The last time I rode a brevet was in 2011, yup. Its been a while! 13 hours on the saddle was not a journey I was too kicked about! But then, the camaraderie, the achievement and the post-event memory were pretty great though.
Damn, coming to think about it, a brevet does hit the spot!
Randonneuring has taken off in India – ride clubs in almost every city you can name, tons of organized brevets, fantastic tooling to support randonneuring, some brilliant people who selflessly contribute time to promote this sport and juicy gossip and mud slinging too!
Yup, Randonneuring has definitely arrived. Folks love to talk about BRMs, SRs, endurance geometries and Bre’VET’s. And they put in the miles too.
Bangalore played host to the 1200kms “bliss in the hills” brevet today and 76 folks signed up to ride this. 76! Unbelievable. A far cry from the handful of folks who had the bums to endure the 1000km a couple of years back.
Was great to see off the 40 folks who did manage to reach the start point and kick off this epic journey.
We wish each and every one of them (and the folks who made this happen) the very best. May your passion just grow brighter!
Some Vignettes from the start:
We had a slightly delayed start, with 39 riders finally starting at 3:07. We had lots of outstation riders from Chennai(big bunch), Hyderabad, Pune, Goa, Ahmedabad. The bunch has two 1200 finishers (Opendro, and Srinivas) and quite a few 1000 finishers (Chiddu, Deepak,Ashok,Sandeep,Kalpesh,Karthik, Jayaprakash,Dipankar)
We were worried about the rain (lack of), but it did rain before the last rider #40 started off at 3:28. Looks like it is going to be a fairly wet ride this time.
We had some nervous moments waiting for the Brevet cards, courtesy Karthik (of the Legendary 1000+200 ride), looks like he had stopped to take a nap before starting the ride.
Silvester swore he will not ride with Chiddu and Karthik at night, during the 600 Ranebennur ride in November, he was riding with them,and they kept stopping every hour to take power naps through the night.
Suman was worrying about out how fast he needs to drive, to ensure he gets to the manned control ahead of Dipankar and I was worrying about how early I need to be at the end control which opens on friday morning. We are thankful Rajani is not riding, else we he would have finished on last friday.
– Parag
INTERESTING LINKS
- RANDONNEURING?
- Updates on the “Bliss in the Hills” 1200km ride here
- All brevets in Bangalore – the Bangalore Brevets
- The Bangalore Brevets Facebook page
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT CYCLING
I love riding my bike. Whether it’s a simple commute, a high-intensity road race, a jaw-grinding brevet, fixie rides thru packed Indian city or a kick-ass technical single track – I love it all. Apart from riding bicycles, I love being all geeky and know everything there is to know about bicycles, technology, bike fit, and service.
I started BUMSONTHESADDLE to share this passion for cycling.
DISCIPLINE: Partial towards MOUNTAIN BIKING but love it all
CURRENT BIKE(S): Specialized Rockhopper, Specialized Tarmac, Pure Cycles Original
DREAM BIKE: S-Works Epic HT & S-Work Roubaix
OTHER PASSIONS: Technology, Photography, Baking, Travel, and Reading
