What Is A Brevet

Well today I found out. At 8am 13 of us left LeClaire heading to Bellevue and then back to LeClaire. This was a 200km (125 mile) Brevet and was sponsored by the Quad City Randonneur Club. Randonneur is a French word that means, a male long distance cyclist. And a Brevet is a sponsored ride that requires certification of your completion of a Randonne'e. And a Randonne'e is a long ramble (ride) in the country side which is a timed event and with a time constraint on how long you have to complete it.

Besides myself there were 3 other riders from Muscatine, Chad, Bill and Joe.

At the start of the race we were issued a certificate that had certain control points that we must stop and get a signature and a time posted on the card. Our first control point was Low Moor, which was 44.7 km into the ride. The control was a conveience store and the clerk signed and wrote the time on our cards. The second control point was Bellevue at 103.2 km. Then on the return we went back to Low Moor at 161.1 km an ended back at the Comfort Inn in LeClaire for the end.

After the first half hour we had broken into two groups and I was in the last group. Each group had 6 people and the 13th person was behind us all. At the first control point, the first group was just leaving the convenience store when we pulled into town. One of the riders in the first group had gotten dropped and we picked him up just before we got into Low Moor. Just before we got to Bellevue we picked up another rider. The first group was still taking a break in Bellevue when we pulled into the convenience store. When we left Bellevue there were 4 (including Chad, Bill and Joe) in the first group and 8 in our group. By the time we got to Low Moor our group had whittled down to 6. We all stayed together into LeClaire and I checked in at 3:41. My bicycle computer registered 17.4 mph average and 7 hours and 11 minutes. The additional 30 minutes reported on my check-in time is attributed to the 3 stops we made. The ride was pretty hilly and the organizers indicated that there was 4,350' of climbing.

A brevet ride is pretty structured and the organizers have to file our stamped tickets and register our ride in France, where our names get added to the "Roll Of Honor" for cyclists. Woop-ee.

The weather was pretty good today. The temps were cold for the first 2 hours with low 30's during the start and a northeast headwind at 9mph. It did warm up as the day progressed, but the winds shifted more to the east and we didn't have much of a tailwind coming back. My legs are a little sore and of course I am tired and there were times I wanted to drop off the pace and slow down, but I survived and the other riders I rode with were good to cycle with. There were a few riders from the Quad Cities, but surprising there were several from out of town. One was from Galesburg and another was from Cedar Falls. Two other riders I didn't catch where they were from, but they had stayed at the Comfort Inn the night before, so must have been from out of town.

This picture was taken on the return route of a silage silo on a farm.