Observations

The ride was a fantastic experience. For me it wasn't just about this single event, it's about the year or more building up to ride.
Doing all of the qualifying rides and other audax's. Becoming part of the wider audax community.
Meeting allot of good people, passionate about cycling and learning from them.

Paris-Brest-Paris did not disappoint. It was hard, but I was prepared for it. The level of organisation and support was amazing. The organizers, helpers and kitchen staff were great. Always friendly and helpful - a feat when you realise that some of them had probably had as little sleep as the riders.
The French supporters along the route, clapping and cheering you on 24hrs a day. It was great to ride through a "deserted" village at 4am and come across a crowd of people urging you on.
As someone remarked, the French just "get it". Nobody tells you that you're mad. Nobody asks what charity you are doing this for. No drunks stumble out of a pub at midnight and hurl abuse. Drivers give you a wide berth & generally if they hoot, it's for encouragement.

Riders from 65 different countries. All on the same route, all with the same goal. Differing abilities, but all sharing a love of cycling and love of suffering. Some had suffered more than others. Allot of respect to those who were involved in accidents, but were able to pick themselves up and continue.
Not all were so lucky - there were reports of an American rider killed in a collision with a truck.
Some riders stood out:
Drew Buck 6478 - riding an original 1900 bike, with wooden rims and brake that pressed onto the tire.
Andrea Devicenzi 1454 - who only had one leg, yet still managed an impressive 72hrs. It was amazing to watch him grind up steep hills.

My club mates Alan Parkinson 1872 who did 62hrs & Paul Alderson who put in a huge amount of work and completed in an amazing 53hrs.

My bike held together and I experienced no mechanicals along the way. My gps went haywire and shut down at 550km. Frustrating. I've come to the conclusion that the Garmin Edge 800 is not suitable for long distance riding.
Link to my partial Garmin data, including heart rate (550km only)

A good bike fit might be in order. 90% ok fit is good enough for most rides, but something this long needs 100%. I'm hoping it was the bike rather than the body that caused the knee problems.

Could I have done a better time? Undoubtedly. I could train harder, reduce my body weight and spend less time stopped at the controls - easy.
The massive food intake seemed to work well for me, but I'm not sure that 17 cans of coke was a good idea.
The dark knowledge is learning how to sleep less and properly control caffeine intake.
...Four years is plenty of time to practice.

Return to Paris

A long steady climb in the dark and heavy mist took us out of Brest. A constant stream of riders still on their way out to Brest were descending on the other side of the road.
I shared the climb with a fairly stoic American (at this stage of the event even the usually chatty, exuberant Americans and Canadians were for the most part silent and subdued).
Dawn brought a large number of trucks sharing the road. French drivers are generally excellent, but one still is extra wary of traffic when ones reactions are dulled from lack of sleep.

Despite fact that my Brest sleep had been uncomfortable and short I felt that my batteries had had a good recharge and I was able to again set a good pace. After the first control I fell in with a large group of Spaniards from Barcelona. There was some good light bickering about how far they should ride before stopping for a coffee.
By this distance riders had pretty much all been sorted into their respective groups and you were aware that most of the riders around you were going at the same pace. You might go flying past someone, or they past you, but inevitably you would see them again a few times at the controls.

Coming out Loudéac I found myself keeping perfect pace with a French rider. We'd both ease off completely on the hills and then try to get good speed up on the flat. I would ride all the way to the end with Jean-Marc. He'd ridden PBP three times before and was a wealth of information (though exchanging this information was not always easy with his bad English and my terrible French). He was being supported by his wife and daughter who would meet him at the controls.

Although it's more efficient to ride in a large group of riders one is only as strong as the weakest link. It was a bit frustrating to have multiple stops for people to remove jackets, etc. You also have to be allot more alert as you inevitably always have someone on your back wheel.
With two riders you can properly relax and have a stretch at the back because you don't have to worry about creating chaos behind.

