On finishing the 2026 PA Super Randonneur Series

On June 7th, late in the afternoon, I rolled back into the Chamounix Carriage House Hostel, 36 hours after I had initially set out, to finish the Bleu Kaundi 600k brevet, and with that, also the PA Super Randonneur Series. A Super Randonneur Series is a sequence of four brevets (a 200k, 300k, 400k, and 600k), done in the same calendar year. With the completion of this series, I completed the cycling-specific goal I'd set for myself at the start of 2026: I am using this blog post to reflect on what went well, what didn't, the aftermath, and what's next.

The context

While I was weighing many different options for "big cycling" projects this year, most of them involved getting to a start line pretty far from where I am living right now: not having a driver's license really narrowed down my options. The PA Randonneurs brevets, on the other hand, all start and end from the Chamounix House, a 10 minute bike ride from where I currently live. That made the logistics of this project really straightforward, and helped me keep up with my overarching goal of zero/low emissions racing.

The Super Randonneur series also seems to be a common launch point for many ultra-cyclists I know: they usually dip their toes into this discipline via brevets, before moving on to harder and longer events. That was also the case with the two other riders in this series: one is a Transcontinental Race veteran, and the other is planning on doing his first TCR later this year.

What went well

• The pacing (most of the time): Something that was on my mind at all times was how to optimally pace myself for these really long rides: longer than I had done historically. I ended up building a somewhat rudimentary pacing calculator (detailed here), which worked reasonably well, except in the case where extreme heat was a confounding factor (the 600k). I was especially pleased with how fresh I was feeling 350k into my 400k, and I foolishly assumed that would continue to be the case on the 600k as well.
• The food: I tried Red Bull for the first time in my life on the 400k, and it was so effective that I ended up having 4 more throughout the course of the day: near the end, I was a little concerned about overdosing on caffeine, but it certainly did its job, along with the standard Wawa everything-seasoned croissants. This combination had the right calorie density, and neutral enough in its taste that I could keep eating it indefinitely.
• Riding in the rain: The 400k and the 600k both featured heavy storms, and I overcame my usual reluctance to ride through rain, and ended up riding straight through both of those storms. While that may not have been the safest choice, it was certainly a lot of fun, and saved me a lot of time, at the expense of destroying my wheel bearings.

What didn't go so well

• Aerobars: I decided to try out clip-on aerobars after the 200k, where I had some hand numbness. While the aerobars certainly relieved hand numbness, they led to their own issues, namely weird shoulder aches. Confusingly enough, the shoulder aches showed up on the 300k and the 600k, while I was perfectly fine on the 400k: unclear why that may have been the case.

On riding in Pennsylvania

These brevets were an absolutely incredible way of getting super familiar with the topography of the parts of Pennsylvania we rode through. The routes went through the Appalachian mountains, and even as we were approaching them, the terrain got more rugged, the climbs longer, and the views better. None of the climbs were longer than 20 minutes or so, but there were a lot of them, and a lot of steep pitches.

Aftermath, and what's next

As a reward for finishing the series, I'd placed an order for a Fairlight Secan frame, to replace my aging Lauf Seigla frame, which had sustained what I thought was merely cosmetic damage from some crashes in 2025. Upon actually swapping the frames and examining the old one, it turned out there was a small but growing crack in the carbon fiber near the bottom bracket: I could honestly claim that I'd done the series on a broken bike.

It's not entirely clear to me what I should try next, but I am itching to try an off-road, East Coast-based bikepacking race: perhaps Endless Mountains in Pennsylvania, or Vermont Super 8. I also managed to finally get a driver's license, which opens me up to more opportunities (although if I drive to races, I can no longer claim to be "zero emissions racing").