Ride Report - Kankakee River Run (RUSA Perm #4799)

Trying to chase down a brevet; enjoying a gorgeous day, regardless.

Randonneuring is funny sometimes, and as a relatively new member I don’t know that I can always explain the rationale behind some of the distinctions made by its governing bodies, both national and international. Deciding what rides “count” and which ones don’t is a odd concept to me, or at least it is in a noncompetitive setting.

For example, take this weekend. The Chicago Randonneurs hosted our first ACP Brevet of the season, the 201km Kankakee River Run. “ACP” here refers to “Audax Club Parisien,” which is sort of the central international governing body for randonneuring. And this is a “brevet” rather than a “populaire” (like the other Chi Rando rides so far this season) because it hits the minimum of 200km in distance that signals the start of a “real” randonneuring distance.

As someone who arrived at all this from, “I’m going to go ride my bike today,” this business of official routes and what counts for what still feels foreign to me.

On the other hand, the whole structure of randonneuring can help people set goals, and goals can be a very encouraging thing. Heck, I’ve already been engaging with the RUSA (Randonneurs USA) awards system, and that’s nothing if not an exercise in formalized goal setting.

So I say none of this to disparage randonneuring, RUSA, ACP, or anyone else; I only mean that explaining randonneuring can be a mouthful sometimes.

And here’s an additional layer: I didn’t actually participate in the brevet this weekend, but I still rode the route.

Let the Hunt Commence!

I had other important commitments Saturday morning, so I wasn’t able to join the Chicago Randonneurs group on the brevet ride. For a brevet, you have to start your ride within (I think?) one hour of the official start time.

I could not start until hours later, so I simply rode the same ride as a Permanent. (See my ride report from January for an explanation of that one.)

This allowed me to continue my R-12 attempt - I did not write about my March R-12 ride, but it did indeed happen - and tick off April. One third of the year down!

Although I was starting much later than the brevet, I did have a specific goal for the day that interacted with the brevet: see if I could catch up to anyone, particularly since the course was an out-and-back, so I would be able to gauge how much ground I had to make up as I approached the halfway point. This wasn’t a competitive ambition so much as a hope that I could support anyone who was struggling to make the distance under the 13 hour cutoff. (The time limit for a 200k to “count” in randonneuring terms.) I figured I’d be riding quick enough that if someone was trying to come in right inside the limit, I’d catch up to them with an hour or two to go and be able to help pull them in to the finish.

Of course, all this was predicated on what I thought the brevet start time was: 8am. In actuality, the brevet started an hour earlier, at 7, so I had very little chance of catching anyone. But I was very unaware of that at the time.

Yelling to Random Cyclists, Hoping They Were Randos, Not randos

Within just a couple hours, I started to see a few cyclists who had the reflective-vest-and-aero-bar-adorned look of randonneurs. First of these, actually, was Chicago Randonneurs co-founder Phil Fox, who I passed before even leaving the southern edge of the Chicago city limits.

Thinking that the brevet hadn’t started until 8, this was candidly shocking to me. By my calculation, Phil would have only been on course for something like five and half hours at that point, not enough time to be nearly done with a 200km ride unless he was putting out some professional-quality power numbers.

(Turns out that not only did the brevet start at 7, but Phil set off a further 20 minutes before that. All the same, he finished in a very quick 7 hours, 11 minutes.)

Still oblivious to my mistake, I saw a couple solo cyclists shortly thereafter who looked like they could be randonneurs, but it still seemed unlikely that they were at the last couple hours of the route so early if they were alone, rather than with a group of Chi Randos who could pull together.

In fact, it wasn’t until I saw a succession of groups from about 40-55km into my own route that I realized my mistake about the brevet start time. The last fellow randonneurs I saw came at about 70km into my own ride, so there was absolutely no chance of finding anyone on the way back.

Still, it was very fun to wave and shout at my club-mates with an enthusiasm you’ll almost never see from another cyclist on the road. I have no idea how many of them recognized me or realized I might be another randonneur who just got a late start, which made it a little extra fun - who (they might think) is this overly exuberant cyclist, and how does he know that we’re Chicago Randonneurs?

A Day to Fly, Except When It was Time to Swim

The Kankakee River Run route is a very, very fun one, and on Saturday it was running fast. The key feature of the course is a 30km unbroken stretch along State Line Road (which predictably runs alongside the border of Illinois and Indiana) that you pick up after finally leaving the Chicago suburbs behind. It has some rolling hills, but by and large it’s a place to put down power and carry lots of momentum, especially on a relatively calm day like it was on Saturday. ESPECIALLY when it’s clear, sunny, and an average of 50 degrees F out for the ride instead of the cold, windy mess I’ve had to cope with for my other R-12 rides so far this year.

