Absconding Paranoid

It's been a week already! The saddle soreness and numb palms from the 300 km brevet ride are still bothering me a bit, but the memories are still fresh :) On 22-Jul-2017, I reached the start point of the brevet at around 4 AM (It was well before start time of 6 AM) by riding around 5 km to Balanagar and getting a lift from Vikranth. We thought of getting the bike check done and brevet card stamped at around 4:30 AM as we were told to reach the start point 1:30 hours before the start time. However, instead of the volunteers, we were warmly welcomed by a bunch of mosquitoes as soon as we got out of the car. We tried to sleep a bit, which, of course, did not happen. Slowly fellow riders Franklin, Prem, PV Sivaram, Pavan etc., arrived. Vishu and Rajeev too arrived, and we slowly got into chit-chatting and getting off the bikes from cars. Franklin had an issue with the rear tube and he had to change it even before we got to the bike check. Later on the festive atmosphere kicked in as ...

Two years after my first brevet, I was in a phase which I couldn't even remotely dream of a few years ago. Conquering brevets in 2015 and after that, riding and running a bit became my favourite morning routine. Recently I started eying a full marathon and started training for that. Last Saturday, the super randonneur medal from 2015 season (along with a 200 km brevet medal from February 2016) finally reached me in the medal ceremony. It was nice to catch up with fellow riders. A few of them asked me if I was doing the infamous Heaven and Hell ride this time. I said I did not give it a thought yet. I was wondering if the brevet would come in the way of marathon training, but a fellow rider reminded me of need to stick to riding in order to run better. Four days passed by and I found myself renewing my AIR BIB number and registering for the brevet without any planning. My only thought was - "What better way can I spend the coming weekend? :)" Planned to leave early f...

It all started in a weird way. I was browsing facebook happily and one fine day, I happened to notice the ‘Bhongir fort ride’ titled event on my feed, scheduled for 21st Feb 2016, when a good rider friend of mine RSVPed for the ride. I recalled the past couple of visits to the fort and thought that it could be a very rejuvenating century ride, thoroughly enjoyable at this time of the year. A few days later, I came to know that this was not a century ride, but a 200 km brevet! It got me thinking…. I was initially not intending to do a brevet (not this early at least) after becoming an SR. But the idea of seeing the fort hill up-close didn’t let me back off. To add fuel, I figured out that my parents wouldn’t worry about it either (I had a tough time convincing them for the last couple of brevets) Two options: Either ride leisurely without going through all the registrations and stuff, probably volunteering. Or go ahead and do it the ‘highway’ way ;) In the meanwhile, the TBA folks orga...

I initially thought of writing this post as a generic one, but considering the extreme experiences, I felt that it would be better to limit this to my personal experiences. Old habits die hard. As with the previous brevets, ended up with not-so-fruitful plans to sleep sound the night before the big day – 5 th -September-2015, as the much awaited, dreaded event - Hyderabad 600 km brevet ride “Into the wild” kept eating up the brain cells with unwanted thoughts, excitement and what not! The ride not just lived up to the name, but went way beyond it!! I rode to Raushan’s place at around 2:00 PM and we both started in his car after ensuring that all the mandatory items were in place. We reached the starting point -  St. Martin’s Engineering College at around 3:10 PM . After getting the bikes checked and going through the formalities, we greeted the fellow riders, well-wishers and volunteers and happily posed for all the photographers. Just before we started, we ...