Photo: Stephen Hinde

Eau de Hell Week 2013
An Overview from the Series Coordinator
by Mike Croy

And so ends the 6th edition of Eau De Hell Week, I think it is safe to say that by all accounts this years version was a great success. We tired a slightly different format this time around to see if we could catch a few new riders and I think we did achieve that. Many riders were quoted though that it was not all that hellish but still plenty hard enough. Riders came and had fun, the weather was for the most part very un Hell Week like (our webmaster felt a bit spoiled by the good weather this year).

I personally learned a lot being the series coordinator for a week long event like this and I have even more respect for the original series coordinator Ken Bonner (2007-2010) and then Martin Williams (2011) who both did the organizing all on their own when they did them respectively.

In the end we had 55 riders for the span of the 4 events and 7 riders who went the whole distance and finished the entire week start to finish overall. 8 riders went nearly the whole distance with Alex Pope racking up 900 km's for the week, but decided not to finish the 600 due to aggravating hip and knee issues.

    Eric Fergusson       68:59  6th EdH
    Ken Bonner           69:08  6th EdH
    Yutaka Moriwaki      70:15  1st EdH
    Henk Bouhuyzen       76:06  4th EdH
    David King           77:29  1st EdH
    David Robertson      78:14  1st EdH
    Eric Guillemot       79:14  1st EdH

  *2 riders completed their 6th consecutive hell week series which includes Ken Bonner and Eric Fergusson
  *1 rider finished his fourth consecutive hell week series which includes Ontario heavy hitter Henk Bouhuyzen.
  *4 riders finished their first hell week series becoming anciens of the event, which includes Dave Robertson, Dave King, Yutaka Moriwaki, Eric Guillemot.
  *3 of those 5 riders completed their first full Super Randonneur series as a compact version so congrats to Dave, Dave and Eric
(This was only ever done before in 2010 by Jim Runkel, Phil Lennox and Mike Croy)

3 women riders rode a few of the single rides including Hell Week ancien and sole female finisher Cheryl Lynch, Melissa Haynes rode her first 300 giving her partner a run for his money by doing a quick paced 300. Susan Barr from Vancouver rode the "Tour of the Cowichan Valley" followed the next day by a 200 km permanent to Port Renfrew and back.

This years eldest rider was Hell Week founder and 6 time ancien Ken Bonner who at the age of 70 can still burn up the km's. Conversely this years youngest rider was Yutaka Moriwaki at 42 and is also the rider who traveled the farthest to reach Vancouver Island all they way from Kobe Japan.

The 600 km brevet of Hell Week which this year happened when the traditional spring brevet would happen saw the return of Vancouver island god-parents Stephen and Carol Hinde. They as always ran a fabulous brevet seeing riders heading to Ucuelet rather then the traditional Tofino version.

As the coordinator of the series this year I would like thank a few people, places and businesses.
Firstly I would like say thank you to all the ride sub organizers, Jim Runkel for organizing and executing a superbly run "Tour of the Cowichan Valley 200", Graham Fishlock for his steadfast and well thought out 300 km brevet which had hints of being hellish on the weather front. Steve Mahovlic and Vik Banerjee for their tag team of excellence on the Lost but not forgotten 400 km and lastly a special thank you to Stephen and Carol Hinde for their 600 km brevet and unwavering island support. Dave Mcmurchie should also receive an acknowledgement for his efforts as he was seen out volunteering many times over including his usual "secret" but not so secret control in Shawnigan lake. Lastly thank you to Eric Ferguson who on top of riding the entire series constantly updated the website throughout the week.
Personally thank you to Brynne and Steven for putting up with my scattered brain and unfocused attention while I prepared this week.

A special note of appreciation must be made to the Chemainus Best Western Festival Inn as they were extremely supportive and receptive to any and all requests that we as a club made of them. They were very appreciative of our business and look forward to having us back again in the future as we showed what excellent guest we can be as a club.
Thanks also to the Petro-can in Buckley should be made for the control support they allowed us for riders on sight.
The town of Chemainus also needs a thank you as they are always encouraging and supportive of randonneuring cycling and I think it's important for us to support small town businesses.

At this point look for Hell Week to return to the island schedule in 2015 as well as moving back to it's original format beginning in early April so that riders wishing to qualify for PBP 2015 will have the opportunity to do so.