Regular road.cc readers might know that I managed to finish the Bryan Chapman 600km audax last year on my way to picking up a Super Randonneur cloth badge. This year I was out on the same roads for the Pauline Porter Populaire, which is a similar route but split into three 200km days, kind of: up to Kings Youth Hostel outside Dolgellau for a night, a slightly shorter loop to Anglesey on day 2 (the other way round to the 600km so you can wave to the BCMers) and back to Kings for a second night before heading back to Chepstow and the finish line. Three days to choose from, and I only needed one to count!
Except. None of them counted. Despite days one and three being well over 200km – and, I might add, with a metric shit ton of climbing thrown in – because of Audax reasons that I don’t fully understand and even if I did would be too dull to explain here, each day counted as a 150km Brevet Populaire ride, and none of them counted as a 200km Brevet Randonneur ride, which is what I need to tick off for June. Anyway, after a bit of back-and-forth with excellent and helpful organiser Will Pomeroy I arrived at a solution. I could do one of the days as an ECE. We’re getting quite deep into Audax here. Let me explain, as well as my limited knowledge allows.
ECE stands for Extended Calendar Event. Say you’re looking to do a 100km Audax and it’s a 50km ride to the start: well, if you ride there and back it’s 200km, so you could score an extra point. There are a couple of ways you can do this, but the easiest is to submit a mandatory route as a GPX that includes the event, but bumps up the distance to the next marker. Day 2 of the Pauline Porter was technically a 150km ride but actually 176km, so an extra 25km or so would do the job: once round the estuary, through Barmouth and round to Dolgellau, before heading back to Kings. Effectively I was riding home from the finish, where ‘the finish’ and ‘home’ were the same place, an hour and a bit apart. If this all sounds a bit daft… well, yes. But anyway, I paid my four quid and sent off the file.
That’s the explainer done: how did the rides go? Well, 600km is a long way, but without the time pressure of the single-ride event the route stays off main roads a bit more, and in Wales that usually means hills, and that was certainly the case here. Looking back at last year’s ride the total elevation was about 7,800m. The three Pauline Porter rides are a bit longer, 636km with my extra loop, but with almost 10,000m of vertical ascent along the way. It’s a mixed bag: long, steady main road climbs on old coach routes, savage back lanes and everything in between. And plenty of flat bits.
Wales never fails, though. And the route is glorious. There are so many highlights. The old military road to Machynlleth. The Gospel Pass, with a tailwind! The lanes out of Dolgellau towards [checks notes] Trawsfynydd. Crossing the Barmouth estuary on the rickety bridge (twice, on my ride). Tearing down the A470 into Dinas Mawddwy. Eating chips at practically every place that would serve us chips. Chasing Mark across mid-Wales to deliver the pizza he ordered but gave up waiting for at Llyn Clywedog cafe. Cheering on the 600km riders along the epic coast road from Harlech. Seeing Matt Page tear past near Llanberis, on his way to finishing the BCM in 24 hours. Madness.
The main difference between doing the 600km ride, and three 200km rides, is that you’re not really against the clock. On the Bryan Chapman – for me, anyway – running out of time is a genuine possibility. The 40-hour cut-off is always in the back of your mind, and you’re always doing the mental arithmetic, at least until the numbers are unequivocally in your favour. On the Pauline Porter we weren’t ever going to run out of time on any given day, so although I’d made a spreadsheet to guesstimate when we’d arrive at the checkpoints, it didn’t matter whether we kept to pace or not, and I didn’t look at it all that much. We had a merry gang of four the whole way round, and my job was to come last on most of the climbs, and be a big diesel for some of the flat bits. I looked at the nice scenery a lot. None of the riding is after dark, so you get to see everything, including the bits that are a bit of a sleepy blur from previous attempts. Except the bit round the headland from Aberdyfi, because I didn’t fancy that. It was an advisory route, so it still counts. And if I’d remembered just how hilly the road from Machynlleth to Dolgellau was, I might have chosen differently.
