Equipment Memories

I know that’s a strange title.  But I read back through what I wrote about the first qualifying brevet that I did in preparation for PBP last time, and I remembered the struggles I went through to acquire and understand and feel comfortable with the equipment part of randonneuring.  It turns out that when you’re on your bike for 12, 15, even 24 hours at a time, the bike begins to matter.  It feels irreverent to say so, but in some ways, it really is about the bike.

Unfortunately, I am often a bit blase about things that I perceive to be minutiae.  In many ways, my lack of perfectionism is a good thing–it keeps me sane in my role as mother to two very active, exuberant, out-there kind of kids.  But it also means that I sometimes gloss over details that I need to focus on a bit more carefully.  So I’m trying, as part of my preparation in the next few months, to pay more attention to the small stuff that can grow to be big stuff if left unattended.  Some lessons shouldn’t have to be learned twice.

My First Brevet: April 2003. Okay, so I did my first brevet.  In order to ride in P-B-P, you have to qualify by doing a series of increasingly longer rides called brevets.  The first, and shortest, is 200k-for those of us who are metrically impaired, that’s roughly 125 miles.  I (and about 40 other people) tackled this first major distance in mid-April.  There were a couple of glitches First off, I had been sick in bed the entire week before with a stomach bug.  I managed to get up and around a bit on Friday, but when the ride started at 7 am on Saturday, I was still pretty wiped as well as nauseated, dehydrated, and weak from four days of not eating.  This did not bode well.

I felt pretty decent for a long while.  The route we’re using begins in Morrisville and winds around through the northern part of Chatham county, then drops down through Snow Camp to Siler City. It’s an out-and-back; the turn-around was at a gas station in Siler City. Every brevet has official check-points, or controls.  At these predesignated places, you go in and get your card stamped as proof that you stayed on course.  The caveat:  the control is only open certain hours.  This particular ride, because it was so short (hah!) had only one control, at the turn-around.  But as the distances increase, I’ll pretty much have to keep moving to make it from one control to the next before closing time. 

Anyway, on that particular day, I felt pretty decent when we got to Siler City.  I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I had brought with me, as well as a Snickers that I bought in the gas station.  Things went downhill from there.
 
The second major glitch was that I was using new shoes and pedals.  Yes, I know.  You’re never supposed to use new equipment (or food or technique, or anything else) in an event.  Well, so, okay.  I screwed up.  It turned out the cleats were placed wrong, and by 70 miles I was in agony.  Pain was shooting up my left leg, from my ankle all the way to my hip.  By about 90 miles, my right leg was going, too.  I couldn’t figure out what to do about it, so I just kept pedaling