Seat miles, and miles, and miles

I've mentioned randonneuring before. I've come to believe that the sport exists for those of us who will never be fast. When you say "I rode 125 miles today," few ask "at what pace?" Randonneuring is non-competitive and there's no glory. At the end of Saturday's ride, D__ and I dropped our brevet cards off at a house in the woods on the shore of Lake Ontario, drove to our motel, ordered a pizza, and drove back to DC the next day. Sometime in October I will get a magazine with my name in a long list of others who did much the same thing.

Randonneuring does have its metrics of success. One is the Super Randonneur distinction, which gets you two things. First, you can say you are a Super Randonneur, and if you do it 10 times, you are an Ultra Randonneur. Second, you can enter a 1200K "Grand Randonnee." You can do the latter also by smooth-talking the ride organizer, which works if the ride is under-subscribed. That's how I was permitted to start the Big Wild Ride 1200K last August, which ended in ignominy with my skull denting the pavement. This year I intend to do it the right way. In fact, apart from another crack at a 3:00 marathon in October, it's become my primary athletic goal for 2012.

I'm now either 3/4 or 3/5 of the way to the Super Randonneur designation, depending whether you determine it by distance traveled (900K in rando events this spring; 600K to go) or by number of events (3 down, 1 to go). Saturday we rode with the Western New York Randonneurs. We cut out early on Friday to drive to a town 5 miles east of Rochester. We woke at 3:30 for a planned 5 a.m. start. Only the start was actually at 6. There were 6 riders total.

It rained on us, hard, for 5 1/2 hours. Then it stopped and was beautiful. Then it started again, just enough to scare us, before becoming once again lovely for the rest of the ride. We left the Rochester area heading east along Lake Ontario. Then south to Auburn, at the north end of Owasco Lake. We bounced around the Finger Lakes until dinner -- south to Monrovia, east to Homer, north past Song Mountain ski area to Jamesville, and back south, this time by Labrador Mountain, to Homer. North to the resort town of Skeneateles at mile 182, where we ate fries and other fried food. Then west, through Auburn and beyond. It got dark when we left US 20 with 50 miles to go, and we rode north at night to Sodus Point on Lake Ontario and east to the finish. On the final 20 miles along the lakeshore, the clouds parted and revealed the Big Dipper right over our heads. We finished the 250 miles at 1 am.

Back to Alaska this month for ride number 4.