Last year, “pandemic bike boom” was a talking point on Reddit. Wikipedia added 2020 to the periods in history when the bicycle was “rediscovered”. The pandemic with its punctuation on fitness and social distancing was just the inflexion point the humble bicycle needed. During the lockdowns, closed gyms had left a void that cycles rolled in to fill.
Raghu Vishal, current representative of Audax India Randonneurs, believes the “pandemic bicycling boom” would not stop with basic cycling, but spur many people, including women, towards ultra cycling.
Aarthi Lakshminarayanan, a senior randonneur at the city-based Madras Randonneurs, reports a spike in women randonneurs having a go at the coveted super randonneur title. “There must be 12 to 15 women randonneurs in Chennai,” elaboartes Aarthi.
Qualifying as a super-randonneur is the height of ultra cycling, as it requires the rider to complete 200 km, 300 km, 400 km and 600 km brevets (as randonneurs call “rides”) in a randonneuring year (from November to October), relying on little outside of themselves, except of course the cycle.
To encourage women to take up ultra cycling, the various chapters of Audux India Randonneurs — recognised and empowered by the international governing body Audax Club Parisien to oversee all Brevets de Randonneurs Mondiaux (BRMs) and Audax events in India — are said to have chalked up their own programmes. To illustrate, Raghu names clubs across the country that have offered women participants rebates on the entry fee for brevets.
Reduced fee would help, however women struggle to cut through two firewalls — considerations of personal safety and family.
A majority of women randonneurs are content with being just a randonneur — which comes with completion of a 200 km brevet — and baulk at the notion of having to do overnight rides, unavoidable in the 600 and 400 km brevets.
Divya Iyer, one of the new entrants to randonneuring and is preparing to go on a 600 km brevet next week, points out that a 400 km would require a rider to spend a night on the road cycling; and a 600km, two nights. That would raise questions of safety and time.
Aarthi places the issue in perspective: While men also have trouble balancing a demanding sport of this kind and other commitments, women are harder hit as they are seen as “caregivers”. A woman’s absence from home for four days on account of a 600 km brevet is more keenly felt, Aarthi underlines.
Safety vehicle
The safety question is indirectly addressed by a policy introduced by Audax India Randonneurs with Audax Club Parisien’s permission.
- Randonneuring does not offer any scope for having “support vehicles”, as it is an exercise in toughening up the cyclist, something that flows naturally from its self supported format. Safety vehicles are however allowed under special conditions.
- Raghu Vishal, all-India representative of Audax India Randonneurs, explains:
- “As per our rules, support vehicle is not permitted. How we make that distinction (between a support vehicle and a safety vehicle) is that a support vehicle typically is in a follow position behind the rider. In cycling, specifically ultra cycling, certain event formats permit and even to some degree require that the cyclist has their own support vehicle with a support group. Those generally include the race across America which goes from the west coast to the east coast, covering thousands of miles. Audax is a completely self-supported format, and therefore support cars are not permissible.”
Raghu explains: “The erstwhile national representative of Audax India Randonners, Ms. Divya Tate, had made a special request to Audax Club Parisien to permit for India the concept of a safety vehicle which would not be following the rider at all times, but leapfrog ahead of the rider to keep an eye on them. The rider is not permitted to take any supplies from the vehicle nor any kind of physical support from it. This provision is not limited to women to ensure their safety, but has rather been put in place because certain routes in the country are isolated and lack emergency services, and certain others that are not safe — we have Gwalior club operating close to the Morena district where dacoity rears its head often. Rourkela club faces a challenge when they organise a 600 km, as they have to pass through territories that are dominated by naxals. So, this exception has been made for India for this purpose. The facility is not restricted to women, but women’s safety is one aspect of the multiple reasons for which the safety vehicle concept has been permitted on overnight BRMs and in unsafe sections.”
He continues: “It is entirely at the discretion of the organiser to extend that facility to the rider. If it is just a daytime BRM, 200 km, and there is no safety issue on that route, and there are sufficient marshals and volunteers on that day, the organisers may not be inclined to extend it to any of the riders.”
The option of a safety vehicle stays with you as a comforting thought, states Aarthi, who has exercised it a couple of times.
She says: “On a couple of occasions when I found myself riding alone, I had my safety car meet me at the control points or follow me at a distance. They cannot provide any support; they are just there for safety purpose.”
Raghu spells out the scope of the safety vehicle:
“The safety vehicle is often driven by the rider’s relative, and we brief them on what they can do and what they cannot. What they cannot do is provide any kind of support to the rider. What they can do is leapfrog ahead of the rider every few kilometres and keep an eye on them as they cross their location and go to the next point along the route. They have to maintain a minimum distance specified in the policy; the rule very specifically even mentions that the rider is not supposed to ride within the headlights of the car either. The rider has to have their own cycle lights — tail-lights and front lights. These checks are carried out before the ride is flagged off.”
Randonneuring gurus would recommend that the safety vehicle be kept as the last resort. The presence of fellow riders is the first line of safety.
“If there are couple of women riding, they could ride with the group, which is good. If they cannot, they can then have their safety vehicle,” says Aarthi.
What makes fell at ease about the upcoming 600 km brevet is what she had experienced during the 400 km brevet ( Chennai-Jamunamarathur-Chennai route via Vandavasi).
“When I did the 400 km, it was raining continuously for seven hours and we had blinkers in our cycles. The lights in my cycle had conked out due to the downpour. And on top of that, dogs were chasing us,” recalls Divya, and what shines through the memory of that difficult ride is how the male cyclists made sure they were around so that the women riders did not come to any harm.
