Thoughts from a brevet

Bengaluru has many cyclists, runners and photographers of birds armed with bazooka-like lenses, meaning a serious interest rather than a hobby

Many years ago there was a marathon in Surat. It must have been a half-marathon, because I know no Gujarati who can run a full 42 kilometres. Actually, come to think of it, it may have been one of those 10K runs because I know no Gujarati who can run 21 km either. Anyway, my friend Arun Shetty signed up for the run and set off at the starting gun. 

Shetty is quite fit and trains regularly at his gym in Surat (which I imagine is otherwise empty of people). He may not have hoped to win the race but certainly he would have thought he would complete it, and in good time. He was amazed and angered, he said, at how the other Surtis “raced”. As he puffed and huffed along, he noticed some of those who had started with him hailing autorickshaws and speeding to the finish line. Others had asked bicycle-riders to give them a lift. 

It wasn't so much the pleasure and joy of participation and physical activity that was attracting them to the race as the desire to finish quickly — by any means necessary. I will not go into that mindset (at least not today) for I want to write about something else. A sporting event with mass participation that is not a race: a brevet. 

 

The word is French, as are most of bicycling's terms, and is a military word meaning the conferring of rank. A brevet event is one where randonneurs (another French word meaning something like a backpacker) cycle a fixed distance inside a fixed time. This popular global sport is also called Audax, from the Latin word meaning audacious. The Audax India website (audaxindia.org) describes randonneuring as "a non-competitive, self-supported, long-distance cycling activity typically enjoyed by experienced and serious cyclists. The objective is to cultivate the qualities of endurance and self-sufficiency for long distance riding."

Regular readers will know that I cycle the dozen or so kilometres to work and back daily and on weekends sometimes for a longer ride of between 60 and 100 km. This week, actually on November 1, which was a state holiday in Karnataka, the local Audax body, the Bangalore Randonneurs, hosted their season's first brevet ride. This was a 200-km run starting in central Bengaluru and then going north past the airport to Chikkaballapur, then east to the town of Chintamani, then south to Kolar and then west, back to the starting point. 

This had to be completed inside 13.5 hours for riders to be acknowledged as having successfully ridden the brevet (medals, issued by the global body in Paris, are given to all who finish inside this time and want the medal, for a small fee).

To give some perspective of the distance-to-time ratio, most decent cyclists will go along at something under 20 km an hour while riding long distance. This excludes breaks, and so assuming that a rider can hold on to that average speed over 10 hours, the total time taken will be close to the cut-off.

If you think that this sort of intense group activity is unusual, you're right, but it is not rare, even in our country. There are 43 Audax clubs around India, all of which are active. Shockingly, the state with the second highest number of clubs, seven in all, is Gujarat. Things have clearly changed since I left the place over two decades ago.

Bengaluru, of course, has many cyclists and runners and photographers of birds armed with bazooka-like lenses, meaning a serious interest rather than a hobby. This is recent and it speaks to the culture of Bengaluru's information and technology industry. My guru and murshid (though he will likely not accept me as being a disciple), Khaled Ahmed of Lahore, explains the radicalisation of Muslims in Europe through his theory of a “zone of contact”. 

Briefly: South Asians working many decades in the Emirates or Saudi Arabia do not return radicalised because there is no link language to transfer the radicalism. The Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim has no Arabic and cannot really engage with the natives. 

This was different in places like London, where the radicalisation happened in English. We are discussing something more pleasant here, but I suspect that one of the reasons that Bangaloreans are more oriented towards the physical world than other Indians is because the zone of contact is the Bay Area and its tech companies. The techies returning from California bring back a lot of the outlook that includes, dare I say, liberal values of the best kind. 

Anyway, to return to the brevet, the website says a total of 86 riders registered initially, of whom 71 then paid the entry fee. Nine of these individuals did not show up for the start, meaning 62 riders started. The organisers checked to ensure all riders had a helmet, reflector vest, lights front and back, and their rider number on the cycle. 

I packed two spare tubes and a mini pump in case of a puncture, having gone through a hasty lesson of how to remove the wheel and tyre and tube (not easy, for me at least). We set off together around 5.50 am. The peloton broke up almost immediately. One group of cyclists took the head and disappeared, never to be caught again. The rest of the pack began to be strung out particularly as we left the city and were exposed to wind. Soon we were separated except for groups of colleagues choosing to ride together at the pace of the slowest individual. 

About 10 minutes into the ride I was alone. The 68 km to Chikkaballapur was pleasant, and we had to click a photograph of ourselves with a local ATM in the background to prove we had been there at a particular time. The ride onward to Chintamani was unpleasant. The road was awful, being apparently this way for years, and it began to rain a bit. 

Children from villages along the route wanted to brush their palms against the riders' and wave at them. Even adults were curious and would ask, in rustic Kannada, what was going on. At Chintamani there was a break for lunch (curd rice, bisi bele bath and upma). After 10 minutes I was off again, this time hitting traffic out of the town. 

The road from Kolar to Hoskote was open and good, but by now, 150 km in, the ride was hard going for me. About 25 km before Bengaluru the spirits lifted again and I was able to finish. The first individual in had done it in exactly eight hours, an incredible time to me because the total time I spent off the bike must have been under half an hour. 

The last two people in clocked 13 hours and 11 minutes. Two riders started but did not finish. I finished in 11 hours and 6 minutes. This was the longest I had ever been on the road. A few years ago, I took delivery of my wife's new car in Bengaluru and drove it non-stop to Mumbai. A little over 1,000 km in about 11 hours. Incidentally, the car was stolen the next morning. The cycle ride was more difficult, more interesting and much more satisfying.