Jean-Marc and I had some good long runs. We'd only spend about 30secs each on the front. At one stage we had a our speed up in the high 30's. We were overtaking loads of riders, he came up beside me with a big grin, punched the air and said "We are the best!"
Later we duelled with two other riders who had the edge on us on the climbs. Jean-Marc noted "hmm... I think they are the best".
We'd both agreed to stop for one and half hours of sleep at Villaines-la-Juhel (1009km).
Jean-Marc slept in his car. His family offered me the other seat in the car, but considering I'd been wearing the same socks and jersey for 3 days I declined.
I made my way to the dormitory. It was full and I found Richard outside facilitating sleeping negotiations for a bunch of weary English riders.
Having already tested myself on a bench at Brest I wasn't fussed about a waiting for a bed. I lay down in a passageway and asked for a 02:30 (1.5hrs) wake up.
I put my head on the floor and the next second someone was shaking my shoulder "Monsieur, Monsieur". I checked my watch and sure enough 1.5hrs had passed.
I'd slept on the blanket rather than under it and was freezing cold. Teeth chattering.
I filled a tray of food at the canteen and wolfed it down opposite a Taiwanese rider who was face down on the table snoring loudly.

Back off again into the night with Jean-Marc. He was a skilled and fearless descender and we had some white knuckle descents in the dark sweeping around bends using both lanes of the road.
My light, which had been excellent was running out of batteries. On a fast (fortunately straight) descent it died. I still had my backup light, but it meant a slightly reduced speed on the descents for the last hour of darkness.
It was amazing to streak through tiny villages at 3am and find a large crowd of people cheering and clapping you on. They all had free cakes and coffee laid out for the riders. I felt really bad that we weren't stopping.

The last section was a mixture of fast flat open fields, punctuate by a few surprisingly steep forested climbs. Despite it being daytime I found myself trying to fight off waves of tiredness.
At one point I switched off for a few seconds and found myself riding at speed in dirt off the tarmac.
On this final day I developed a very serious pain in my left knee. It would come and go in intensity. At it's worst it felt like someone was having a go with a power drill into my lower kneecap.
Despite an aching knee, sore arse, burning feet, hurting hands wrists and shoulders I did feel a bit of regret when it was all about to come to an end.
We'd picked up a couple of other riders in the last few km and managed a good light hearted sprint at the end.
My club mate Paul was waiting for me at the finish. I was shepherded into the final control and taken for a lunch celebratory beer with his family.

1230km in 65hrs 39min

To Brest

Dawn arrived and I was still feeling strong. Monday was a good productive day. Overcast with a tail wind. My fears about all the faster riders having gone ahead were unfounded. I managed to find riders of similar ability and work productively. There were riders from every imaginable country (I think the official count is 65 countries). Very interesting to see the different nationalities & personalities differing riding styles. I got in with a group of eight Danes and one German. The Danish “leader” laid rules early on “each person two minutes on the front, exit to the left!” Super efficient.
Fairly often one would get a rider clinging onto your back wheel like a limpet. Never coming forward to do work & not engaging in any conversation or acknowledging your presence. Solution to this problem was gently dial up the speed until you could hear heavy panicked breathing behind you and they dropped off.
I stopped to eat a full meal at every control. Soup, bread, pasta or rice and meat or chicken. Rice pudding, tinned fruit & a coke. I don't think I've ever consumed such a volume of food over that get into small packs with riders oshort duration.
Mentally I was viewing this as a stage ride. I hardly ever considered the distance to the final destination. My thoughts were occupied about the up coming stop and what I was going to eat. Rice pudding?...or rice pudding?
At one point during the day I had some light rain, but I could see huge thunderstorms in the distance. I was very lucky - other riders had spent hours riding through torrential downpours.

