Super Randonneur 2020

With the road bike I’ve found something interesting and at the same time quite challenging: Audax rides. It is a self-support non-competitive endurance riding, over scneic routes (including hilly ones) throughout the country. Many of these rides are crossing multiple states along small towns, usually off the beaten path. In Malaysia the awesome folks of Audax Randonneurs Malaysia (ARM) are the authorised organisers of Brevet rides, sanctioned by Audax Club Parisien (ACP).

There are 200, 300, 400 and 600km rides organised throughout the Brevet calendar year. These are timed rides, meaning that there are cutoff time that the participants (Randonneurs) need to observe. The routes are predetermined with a few checkpoints scattered throughout, including perhaps a secret checkpoint just to make sure no one is skipping some part of the course*. The rides are roughly timed with an average pace of 15km/h. As an example, for a 200km Brevet the time limit is 200/15 = 13.33 hours, simplified to be 13.5 hours. 

With SR Adnan at Morib for our BRM600

For the brave and courageous souls who complete each of the distances of 200, 300, 400 and 600km in the Brevet calendar year, there is an accolade bestowed upon them - the coveted Super Randonneur Award. As I am writing this, those numbers appear not as unattainable as I would have thought a few years ago. I still remember how intimidating it was to ride a 200km Brevet. The rides are all by no means easy, even after having finished them multiple times now. What I’m saying is that they are now less terrifying as it used to be. Some experience and lots of preparation play big roles in that, I suppose.

Together with Adnan, a fellow Perpatih member, we did all 4 rides to earn the title for 2020 season. It was an awesome journey along the 1,500km that we rode. The roads were scattered with our stories full of drama, hardship, camaraderie as well as fun times amid the adversaries; with breathtaking sceneries and weather spells, both favourable and discouraging, as the backdrop. I’ll recollect and put in this blog later the stories for keepsake, insyaAllah.

SR2020 list: https://audaxmalaysia.com/2020/11/16/super-randonneurs-2020-2/

The rides I completed for SR2020 award:

event		time, hours	cutoff time, hours	course distance, km	route
BRM400	Nov 2019	27:00	27:00	408.7	Muar - Tanjung Piai - Muar
BRM300	Dec 2019	18:05	20:00	288.6	Sitiawan - Taiping - Kuala Sepetang
BRM200	Jan 2020	11:20	13:30	198.6	Nilai - Morib - Nilai
BRM600	Aug 2020	39:30	40:00	599.7	Morib - Bahau - Segamat - Batu Pahat - Merlimau - Morib

*full rules of riding in here: https://audaxmalaysia.com/the-rules/

Images are owned by ARM