In a nutshell, randonneuring is long distance, unsupported cycling. Randonneuring events are called brevets. Typical lengths for brevets are 200 km (124 miles), 300 km (186 miles), 400 km (248 miles) and 600 km (373 miles). There are also 1200 km brevets (750 miles), this most famous being Paris - Brest - Paris.
On a typical charity/century ride, you have support in the form of rest areas every 10-20 miles and a sag wagon that will help you fix your bike or transport you back to the finish if your car breaks down. Randonnneuring events are unsupported. There are no organized rest areas to stop at. You may stop at any stores or restaurants along the route and acquire additional food, water or supplies, but there will be no tent full of volunteers waiting for you with snacks prepared. There is also no SAG wagon. If your bike breaks down, you need to fix it. For this reason, randonneurs tend to favor more durable equipment over lightweight equipment. Randonneurs also tend to carry more spares with them than the normal rider. It is not uncommon to carry 3 or more tubes, a spare tire and a fiber spoke. I have even heard of randonneurs carrying a spare brake cable. Finally, personal support vehicles are not allowed. That is, you can't have your significant other or friend follow you along the course in their car with spare parts and food. The idea is to complete the course using your own ability.
At the beginning of each ride, each rider is issued a brevet card. Randonneuring events will usually have several controls along the way, and at each control the rider must have his or her brevet card signed with the time the rider arrived at the control. The brevet cards and controls serve to make sure that the rider actually completes the course specified, and does not 'short cut' any distance off of the course. They also serve to make sure the rider completes the course in the time allotted (more on that below). Controls are typically at a convenience store, which is useful so you can replenish your water bottles and fuel supply while at the control. There can be controls though which are not manned by a person. Typically these will have the rider note their time and answer a question about the spot, like some text on a historical marker.
Randonneuring events do have time limits in which they must be completed in. A 200 km brevet must be completed in 13.5 hours, a 300 km brevet in 20 hours and so on. Given, these time limits do not require one to go exceptionally fast. However, that time is total time, not 'on the bike' time, meaning the clock is always ticking. If you stop for lunch, the clock is still ticking. If you have to stop to fix a flat or mechanical, the clock still runs. So it is not so important to be fast, but to make consistent progress. As indicated above, not just the whole event has a time limit, but each control has a time limit as well. For example, if a control was located at 50 km of a 200 km brevet, a rider would have to pass this control by 3 hours and 22 minutes into the ride.
A typical charity or century ride will be a marked course, with arrows or signs along the route to guide riders on the right path. Randonneuring events are almost always unmarked. That is, before the ride, you receive a cue sheet (example here) with the course and turns on it, and you are responsible for navigating the course. The directions are almost always of very high quality, like "At 15.5 miles, turn left onto School Road". But it is important to pay attention to your computer and your cue sheet to know where you are at all times and if a turn is coming up. If you do miss a turn, you have to back track and rejoin the course at the point you left.
Randonneuring events are typically held over challenging terrain. Perhaps not mountainous terrain, but usually hilly terrain. Paris-Brest-Paris averages about 4000 feet of climbing per 200 km, so most brevets try to mimic this. Obviously in some parts of the country, that is more difficult. But a typical brevet will generally be much hillier than a normal century ride. So once again, while 13.5 hours seems like a lot of time to complete a 200 km brevet, a factor that slows you down is that there will be more climbing, so you are not averaging 20 mph.
The final difference I'll talk about between a typical century event and a brevet is the number of participants. Century rids usually have hundreds, sometimes thousands of participants. It is very often possible to get into a group of riders and draft for a lot of the miles on the ride. A typical brevet will have 30-60 riders. And it seems everyone tends to spread out after about the first 20 miles or so. Usually people do buddy up into groups of 2-4, but rather than drafting, because of the distance of the rides, you are typically riding side by side having a conversation to help pass the miles. I won't say drafting doesn't occur on brevets--it does, but it is not nearly as frequent as a century ride or club ride. Again, this is a reason that an average speed on a brevet tends to be a little bit lower.
There are other factors that come into play on brevets 300 km or longer, like weather and riding at night. But this post is really meant to give everyone an idea of what a brevet is all about, and most people start off by doing a 200 km or several 200 km rides before moving up to the longer distances.
All in all, if you have ever gone out and done a long ride between 80-100 miles either solo or with a small group, that is what a brevet is like. When you go out on your own, you are planning out a route, stopping at stores rather than rest areas for replenishment and there is no sag wagon following you. Probably the most important skills are aerobic endurance (obviously) and persistence. You don't really have to be fast, just keep going and making steady progress. And you have to be comfortable being on your bike all day.
Randonneuring Resources and Information
- Randonneurs USA (Body in the US that sanctions Randonneuring events)
- Great Lakes Randonneurs (holds their brevets in Delavan, WI, about 2 1/2 hours from Appleton)
- What to Expect on Your First PA Brevet (From Tom Rosenbaur of PA Randonneurs, where I did my first brevet--very useful summary)
- Intro to Randonneuring (From the group out of Rochester, MN)
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