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10.5
If It’s Not on Strava, It Didn’t Happen
My first 200-km finish, and the night the road became my classroom
The itch that wouldn’t go away
After my first 200-kilometre brevet ended with a blunt “DNF”, I behaved like most people do after a public stumble. I told myself I didn’t care. I announced, with a face of forced maturity, that the experience itself was enough, and even quoted Robert Louis Stevenson to anyone who looked remotely sympathetic. The truth was simpler and less noble: I was irritated, not at the punctures or the headwind, but at myself. The brevet had exposed me. It had shown me that enthusiasm, by itself, is a charming but unreliable friend. It cheers loudly at the start and disappears the moment the tyre hisses.
So, after a few days of sulking in private, I did what I often advise my students to do after an unexpected result: I went back to the basics. I trained. I rode fifty-kilometre loops around Sevagram. I rode with Ashwini and a few medical students who were young enough to treat fatigue as a temporary inconvenience. I learnt to eat before I felt hungry and drink before I felt thirsty—an old cycling rule that sounds obvious until you forget it at the wrong time. When Nagpur Randonneurs announced an all-night 200-kilometre brevet in early September 2016, my family looked worried and I looked secretly excited. Night riding on a national highway with blinding headlights and unpredictable traffic sounded like the sort of plan that only cyclists, and slightly reckless men in their sixties, would consider reasonable. I decided I qualified.
Family negotiations, the polite kind
The announcement was met with predictable resistance at home. Bhavana and Ashwini tried to apply brakes gently, the way you slow down a car without making the passenger jerk forward. “Why don’t you do a daytime brevet?” they suggested. “Wait for November. Make haste slowly.” They were not wrong. I wasn’t supremely confident either, and I carried my own private anxieties, which I didn’t say aloud because saying them aloud would give them weight. What if I got sleepy on the road? What if a truck brushed past me? What if I got another puncture in the dark and stood helpless, watching time leak away?
I argued like a man trying to convince himself more than anyone else. I promised I would ride cautiously. I promised I would stop if I felt unsafe. I promised I would not chase speed. In the end, they gave in—not because they were convinced, but because they could see how badly I wanted to try again. The registration was closing in a couple of hours, and I signed up quickly, before my courage could change its mind.
The riders who became my little tribe
This time, I was not alone. A small Sevagram contingent joined the brevet: Dr Nikita Bhugra, a resident in Anaesthesiology, and two MGIMS students, Sumedh Manikpure and Alfred D’Souza. We had done a few practice rides together, the kind where you talk too much at the start and become silent by the last ten kilometres. On Sunday evening, we loaded our cycles into a car and drove from Sevagram to Nagpur, carrying not just bicycles but our nervousness as well.
The starting point was Zero Mile, a place that carries symbolic weight even when you are too anxious to appreciate symbolism. The volunteers were efficient and kind. They checked our bikes, handed us rider numbers, made us sign the liability waiver, and gave us brevet cards that looked deceptively innocent for something that could ruin your sleep and self-esteem in one night. At five o’clock, Aditi Hardikar flagged us off, and twenty-two cyclists rolled into the evening, each carrying a private mix of excitement and dread.
Traffic, red lights, and the first small panic
Barely a few hundred metres from the start, at Variety Square, we ran into heavy traffic. Vehicles were packed bumper-to-bumper at a red light, and I had to thread my bicycle through the chaos like a man trying to pass a catheter in a poorly lit ward. I am not naturally skilled at negotiating aggressive traffic. I ride with caution, which is another way of saying I ride with fear disguised as wisdom. But once we hit National Highway 6, the space opened up. The road was broad, the tarmac smooth, and the city’s noise slowly faded behind us. It was not poetic. It was practical. For cycling, practicality is a blessing.
The Strava emergency
About thirty minutes into the ride, I suddenly remembered something important, something modern, something ridiculous: I had forgotten to start Strava. To non-cyclists, this may sound like a minor error. To cyclists, it is an existential crisis. If the ride isn’t recorded, did it really happen? Will the world believe you? Will you believe yourself?
I stopped abruptly, pulled out my phone from the rear pocket of my jersey, opened the app with trembling fingers, and pressed “Record.” The GPS began tracking my movement, and I felt a strange relief—as if the road had finally agreed to witness my effort. We resumed the ride, and I promised myself that if I finished the brevet, I would never again begin a long ride without checking the basics: lights, bottles, bananas, and the blessed “Start” button.
A puncture at 38 km: the brevet’s reminder
At the 38-kilometre mark, Sumedh had a flat. We all stopped and tried to fix it, but our collective competence was still at the “watching YouTube” stage. Fortunately, a support vehicle happened to pass nearby. Wilfred accompanied Sumedh to a puncture shop, and the wheel returned to life without too much delay. The incident served as a reminder that brevets do not begin gently. They test you early, to see whether you are serious or merely enthusiastic.
