This December a major change has taken place as Bruce Ingle, NER’s and BBS’s long time RBA, President, and Route designer needed to step down to devote time to his job that pays the bills. Bruce has been involved with the Boston Brevet Series since 1995 — four years before RUSA was even founded. He was the region’s fourth RBA with his former wife Tracey being the third. Together they single handily ran all the events of the Boston Brevet Series for much of the 2000s. Later they created the New England Randonneurs organization.
Bruce his been instrumental to designing many of the routes. In 2007 the Boston Brevet Series lost the use of Bullard Farm (New Salem, MA) as a control location. As most BBS events past though this location at the time, Bruce had to quickly design and run the Boston 400k and 600k so that riders would still qualify for PBP. That Boston 400k route is still used today, largely unchanged and the 600k follows much of the same route. Bruce had also designed the 350k to Westfield and made various tweaks to the remaining rides.
Not many cyclists understand how difficult it can be to design a RUSA approved route, let alone the time and effort it takes to organize the support needed to pull one off. To this day NER’s routes provide a much higher level of support then most other Brevets nationally and riders who appreciate this have Bruce to thank.
Speaking for myself and Emily O’Brien (Volunteer Coordinator), we both became interested in Randonneuring when attending a mid-winter CRW ride and house party hosted by Bruce in 2006. Hearing his tales and him speak of casually riding 100+ miles both made us interested in endurance cycling. We rode our first 200k that spring and Bruce provided us with lots of guidance and as we (well, me) struggled though our first SR series.
From the founding of RUSA (it’s charter based roughly on CRW’s) to the US’s first 1200k (Boston-Montreal-Boston), Boston has been a cornerstone of Randonneuring in the United States. We thank Bruce for his efforts over the years and hope he can now just relax and enjoy participating as a rider instead of as a tireless volunteer. If you see him on the road (and you will) make sure to thank him for all he’s done.
Starting in January of 2014 myself (Jake Kassen) will be taking over as RBA and Dan Greene as NER’s President. We have a big shoes (cleats?) to fill. We hope to make some changes in the future to expand NER’s offerings, an example of which is the recently announced “short” 200k option for longer events. If you have any comments or suggestions, please send them our way!
