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Permalink Reply by Eric Peterson on April 4, 2011 at 12:49am

If you want to train on a 200K course, you can take the train to Naperville then ride the Fox Valley Permanent which starts about a mile from the train station.

Sunday train service sucks, but on Saturday there is a train that arrives at 7:26. Bikes are allowed most weekends, and a weekend pass is only $8.

I've been leading some hill training rides as part of prepping for the 200K, these can be found on the website of the Elmhurst Bicycle Club. This weekend there were two rides, on Saturday one rider from Chicago showed up, and on Sunday there were two.

Eric Peterson

Permalink Reply by ambimb on April 12, 2012 at 4:04pm

As the 2012 GLR brevet season approaches and we all prepare mentally and physically for this year's series, it's always good to hear from experienced distance riders. Recently Lovely Bicycle featured a piece about the brevet season and the comments have been full of great tips, links, and advice. The best advice I've seen so far was here:

Randonneuring is easier than you think, and harder. It really boils down to two things: [1] convincing yourself it's possible, and then [2] not thinking about it when you're doing it. You're just riding your bike, and if you stay in the moment all is well. If you think about the fact that you'll still be riding your bike in eight hours, or twelve hours, or twenty-four hours, you get into trouble. Training is all about convincing yourself you can do it--"if I did 40 miles, then I can do the 100k". Then, having done the 100k, you can do the 200k, and so on. But you also need to learn to achieve some sort of steady state on the bike, eating and drinking enough to keep going (the hardest part, and where experience counts most) and staying comfortable and happy. Speed has almost nothing to do with it. The time limits work out to around ten miles per hour; the horror and the glory is that the clock is always ticking. You can be fast and stop a lot. If you're slow you need to be more careful. I'm very slow by roadie standards, and always get dropped on local club rides. But I can stay ahead of much faster people on brevets, just by not stopping much. 

But there's nothing like being on a bike ride that started two states away, or watching the fireflies light up the fields as you ride through the night, or feeling perfectly adapted to 50 degrees and rain (an important skill for the New England Randonneur). The world seems so full of possibility, when you know your bike can take you anywhere, any time.

Stay in the moment and don't worry about your speed (but keep an eye on that overall time/pace). Terrific advice! Plus that last paragraph sounds so true and beautiful. Is this what's in store for us on the 400 or 600km rides coming up in just a few weeks? 

Along similar lines was this bit:

I usually recommend that folks make sure they are comfortable with the idea of doing a century before doing a 200km (124 miles). So the 200km is just a century, which you know you can do, followed by a 24 mile ride, which is no problem at all - or you can think of it as a 100km, which you do regularly, then another 100km. Then the 300km is a 200km which you did a few weeks ago, followed by a 100km which you do regularly. As Dave Cramer said, don't think about the big picture. It will overwhelm you. Break it up into smaller achievable segments.

Sounds pretty much exactly like what I'm hoping to do this season. 

Permalink Reply by Rosa Gaia Saunders on April 19, 2012 at 7:52am

Consider doing a ride through Team in Training. They will give you full training and support or a century ride in return for fundraising for Blood Cancer Research.