DC Randonneurs

The cue sheet for the Warrenton (Old Rag) 200K ACP brevet starting at the Howard Johnsons in Warrenton, VA at 7:00AM on April 10, 2010 is now posted at Cue Sheet - 20100410 Warrenton 200K Brevet. Be sure to park either at the high school indicated on the map or along Waterloo Rd. Do not park at the HoJos or nearby businesses. Bring lights, especially in case of morning fog or rain.

The link to the GPS files is posted below. But please read this information before downloading them. Always get a copy of the final cue sheet. That final cue sheet contains the official route, so in case there is a conflict with the GPS file, you should resolve the conflict in favor of the cue sheet. Use the GPS as a handy-dandy adjunct. Keep your wits about you, as the GPS cannot notify you of road hazards — it is up to you to ride safely.

We strongly recommend that you set your GPS to the settings below. We cannot guarantee that these will keep you on the official route, but if you have your GPS set some other way, it is entirely possible that it will take you off route, possibly onto unsafe roads. Go to the Setup->Routing page and set as follows:

Guidance Method: Follow Road
Follow Road Method: Shortest Distance
Next Turn Pop-Up: On
Follow Road Options:
  Off Route Recalculation: Prompted
  Calculation Method: Best Route
  Calculate Routes for: Car/Motorcycle
  Avoid: (set to none – the route itself should control this)

By the way … make sure that your GPS either has maps already downloaded, or select the relevant maps around the routes.

GPS files are posted at GPS Files - 20100410 Warrenton 200K Brevet.

The ride starts at the “Howard Johnson Inn” at 6 Broadview Avenue in Warrenton, VA‎ (540 347-4141‎). Checkin starts at 6am and the brevet starts at 7am. Pre-ride bathrooms are available in the Burger King, just N of the HoJos, on Broadview. Please do not park at the HoJos, unless you are a guest.  There is street parking on Waterloo, just west of the HoJos.  If you want off-street parking, park at the High School which is at Waterloo and Van Roijen St, about three blocks from the HoJos.

From Warrenton we head generally southwest passing through rolling horse farm country with the Blue Ridge Mountains as our backdrop. We parallel the Blue Ridge as far south as Madison where we begin our return to Warrenton after a stop at the friendly, well-stocked Yoder’s Country Market. The route is fairly gentle as we wind our way to Syria in the shadow of Grave’s Mountain. A moderate climb followed by a 3-mile descent puts us up and over the Old Rag Grinder. A series of steep and unrelenting rollers–lovingly known as The Three Kings and The Meanies–will consume us for the next hour or so prompting many to re-fuel at the Laurel Mills store with the sweet, spring water that flows nearby. Country roads bordered by stone fences carry us through Ben Venue and into Flint Hill and the final control at the reopened Orlean Store. A final climb over Piney Mountain brings us back to the HoJos in Warrenton. Estimated total elevation gain : 8,000 feet.

The cue sheet for the Urbana 200K ACP brevet starting at the Waffle House in Urbana, MD at 7:00AM on March 27, 2010 is now posted at Cue Sheet - 20100327 Urbana 200K Brevet. Be sure to park either at the Park and Ride indicated on the map or at the shopping center at the finish. If you park at the shopping center, park as far away from the stores as possible. Do not park at the Waffle House or nearby businesses.

The link to the GPS files is posted below. But please read this information before downloading them. Always get a copy of the final cue sheet. That final cue sheet contains the official route, so in case there is a conflict with the GPS file, you should resolve the conflict in favor of the cue sheet. Use the GPS as a handy-dandy adjunct. Keep your wits about you, as the GPS cannot notify you of road hazards — it is up to you to ride safely.

We strongly recommend that you set your GPS to the settings below. We cannot guarantee that these will keep you on the official route, but if you have your GPS set some other way, it is entirely possible that it will take you off route, possibly onto unsafe roads. Go to the Setup->Routing page and set as follows:

Guidance Method: Follow Road
Follow Road Method: Shortest Distance
Next Turn Pop-Up: On
Follow Road Options:
  Off Route Recalculation: Prompted
  Calculation Method: Best Route
  Calculate Routes for: Car/Motorcycle
  Avoid: (set to none – the route itself should control this)

By the way … make sure that your GPS either has maps already downloaded, or select the relevant maps around the routes.  

GPS files are posted at GPS Files - 20100327 Urbana 200K Brevet. Be particularly alert to following the cue sheet near the end of the brevet.  The GPS maps do not know about the bit of Caledonia Dr that bridges from Royal Crest Dr to Carriage Hill Dr.  Rather than start a new GPS route two miles from the end, the GPS route just takes you up to Carriage Hill, then turns around to loop back around to where Carriage Hill meets Royal Crest Dr.  But having read this note, you won’t be puzzled about why the GPS file doesn’t match the cue sheet, and you’ll follow the cue sheet!  Once you make the turn from Royal Crest to Sugarloaf Pkwy, the GPS should stop complaining that you’re off route.”

Note: Park at the Urbana Park’n'Ride.