All that added up to going fast, even when I wasn’t trying to push particularly hard. I ended up averaging 28.5kph (17.7mph) for the duration of the 200km ride simply because it was a nice day out on (mostly) good roads.

I will add to that though: I was absolutely on top of my nutrition. When doing long distances, it pays to eat early and often, and that’s exactly what I did, taking on a bar or a pack of chews every 15-20 kilometers through the first half of the ride, plus the carbohydrate/electrolyte Skratch drink mix in my bottles. The second half of the ride required a little more making myself eat, but I still managed to take on high calorie density snacks about every 20km, plus a couple slices of Casey’s pizza at the midway point.

There was, however, one section of the route that went decidedly slower than the rest.

Just before the midway point, the route included a very short out-and-back detour to the bridge over the actual Kankakee River. However, the last 100-200 meters before the bridge were flooded, and it was not immediately apparent that it would be possible to get all the way to the bridge itself.

In the spirit of adventure, I decided to give it a try anyways, and the early returns were encouraging! For the first 50m, the water didn’t seem to get deeper than about six inches, and because it was running over a paved road, my tires had no trouble maintaining good traction. The water was clear enough to give me some confidence it wasn’t suddenly going to become knee deep or higher, and all that meant I could ride slowly through without even really getting wet.

That changed further on, where even though the water was still over road, it became quite a bit deeper, up to maybe a foot or so. At that point, my feet got fully wet - but also, when my feet became suddenly wet, there wasn’t much to do but keep going. Turning around in that much water wasn’t going to be the easiest, and it’s not like it was going to make me dry either.

So despite a little water, I made it! I got my picture at the control point, turned around, and dredged back to the road proper. Thankfully this all happened around 3:30pm, so I was very much in the height of the temperature for the day. My feet were cold for a little while (and that was decidedly not fun), but they dried up from pedaling and never got so cold as to be any kind of problem.

Gear Heroes

I will continue to sing the praises of my Julbo Ultimate Photochromic glasses, which handled perfectly the midday sun, the dusky evening transition, and the nighttime ride home from the finish line without ever having to change lenses or otherwise think about the glasses on my face whatsoever. I have never had expensive sunglasses before, but these have absolutely been worth the investment.

But there are two other bits of kit that I haven’t had the chance to properly test until this ride.

First up, my updated aero bars. These are the exact same aero bars I’ve been using for the last few seasons, but I’ve added a 50mm riser kit from Profile Designs to raise my position in them quite a bit and hopefully make them more comfortable for my neck and shoulders over distances like this (and longer).

It absolutely worked. This is only the second outdoor ride I’ve gotten to use these bars on, and the first when I wasn’t testing another contact point at the same time (a different saddle, since rejected). There’s definitely an adjustment to make mentally - sitting that much higher on your bars doesn’t feel as aerodynamic, especially in the face of a headwind - but it’s sooooooo much easier to stay in that position for kilometers on end. I’ve tipped the bars up just a little more than I have in the past to add to the comfort of the aero position, and I’ve also grabbed a new Wahoo mount that places my computer just behind my hands, making it easier to look down to. All excellent updates that I’m very happy with.

And second, I had occasion to use my new mini-pump, a Silca Gravelero. While the “occasion to use a thing that fixes flat tires” isn’t exactly one to be celebrated (I got a leak inn my rear tire while riding to the start of the route and had to plug it), the pump itself was spectacular. The Gravelero is sealed with rubber gaskets while riding on my frame, so hopefully it will prevent a lot of the dirt ingress that seemed to have doomed my last pump. It also has a retractable hose and a lock on, rather than screw on, head that in combination should avoid damage or unthreading to any Presta valve cores. Add to that a pump volume that turned out to be much larger than I realized, and I had a 40mm tire back up to good pressure in almost no time. Great job, Silca!

(I am in no way sponsored by Silca, by the way. However, If someone from Silca is somehow reading this, you should know that I also use your wax, aero socks, bottle cages, bar tape, and computer mount, so maybe let’s talk?)

Up Next: Pushing More Distance

Although I won’t be riding a brevet until a month from now, there will certainly be plenty of riding ahead. With the weather improving, I’m finally integrating my office commute into my training schedule, which is always a big point in my season because of the additional weekly volume it brings.

I’ll also be doing some other solo rides over the next few weeks. Will a report on any of those end up here? Who can say.

But what you can count on are more bike-related newsletters every Wednesday, so be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already so you get them straight to your email inbox!