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HILLSBOROUGH: Kratovil born to ride

By Chuck O-Donnell, Special Writer
  The clock says 5 a.m., the thermometer reads 9 degrees, and there’s hardly a soul on the roads.
   Hillsborough’s Joe Kratovil has a head start on the sunrise and the morning traffic as he rides his bike toward Sourland Mountain where the hills and dales will leave him with a few aches and pains.
   As the glow of the sun appears on the horizon, he might continue toward Flemington or, heck, Pennsylvania. Or he may turn right and end up on the other side of the New York border in Harriman State Park.
   It is the rush of the road under his tires, the whip of the wind around his face and the untethered feeling that gets Mr. Kratovil out of a warm bed on a freezing morning.
   And it’s this commitment to his training that makes him one of the most accomplished ultracyclists in the United States.
   Mr. Kratovil, who is gearing up to start his season with the Central Florida 400K on March 16, specializes in randonneuring — a form of long-distance cycling that stresses camaraderie rather than competition.
   Randonneurs take part in brevets, in the sport’s parlance, not races. And since its beginnings in late 19th-century Europe, randonneuring hasn’t been about winning or losing, it’s a matter of all the riders finishing the course in a prescribed time. This makes the sport attractive to athletes over 40, such as Mr. Kratovil, who’s 61.
   Mr. Kratovil is one of 2,600 members of Randonneurs USA. The organization doesn’t have a ranking system, but Mr. Kratovil is one of only 50 or so riders nationally to have received the Mondial Award for competing in at least 40,000 kilometers in Randonneurs USA events.
   Unfortunately, riders get just one medal from Randonneurs USA, no matter how many series they complete — that’s a 200K, a 300K, a 400K and a 600K event in the same year. Last year, he finished three brevets at each distance.
   As if a crowded trophy case doesn’t speak for itself, Mr. Kratovil’s friend and training partner, Paul Shapiro, said, “I often describe Joe as the Energizer Bunny of cycling. He has the stamina and discipline to go and go despite adverse conditions, despite wind and weather.”
   Mr. Kratovil said, “I’ve tried other things — running, triathlon, in-line skating and tennis. Nothing has ever given me the feeling of freedom or independence like cycling. I can go anywhere near or far under my own power. When I’m on a long ride, I go internal, mentally finding a zone where I feel like I can keep going forever.”
   Or at least 14,350 miles. That’s what he put on his bike last year — all on a fixed-gear bike. Bikes typically have 20 to 30 combinations of gearing to help traverse all manners of terrain — plus the ability to coast since going downhill is as hard as going uphill.
   Mr. Kratovil, one of a handful of riders nationwide who rides on one gear, estimates fixed-gear riding is 10 to 30 percent harder.
   Mr. Kratovil needed a change of gears a few years ago. He spent 20 years as the sales manager at a car dealership, but decided to leave the rat race. He attended a bicycle mechanic school in Canada, came back and went to work part-time at Knapp’s Cyclery in Lawrenceville. Of course, he rides his bike to work.
   Over the past four years, randonneuring has become his passion. The miles keep Mr. Kratovil trim, even sinewy. He has brown eyes and a graying goatee. He laughs when talking about some of the things he’s seen on his bike, and when he does, the lines in his brow bend and turn like some of the roads he’s traveled.
   He had to avoid a wayward bull on a Texas road, a huge snake slithering across his path in Sussex County, a bear foraging for food along the Sourland Mountain ridge and aggressive drivers everywhere.
   But there are precious moments like when he rode the Paris-Brest-Paris event in 2011. Since it takes so long to launch the 5,000 randonneurs, Mr. Kratovil grew angry as he waited inside a soccer stadium for four hours to start.
   ”But when we got on this highway, it was lined with cheering crowds that were clapping and yelling ‘Bravo!’ “ he said. “At every overpass, people were leaning over, yelling down, and I forgot all about the four hours of inconvenience. I was wondering, ‘What is this, the Tour de France?’ “
   Mr. Kratovil said the secret to his success is he doesn’t have a secret. No heart-rate monitors. No training program.
   ”A lot of riders will log what their average speed was every day,” Mr. Kratovil said. “I don’t do that. For me, the unscientific approach works. I love to ride. I don’t need to turn it into a science experiment or a business or analyze it. It would take some of the fun out of it.”
   About the only time he paid attention to his pace was Sept. 9 when he crossed the state in 4 hours, 27 minutes, shattering the record for the fastest east to west crossing of New Jersey by 83 minutes.
   It turned out to be a family affair. His son, Charlie, drove the support van. His wife of 38 years, Lucy, was the handoff person in the backseat.
   ”I really don’t know how he keeps pushing at his cycling. I know I couldn’t do it,” she said recently. “This morning, it was about 9 degrees, and he still got up at 5 a.m. for a 200-kilometer ride (about 135 miles) with a few other brave souls. It’s not supposed to reach much above freezing all day. He must love the physical and mental challenge.”