought: Four years ago I must have gotten to July without bagging a long ride in the spring or summer, just like this year; some things never change. There is progress, however—I have learned a thing or two. OK, maybe just one thing: In order to count towards early preregistration, a brevet has to be an ACP-credited ride, not simply a RUSA one. A technical difference, having to do with which governing body approved a route—the international overlords in France or simply Randonneurs USA. This was a lesson learned the hard way:
     Four years ago, in the exact position I am now, with regards to 'dreams of PBP'; 'fears of not getting in'; 'lack of a completed brevet'; and 'running out of time,' I drove 10 hours to Michigan to complete a 400K circumnavigation of the mitten's thumb. I settled into the hotel at the ride's starting point after the long drive, and woke at 4am for the start the next morning. In the pouring rain I ventured out of the cozy hotel to register at the start, and met the organizer, who remarked on my fortitude and enthusiasm to have traveled so far to join the locals. "Well, I need this to move up in line for PBP preregistration," I explained. And this is when I learned that RUSA rides don't count, and that this was not an ACP-sanctioned brevet. Sigh.
     So, I have learned one thing in four years; and I made sure I picked an ACP ride to add to my year's results. But another lesson that is coming to me only slowly is this: You can't skip training and completing long events and expect to successfully finish an ultra-distance ride. It's taken me a few months to come to terms with how unwise it would be to attempt a 1000K a week from now; I've now changed my plans to instead ride a 600K (yes, ACP-sanctioned!) September 1-2.
​     Let's see how much training and time in the saddle I get in in the next five weeks . . . .