BC-12 A Proposal
Decalendarizing the Permanents Award
by Eric Fergusson
Permanents Coordinator

To say that the BC-12 Award is the “permanents award” is not strictly speaking true. The required 12 rides, one in each calendar month, can include a mixture of ACP brevets, fleches and traces, in addition to permanent brevets.

The BC Randonneurs permanents program, and the BC-12 award, date back to October 2008 modeled on permanent programs in France, the UK and the US. They offer something a little different from riding scheduled ACP sanctioned brevets. They offer riders flexibility and freedom. Riders can choose the time and date of their ride. They choose the route, and that route can be anywhere in the world. Riders also choose the distance. It must be over 200 km but does not need to conform to the official randonneur distances (200, 300, 400, etc.) A permanent route can be 243 km, because that’s the out and back distance to your favourite beach or cafe.

If you were to design an award that recognized permanents participation and achievement, what would it look like? You’d probably lean towards something that fits with the flexibility and freedom that defines the ride experience. More on that below, but first a little context.

At the time when the permanents came to BC Randonneurs, all-season brevets were trending amongst riders. Permanents co-founder and co-coordinator Tracy Barill, was particularly interested in pushing ACP brevets into the “shoulder months” as he called them. For the 2010 season, shortly after the permanents were introduced, the Lower Mainland added two 200s: the “Early Bird” in March and the “11th Hour” in November. The Island schedule soon followed. To earn a BC-12 could now mean that you only needed to ride permanents in December, January and February. The rest could be taken care of with scheduled ACP brevets, which you might be riding anyway.

So at that time there was this trend/fad for riding “off season” events. In my mind the challenge of the BC-12 always meant suffering through the rides in those 3 dark and icy months. I bought into this aspect of the program at the time, but on reflection I’m not sure it was ever the right challenge.

I’m not sure it’s safe either. I rode a December permanent with another rider in 2014 who crashed twice on black ice. There are other riders who have gone down hard too on winter permanents. As permanents coordinator I’m always relieved when riders report in after completing winter permanents, and I breathe easier when the temperatures go up in early spring, when ice becomes puddles.

Another problem with the current BC-12 criteria is that it doesn’t recognize the riding achievement, focussing rather on the calendar timing of your rides. Someone could ride 20 permanents and not get a BC-12 award, when another rider could earn it by just doing those three deep winter permanents.

And why not give riders the freedom to schedule some off-bike time on their own timelines, for their own reasons. Maybe someone is injured, or having knee surgery, or spending six weeks in Antarctica or just forgot to do their August permanent. Why not allow all of these, and still leave the door open for earning your BC-12.

So what would a better BC-12 look like?

I think that 12 is still a good number. I also think that there will be riders who enjoy the winter challenge aspect of the BC-12, so I suggest we keep the current criteria as one option. But I do think there also needs to be a more permanents focused option to the award. So let’s twin the BC-12: 12 rides, calendared or uncalendared.

The purist in me likes the idea of the award being a completely permanents focused award – 12 permanents in 365 days. But maybe we don’t need to go that far. The current award is already a hybrid. Why not keep this. I suggest that we require a minimum of 8 permanents, plus your choice of up to 4 sanctioned ACP events. With this mix a rider could, for example, ride a super randonneur series (200, 300, 400, 600), plus 8 permanents. There’s a nice symmetry to that.

Feedback welcome.

Eric's e-mail