Brum200: X-Rated Randonee

Some Audax events start with a speech from the Mayor, a brass band and motorcycle outriders, whilst others are a bloke in a car park who says “off you go then”. This was certainly one of the latter. The Brum200: X-Rated is about as bare bones as randonnees get with no manned controls and postal validation.

In terms of practicalities it makes very little difference. However, I think it does affect the social aspect of randonneuring. One of things I like about manned controls is the way in which it funnels riders into one spot, making it more likely that you might have a quick chat before getting back out on the road.  It’s not to say that this didn’t happen all during this ride but it certainly happened less than I have experienced before. I think specific locations can have a large bearing on this as well. If a free control is a cafe or visitors centre in the middle of no where, it’s quite different to a free control in a small town. The more choice of places to grab a sandwich or tea and cake, the more spread out the riders will tend to be. Add into this that many of the small town stops will also be tourist type locations and on a nice day it makes the chances of seeing other riders even less likely. 

To be clear though, this isn’t a criticism just an observation of the different styles of randonnee and how that changes the experience.

My day started about 7 am, as I left home riding out to the start of the event. I have never ridden to an event before and it was nice to be able to ride straight from home and not have the typical faff of taking wheels off and putting the back seats down. It was a crisp bright morning and the roads through Solihull were clear making the 13 miles to Balsall Common a pleasure to ride. When I arrived at the railway station car park there were roughly 25 others waiting for the off, with Paolo our organiser handing out brevet cards. I guess we got lucky that it was dry because standing around in the rain waiting for the off wouldn’t have made for a great start to the day.

The field very quickly spread out along the road and I made a beeline once again for the front group. I always think it’s worth getting in the wheels and make use of the pull for as long as I can. I ended up in a group of 4 that was rolling along at a reasonable pace and we covered the first 40 miles to the visitors centre at Cannock Chase fairly quickly. On the way I chatted for a while with a lady from Studley that had also ridden down to the start, although her morning had started considerably earlier than mine!

After a sandwich and piss poor cup of coffee I decided to get a wiggle on. The group I had been with had gone already and it was time to settle into the miles on my own. This point has come on every calendar event I have done so far and some how feels like the real start of the ride.

3-4 miles later was the first of the information controls. After passing through Penkridge and noting the name of the shop by the canal, I began the fairly flat section to Iron Bridge. Most of this flew by quite uneventfully. After about 15miles though I again caught up with the lady from Studley and we continued to chat for a while. Turns out she is aiming for the RRtY award as well and was on a two month streak. Just outside Iron Bridge we hit a sharp climb that I pulled away on and I never saw her again.

As I crossed the small round-about that leads through the village I realised the road was closed for a mini street festival of some kind. I walked through the throng, hoping for something nice to be on offer to fill another gap. I was somewhat tempted by the Churros and Chocolate but I had had enough sweet snacks already and savoury was calling my name. I had hoped for a pork roll but sadly there was nothing like that on offer. I wheeled the bike down the hill a little and picked up a sandwich and bag of crisps from the newsagents.

It was only now that I had stopped that I realised just how warm it had got. I proceeded to strip off my extra layers and stash them round my pockets and bike bags. Sitting in the shade of the wall I eat my sandwich and watched the world go by. I was sat here for far longer than I would normally but there was something very relaxing about that spot on the street. The village was quite busy but I was just far enough down the hill from the main cafes for the hustle and bustle to feel like a million miles away. 

Eventually it was time to go. I strolled across the bridge and got on my way. When I say got on my way, I got straight into a stinker of a climb out of the valley. After that the up and down saw tooth of hills and descents seemed to go pretty much all the way to Bewdley. It was odd as even now looking at the elevation profile it really doesn’t look all that, but on the day it got real lumpy, real quick.

What I haven’t mentioned yet, which is quite surprising given how close to death I was, is that I had been ill all week. It might have been ‘just’ a cold, but I had questioned if I was going to ride. Up until this point I had felt fine, but as soon as I really needed to breath properly, my chest tightened up, my head went fuzzy and frankly I felt like shit. I started getting the sweats, not the hot sweats of working but the cold sweats of sickness. I was getting the dozies like I hadn’t eaten enough (I had) and I just couldn’t keep my mouth from going dry. I was spitting sand no matter how much water I drank and I really wasn’t feeling good at all. 

As I entered Wyre Forest I knew I was pretty close to Bewdley. I really hadn’t planned to stop as Paolo had mentioned that he would accept one selfy from one control as proof of passage. Bewdley Brewery bar seemed like a good spot to grab a quick snap and be on my way. Feeling as crap as I was though I decided to pick up some paracetamol, a sugary drink and see if I could get myself set for the last push for home.

As an aside, I’m all for the sugar tax in principle. Anything that encourages people to put less crap in the bodies is a good thing, but so is choice. I drink carbonated drinks so little that when I do I want the full sugar one, I’ll pay the extra for the one that tastes like it should do, not that aspartame based crap that they push out these days as “the healthy option.” The Tesco express in Bewdley had every bloody flavour of ‘no sugar’ coke under the sun… I mean who drinks vanilla coke anyway?!?! vanilla… It will be artisanal coke next served by a nob with stupid mustache. Ultimately they didn’t have a single flavour of real full fat version. WTF?!?! I ended up buying a Fanta in a last ditch attempt to get some sugar inside me.

I took a stroll down to the water side with the intention of taking some pain killers and sitting for a while to let them kick in. Unfortunately it was a bit too busy in Bewdly to chill, so after a short stop I decided to push on. The next 4-5 miles were much the same as before, but after the climb through Stourport on Severn I started to feel a little better. I stopped at the top of the hill to tuck into my home made flapjack which added to the improvement of my mood. The next 20 miles or so went by fairly uneventfully. Spinning the pedals, watching the country side go by and trying to enjoy the rest of the ride as much as I could.

I reached Studley, the last information control, and stopped up at a shop to again fill myself with fuel to try to get myself to the end. My headache had stopped by this point and my chest had loosened up a bit so I was feeling in better spirits at least. I was still very fuzzy though, illustrated by the time it took me to find the information I needed for the brevet card. I was looking up and down the road for a little while trying to find a parking restrictions sign, when suddenly it appeared… directly opposite on the other side of the road from where I had been sat having a drink and tucking into some sweets. One part of me was just relieved to have found what I was looking for… another part of me said “lets get yourself home lad”.

The last stretch back to Balsall Common was a fairly easy ride, but I found myself constantly looking at the GPS. It seemed like every time I glanced down I had only gone a few hundred yards and honesty it started to do my head in. I have really never experienced that sort of chasing the distance before in that way, so I changed the display on the Garmin so the map screen didn’t have any distance travelled info. This really did the trick and the rest of the miles went by quite quickly after that. I reached Balsall Common, got my proof of passage to finish and headed for home.

Lessons from this event

The main thing I got wrong this ride was not doing my route research properly. Yes I was sick and maybe the second half wasn’t really that much harder than the first. Maybe on any other day I wouldn’t have found that section so tough but ultimately I didn’t really know the lumpy bit was coming and I think that knowing might have made me approach the start a little more conservatively especially given the fact that I had been ill. This is normally a fairly strong part of my game as I normally like to geek out on route research but somehow I missed it this time.

It really surprised me how much it helped not having any distance travelled or distance to go info on the map screen when I was feeling low near the end. I need to weigh up how sensible this is to have the screen set up this way for the whole ride. My reservation is the risk of missing information control points and I tend to try to pace my water consumption by distance to the next control. Arguably I should be more concerned about water over time not distance, but hey ho.