Having the same stop both nights means easy logistics. You get a drop bag, so you can pack kit for the subsequent two days and some civvies for hanging around at the youth hostel, as well as the other essentials: a towel, a toothbrush, and a massage gun to attack your aching legs. Oh, and some earplugs. There wasn’t a huge amount of snoring but someone had helpfully organised the night stage of a rally along the road right past the youth hostel at 3am on the Saturday night. That woke plenty of people up. Not me though, I was dead to the world. My legs were pretty shot by the time we made it back to Monmouth for our final round of chips, so having two fresh riders head out to meet us and tow us home was welcome, until the climb out of Tintern, when it definitely wasn’t. Everyone else did laps of the roundabout at Chepstow racecourse waiting for me to arrive. I didn’t ask how many laps it was, but they looked a bit dizzy by the time I’d dragged myself up the hill.
Four 200km rides down then, assuming this one gets ratified. A third of the way through the RRTY challenge and next month is likely going to be another DIY effort, possibly on the gravel bike and along the Ridgeway if the weather is kind, with some kind of fallback option on tarmac if it’s not. But now I can have the rest of the month off. I probably won’t though. Huge thanks to Will and the team for putting on an excellent event, as ever, to Ben, Iwein and Justin for the company, and to Julie and Rachael for the tow back from Monmouth and the flapjacks and bottle of scrumpy as a finishing prize.
636km / 9,890m / 39h18m (plus two sleeps)
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12 thoughts on “Can I ride a 200km 12 months in a row? #4: The Pauline Porter Populaire”
In 2021 I completed 14
In 2021 I completed 14 Imperial and 50 Metric centuries.
Well done! How many of them
Well done! How many of them were 200km (which, as I always forgot, is a good chunk more than 100miles)? Were they in every month of the year? Did you write entertaining reports of them?
quiff wrote:
6. There was at least one every month. I completed every Strava distance and climbing challenge that year. The following year I set a challenge of an imperial century per week. I got 15 completed before a virus wiped me out.
I bored my friends and family about it in the way someone with a slide show does after a holiday.
scousegreg wrote:
Fair play, that’s good going. From a frustrated “down to one century a year and never sure if I’ll survive it” rider.
I actively look forward to
I actively look forward to these ride reports Dave, keep up the good work!
For 7 years in a row I did
For 7 years in a row I did monthly imperial centuries with the odd 200km and 300km thrown in. Legs wise its sounds like you’ve got it Dave, good luck!
Man on the street would think
Man on the street would think someone pretty badass if they did sub four hour Marathon run.Two Marathons at that pace – some kind of mythical warrior, yet even an ‘normal’ 200k Audax is eight hours plus. I love it that such an assortment of generally very ordinary looking boys and girls, nothing much to look at, usually not having all the latest bike bling; can do these extraordinary feats of endurance. All year round. In Velominati terms, these are the hard men, and women of course🙂
I’m feeling a very strange attraction……
…in which case there’s an
…in which case there’s an 04:00 garage forecourt just waiting to embrace your presence; you won’t often regret it!
Not in any way detracting
Not in any way detracting from the magnificent achievement of a 200km ride – takes a lot of doing whatever the time – but it’s in no way equivalent to two marathons back to back. It’s difficult to compare running and cycling of course as cycling is much easier on the body as it’s mostly seated and there are plenty of “rest” periods of freewheeling, but it’s a generally accepted heuristic that a running distance is about equal to a cycling distance just over four times greater (e.g. when the first Ironman Triathlon was established it had a marathon and a 112 mile cycle). This would make a double marathon equivalent to about a 340km cycle.
Rendel, I know🙂 I was
Rendel, I know🙂 I was clumsily or tongue in cheek ish trying to express my massive ‘kudos’ admiration etc for the typically unassuming everyday people, who are inspirational examples to us of how monster fit people can be without feeling the need to shout about it. Still rivers run strong and all that.
Fair ’nuff, I missed the
Fair ’nuff, I missed the tongue in cheekness as it’s surprising how many cyclists, even experienced ones, make the mistake of thinking that because their 100km ride takes 3-4 hours and people of about their age and fitness can run a marathon in 3-4 hours that the two are somehow equivalent.
Well done Dave. You had me
Well done Dave. You had me with the ‘shit ton of climbing’. Thats no exaggeration as I can attest from last years BCM, you think there can be no more suffering after the last hill you dragged your sorry arse up, then you’re faced with another ramp from hell. Fair play to Will though always provides epic and unforgettable routes.