WORDS AND PICTURES ELEANOR JASKOWSKA
Persistently pursuing an irresistible urge Bristol-based Eleanor Jaskowska has conquered Paris-Brest-Paris on a fixed wheel bike, so she knows a thing or two about endurance cycling. Here she chats to fellow riders about the fascination of the Randonneur Round the Year cycling challenge
Arrivéewinter/spring2020
THE RANDONNEUR Round the Year (RRtY) award is one of the tougher cycling challenges on offer. It requires a ride of 200km or more for 12 successive calendar months, and it entails consistent big rides in all seasons, a strong mind and a proactive approach to diary logistics. For the committed there are also awards for five and ten times RRtYs.
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Not everyone can ride a 1,000km, so 200km is much more accessible. Persistence and perseverance trump strength and speed. For this reason riders come at this award from a number of different angles. For some it seems like a challenge that strikes the right balance between being potentially out of reach and possibly doable. Some accidentally realise that they have many
A long distance ❝ challenge that requires you to persevere for a minimum of 12 months is a whole new way to test your sticking power
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months of back-to-back rides so why not? For others, like myself, it is a challenge to keep riding longer distances consistently throughout the year. We have different motivations. Sometimes the motivator is simply: “Can I?” All long distance rides are a challenge of endurance. A long distance challenge that requires you to persevere for a minimum of 12 months is a whole new way to test your sticking power. Rides can go wrong, injuries happen or calendars get hijacked and a month can go past and that elusive 200km slips from our fingers. There is a pretty high likelihood of failure and having to start the 12 month streak from scratch. Every long ride has its stories so I decided to question a selection of AUK members who all came at the award for different reasons. No-one is born a Randonneur Round the Year, are they? Well, there’s Laura Collett who jumped right in. Laura is a data nerd from Bristol and purveyor of fine rainbow cycling caps. She is our newbie and rode her first UK event 13 months ago. She didn’t waste much time cracking on with her RRtY. Most of our riders took a while to find the world of point-to-point Brevet riding and built up to the RRtY. Judith Swallow was headhunted into AUK buy the then chairman, the late Rocco Richardson. Judith has now ridden more miles than almost anyone else alive; she has 25 grande brevets to her name and is well on her way to the 300,000 mile club. Rocco took her out on the Paragon Potter in March 1997. Judith recalls: “He seemed to think that this was a good idea. As it was ‘only’ 120km, Rocco decided that we’d also ride the 50km to the start and again back. Things went from there”. About 10 years ago a young and naive Johnatan Williams was chatting to a local Bristol cyclist about the