We stuck to our plan—an average of 20 kilometres per hour. It was not glamorous, but it was sustainable. At the checkpoints, volunteers welcomed us with bananas, khichdi, water, and encouragement that felt strangely personal for people who had just met us. Each stamp on the brevet card felt like a small assurance that we were still in the game.
The downhill that tried to seduce us
Five kilometres before Talegaon, we hit a long downhill stretch. The bicycle began to glide, and the wind rushed through my helmet, wiping sweat off my cheeks as if it was doing me a favour. Speed is intoxicating, especially when you have been pedalling patiently for hours. The temptation is to let go and fly, to believe for a moment that gravity is your friend and you are younger than your birth certificate claims.
We resisted. We kept control. It was one of those small adult decisions that you feel proud of later, when you are not lying in a ditch. When we reached Talegaon checkpoint, the first hundred kilometres were done. We felt elated. The body was still cooperative, the mind was still optimistic, and the grass looked very inviting.
The lawn trap, and the wisdom of not lying down
There was a small garden nearby. The idea of lying down for five minutes felt irresistible. It felt harmless. It felt deserved. But I had already learnt what “harmless” means in a brevet. It means you will lose time and pay for it later. We sat briefly, stamped our cards, ate, drank, and left before comfort could turn into a trap. I knew that if I lay down, even for a few minutes, the body would start negotiating. It would say, politely at first, and then firmly, that it had done enough.
The hill, the breath, and the mind games
Soon after Talegaon, a long climb awaited us. I had studied it in advance—the length, the gradient, the likely time it would take. That knowledge helped, because climbing a hill is half legs and half psychology. I dropped gears. I stayed light on the pedals. I focused on cadence, not speed. I tried to keep my thoughts clean and simple, because when the breath becomes loud and the heart begins pounding, the mind starts bargaining like a lawyer.
Slow down, it whispers. Stop, it suggests. Walk, it offers. Who asked you to do this, it asks, as if you were an innocent man dragged into the affair.
I countered with quieter thoughts—clouds, birds, stars—anything that kept panic away. Slowly, the top arrived. Relief came not because the hill was conquered, but because doubt had been silenced. The road flattened out, and the body behaved again.
The solo stretch: discovering the night
Alfred and Sumedh moved ahead. Nikita was a few kilometres behind. I found myself riding alone for a long stretch. It was past midnight. The highway was darker, the traffic thinner, and the world felt strangely private. I had never spent two hours on a saddle, alone, on a national highway at that hour. To my surprise, I did not feel afraid. I felt free.
There is something liberating about moving through darkness with only your headlamp, the moon, and the hum of tyres on tarmac. You stop performing for others. You stop thinking of how you look. You become only a body in motion, negotiating distance. At some point, I began talking to myself, quietly and foolishly, the way people do when they are alone and tired and slightly proud of being brave. I discovered that solitude, when chosen, can feel like a gift.
Coffee at 2 a.m., and the luxury of feeling awake
The third checkpoint was Kathiawad Dhaba, about sixty kilometres from Nagpur. I reached it with a sense of gratitude that felt almost devotional. I sprinkled cold water on my face, drank coffee, ate bananas, chatted briefly, and sat down longer than I should have. Thirty minutes in a brevet is a small crime, but this time I could afford it. I had time in hand, and I allowed myself the luxury of believing that I would finish. The coffee gave my mind a jolt, and the chatter with volunteers reminded me that even in a solitary sport, you are rarely entirely alone.
The final approach: a city I suddenly loved
At two in the morning, with sixty kilometres to go, I rode more leisurely. The road was dim, the breeze kind, and the fatigue oddly manageable. As I neared Nagpur, the streets looked wet, suggesting recent rain. The air was cool. The city felt gentler than it does in daylight. I crossed familiar squares, turned at Variety Square, and found myself on Wardha Road. The finish was close enough to taste, and that was when I decided to stop being philosophical and start pedalling properly.
I pushed harder, not like a sprinter, but like a man who can smell the end and doesn’t want it to slip away. A few minutes later, I reached the final checkpoint near Nagpur airport. The volunteers cheered. They stamped my card. They smiled as if they had been expecting me. The title arrived quietly, without fanfare, the way real achievements often do.
I was a randonneur.
The real victory
Later, people asked me how it felt. I could have said it felt triumphant. I could have said it felt heroic. But the truth is, it felt strangely ordinary. I was tired. I was hungry. I was sweaty. My legs were sore. Yet inside, something had shifted. I had crossed a line I had drawn for myself. I had learnt that a DNF is not a full stop. It is a comma. If you are stubborn enough, you can continue the sentence, and write the next paragraph on the road.