A big climb up to a radio mast before Brest. I was now starting to hurt. Hands really painful, between thumb and index finger where I'd been putting pressure on the brake hoods. Terrible "hot foot" pain on my right foot.
The real issue was that now I was starting to feel really tired. Tiredness would come in waves. My vision would become very blurred and my eyes kept trying to clamp shut - not what you want when riding in a pack.
Two very upbeat German's shepherded me to Brest. They'd both ridden two PBP's and recognised my suffering and kept me going with lots of conversation and gave me plenty of wheel.
It was dark by the time we descended into Brest and crossed the bridge. I was in really bad shape. Hallucinations where coming thick and fast. Random flashes of people that weren't really there in the bushes. Looking up at the clouds and seeing a large crystal chandelier. One of the German's had a orange hi-viz jacket on. A large smiling 3D pacman face kept popping out of it at me all the way into Brest.
We descended into the docklands. I'd heard that the control was in a naval base and so felt sure that this was the end. There were railway links running diagonally across the road (covered in white chalk). I nearly crashed here twice as I was now loosing conciousness for a second or two.
Despair and tired rage came when we started climbing out of the docks and I was told that we still had a few km to go.
When the sign "Controle" appeared up ahead I just though that must be the most beautiful word in the world.
I parked my bike and made my way to the showers. Changed shorts.
Got in the food queue. This control seemed badly organised and allot more spread out than all of the others. There was only one person serving food and taking payment. My legs kept buckling under me & an Italian rider in better shape propped me up and let me go ahead of him the queue.
Sat down to eat and kept falling asleep with food in my mouth. Saw Richard here and had a conversation with him (I think!). I'd heard there was a dormitory, but I was too confused to find it. People were sleeping in the main hall on wooden benches and I made for an empty spot.
Bright lights. Put my rain jacket on my face. At some point I woke up to see some guy wriggling around in what resembled and sounded like a giant Haribo packet. Wanted to scream "Will you shut the f*ck up!" but didn't have the strength.
Woke up feeling a bit more human after about 4hrs of painful sleep & headed out of Brest into the pre dawn.

Sunday evening start

Not the start I had hoped for.
The official pre start meal was rather large. I had a few hours to kill before the 18:00 start and it was very hot so I decided to snooze under a bush outside the canteen. At about 16:30 I made my way over to the start thinking that I would still have plenty of time to get a good place.
Rookie mistake! I'd under estimated how keen the other riders were and ended up starting right at the back of the 90hr field. I finially got off at about 19:40...after having stood in the blazing sun for 3hrs.
My fears were confirmed when I realised how slowly the bunch was moving. I'd hoped to be in a good pack at the start doing a decent speed, but found that they had all left ahead of me.
Riding on my own TT style was not how I had planned my 1230km ride.
After about 2hrs it got dark and I was having to pick my way past an endless stream of slow moving riders. I could see a long snake of red tail lights stretching off to the horizon.
After a few hours salvation came in the form of a big road train of 20+ mostly French riders. I can only assume that they must have started even later.

I jumped in stayed with them until the first control. All of the riders had powerful lights and grouped together we had our own patch of daylight. I was even able to turn off my own main light.
In retrospect the relaxed start had probably saved me. If I had of started with the 80hr riders I would have tried to stick with the front bunch and ended up coughing up a lung a short while down the road.

Start day

My start is today at 18:00. Allot of time to kill...and not much place to kill it. Alan, Paul & I have planned to go to the park by the lake and find a big tree to sleep under.
I didn't have a great sleep last night. My afternoon map was probably a bad idea.
There was a huge thunder storm last night and allot of rain. This is the start of the rain that everybody has been fearing. Dry and clear at the moment, but I expect that another storm will attack us on the road tonight.

Bike is all prepped and ready. But this morning its not about the bike. It's about try to eat my muesli, fruit juice and yogurt without a bowl or spoon. Water bottle will have to do.
...I suspect this tiny hotel room has seen worse savagery.

I expect few, or no blog posts from now on until the end.
I'll post on Twitter: roamingsloth
The updates should come through on the right of this page.

Why am I doing this?

Why am I doing this ride ride?
In 2009 I was on a cycle tour in Morocco. I was riding a 100km a day, crossing the Atlas mountains and feeling very proud of myself.
I met a German rider coming the other way who was riding 350km in a day and crossing two mountain ranges!

I of course thought he was bluffing. He explained his technique & told me about PBP. I took note, did some research & two years later here I am.

Today I spotted Jens at the registration.
The photos I took in 2009 in Morocco & today:

Bikes

Lots of different bikes lining up to do 1200km. Some fast, some slow.