Wounded Leg
Permanent Brevet #220, 200km
Ride Date: January 31, 2022
by Mark Payten

Mark checked in with this message after his ride. He has some interesting thoughts about meeting the cut off times on the slower gravel brevet routes. Audax Australia allows extra time for brevets with significant gravel distance.

Hi Eric,

Here are the completed control cards from Dave and me for our ride on Monday.  Here is my Strava URL for the ride: https://www.strava.com/activities/6612862214. I am working on the revised version of this route. The North Saanich end needs a bit of work to make it better. I will send you the revised route when it is complete. This is it so far. https://ridewithgps.com/routes/38462647.

The route we rode was about 52% gravel and a greater percentage on trail, making for a slower than normal ride. Following the ACP guidelines, meeting the cut off times for the controls was on our minds. Dug Andrusiek sent me some information on Audax Australian gravel brevets a short while ago. Link. I have been wondering if as a club, could adopt their rules and have gravel permanents with more appropriate control opening and closing times. Not knowing anything about the database, I thought an easier solution would be that the permanents could have a GRX or something similar in their ride title do designate that they meet the criteria of a gravel ride. This would open up more opportunities for riding in different weather and also meet the evolving interests of cyclists keen to avoid the ever increasing traffic on our roads. Would you mind looking over the information and giving me your opinion?

By the way, both my hip and Dave’s leg did very well. There was just the usual fatigue.  I got off my bike on the left side without even thinking about it. I have not done that in years.  WOW! Dave even did his usual ride ahead and geocache thing a couple of times.  It is hard to believe that he has not really ridden in over a year!

Thanks for doing what you do for the permanent program.

February 3, 2022