The Urbana 200k reverses direction this year, but quite likely will retain the same degree of difficulty and feet of climbing,  if in a different order.

The brevet begins at the Urbana Waffle House (8906 Fingerboard Rd, Frederick, MD 21704). Checkin starts at 6am and the brevet starts at 7am. Get there early and have a hearty breakfast to carry you through the day! From Urbana, the route slides down to the Monocacy and across the valley to the first significant ridge of the Marlu appellation.  After the fast descent to Jefferson, there are several creek crossings with the attendant downs and ups and then a fairly easy grade over South Mountain at Gapland.

Several hard rollers involving Antietam Creek and tributaries bring the riders to Sharpsburg and a short tour of Antietam Battlefield.  The terrain moderates after this with a gradual rise out to Williamsport for a control at the KOA on the beautiful Conococheague Creek.  The route then heads north and loops around Hagerstown on mostly rural roads to a control in State Line PA.

A long slow downhill into Leitersburg passes through dairy farms and across mill creeks until some very hard rollers appear outside of Smithsburg.  Then there is the long arduous climb over South Mountain and Catoctin Ridge with a several false summits to keep things interesting.  The Frederick county line commences the long descent through Catoctin State Park into Thurmont.

The route does a long flat haul eastward on MD 77 and turns south for a control at the 7-11 in Union Bridge.   It will be a welcome break to prepare for the various hills - long and slow and short and steep -  from Libertytown to Bartonsville Road.  Cresting the last interminable uphill on Bartonsville, there is a brief pause to catch the view before a very long downhill along Reichs Ford Road.  One last uphill on Ijamsville brings the riders back to Fingerboard and the final miles to the finish at J & P Pizza.

A DC Randonneurs Dart will be held on March 20, 2010. A Dart is a team event in which each team rides different routes toward a common finish location, like arrows toward a target. The minimum ride distance for a Dart is normally 180 km, which must be covered in a period of 12 hours. However, we have established a minimum distance of 200km for this Dart so that it will qualify toward the R-12 award.

We have also scheduled a Fleche team event for the weekend of April 15-18. The Fleche is twice as long, with a minimum distance of 360km over 24 hours, and our Dart is scheduled approximately one month before the Fleche so that it can be used as a training and shakedown for that longer event. The Dart is ridden almost entirely in daylight and will be a much more forgiving event on which to discover problems with organization or rider pacing. So it would be a good idea for all Fleche teams to also ride the Dart, but especially any new teams.

The target for the Dart is Dunlap’s Restaurant in Gettysburg, PA, where the teams will join together for a  post-ride dinner at 7PM. Sunrise will be at 7:12AM and sunset at 7:20PM, so a start and finish time of 6:30 would yield a good compromise between riding in daylight and eating at a reasonable time.  For any riders that plan to stay in Gettysburg on Saturday night and ride back to the DC area on Sunday, there are many hotels within a few blocks of Dunlap’s.

The Dart has its own set of rules that are somewhat different, and perhaps even more arcane, than those for a standard brevet. Some of them are summarized here:

• Each team must consist of three to five bicycles. (Note that a tandem counts as a single bicycle, so teams will sometimes contain more than five riders.)
• The traditional Dart/Fleche route starts at some distant location and then heads for the target, but a loop route is also allowed, as long as the start location is far enough from the finish to be considered as a different postal jurisdiction.
• As in a standard brevet, the routes must contain control locations chosen so that the shortest bicycle-legal route through the controls is equal to at least the minimum distance of 200 km. However, the Dart has an additional requirement that one of the controls must occur exactly 10 hours after the start and be at least 25 km from the finish. Note that this requirement, as well as the one that states that no rest stops can be longer than 2 hours, ensures that teams take nearly the full 12 hours to complete the ride.

Additional information about the 10-hour control will be provided to all registered team captains, since a full understanding of the rules for this control is essential for achieving a successful finish. And this will be excellent practice for the similar 22-hour control on the fleche.

To participate in this special event, riders should start forming teams now. Each team must have a captain who is responsible for designing the route and submitting it for approval. Captains should carefully read the rules first. The schedule will be:

• February 20: Applications from captains due to RBA including 1) captain’s application form, 2) start date, time, and location, 3) map of route, 4) cue sheet, and 5) names, addresses, and phone numbers for the controls. The route information can be submitted electronically to cba@dcrand.org in PDF, MS Word, or MS Excel format. Route files from DeLorme Topo, Garmin Mapsource, or MS Streets and Trips will also be appreciated, but not required.
• March 6: Final rosters, rider applications, and waivers due from team captains to RBA. Deadline for final route approval.
• March 13: Control cards sent to captains
• March 20: Dart

The application form is available here. Team captains are responsible for collecting applications and waivers from their team members and getting them submitted on time. The information part of the application is a fillable PDF form that can be emailed to cba@dcrand.org, but the waiver parts must be signed and snail-mailed to the address on the form.

Please contact Bill Beck ( cba@dcrand.org ) with any questions. We also have many experienced fleche captains in the club who would be excellent sources of advice. If you are thinking of forming a team or looking for a team to join, the dcrand listserve is one good way to connect with other riders.