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The original was posted on /r/randonneuring by /u/aedes on 2025-01-14 19:20:15+00:00.

It’s -30c out right now and I’m at home daydreaming about long rides this summer. Got me re-reading my write-up from PBP in 2023. I’ve had a few people suggest they enjoyed reading it and that I should share it more broadly, and for lack of anything else to do with my time this afternoon, today is going to be that day. Maybe people will enjoy reading it, or reliving their own experience by hearing about my own, or maybe even learn something useful.

It’s very long because I am wordy as fuck, so I’m going to break it up into parts and post them as I get around to it. Alternatively if this is universally hated, I’m not going to do that lol.

Part 1: The Aftermath

Not much is written about the days after you finish Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP), so let’s start there. It is Sunday night, August 27th, 2023, and I am writing this from bed on the coast of the Gulf of Tropez in Provence. For the record, a family beach vacation is the perfect thing to do to recover from PBP. Today was unusually cool and rainy, so we spent the day on a road trip to Cannes, exploring various sites, tidal pools, and other errata along the road with the kids.

It is also the first day where I have felt truly back to normal since finishing PBP. The pitting edema in my legs has resolved (never had that before) - I can see the veins and tendons in my feet again - and my shoes fit normally. A day or two of doing nothing other than sitting on the beach has allowed my aching muscles to go back to normal, and my Achilles is almost pain free. The grip strength in my hands has returned – I can crack my knuckles again and massage my neck. My sleep has returned, and I almost feel motivated to go ride a bike. I still get occasional tingling in my toes but I’m sure that will heal with time as well. Though if it doesn’t, it’s not like there is anything I can do about it anyways.

I’m left reflecting on questions about how I got here, what I’ve just done and experienced, and what I am going to do going forwards. The last two of those I don’t have an answer for yet, but the first one I know.

Part 2: How I Got Here

Older stories are easier to tell because your memory and mind have already decided on the narrative – of how to connect the different events together so that they make sense - and the story of me and randonneuring is a relatively old one. It starts at the tail end of my emergency medicine residency in 2015, back when I was still power-lifting, and the summer our first child was born. I had bought my first bike and started commuting and riding for fun. I rode 20km to Assiniboine Park at 18kph and was exhausted… but I kept at it because it was amazing. I bought a road bike in 2017 and my first 100k ride came shortly after.

Long-rides had a particular allure for me, both for the personal challenge, as well as the adventure they always entailed. Even when you didn’t want one. That winter, I stumbled upon randonneuring (and the Manitoba Randonneurs) I think on Twitter of all places. In a bit of a coincidence, Sam Ehlers ran the club at that time, and he’d just done PBP in 2015. Sam and I had gone to high school together, sitting beside each other in several bands as we both played trumpet, though I hadn’t spoken to him since maybe 2003. At the time, the concept of riding your bike for 1200km seemed completely absurd and beyond plausibility. But I read his trip report on the club website with much interest, much like one might cozy up with a novel about Hillary and Norgay trying to climb Everest.

After several months of hemming and hawing, I signed up for my first 200k in May of 2018. I had never ridden in a group before (nor more than 125km at once…), so it was a bit of a crash course in bike handling, etiquette, and how pacelines and echelons work; but experienced local riders were very patient with me, teaching me as the ride went on. I could only keep up with them until Ste Gen though – they were way too fast! – but by that point I knew I could finish, so just plodded on by myself for the remainder of it, finishing in a bit under 10 hours. There was suffering… but it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it might be and after a day of reflection I signed up for the Great Falls 300k, finishing that in just under 16 hours two weeks later. I had to dig a lot deeper to finish that ride, so that was it for me that year.

At that point, I had a vague notion that this was something I wanted to do more of, so I decided I needed to ride my bike more. I bought a trainer and rode my bike regularly through the winter for the first time, so when I did the 200k and 300k in April of 2019, they were so much easier than the year previously. So much so, that I decided to try and tackle the full series that year and signed up for my first 400k and 600k. I spent most of my time on those rides riding with Rob (another local rider) as we rode at a similar pace. He was trying to get his series done so that he could go to PBP that year.

My increased experience with long rides, coupled with talking to someone who was actually going to do this thing, started to make it somewhat possible to conceptualize riding your bike for 1200km. I told myself that if I was able to finish a 400k and 600k ride this year, that I would consider registering for PBP that summer. In the end, I wasn’t able to finish either the 400k or 600k though, DNFing on both. However, both attempts taught me a lot of valuable lessons about preparation and the mental headspace you need to be in for these long rides. They also taught me that I needed a better bike fit – I was regularly running into issues with a pinched nerve in my neck after these long rides, and Rob had mentioned he’d had good luck with getting a fit at a local shop. This ended up being a great decision, as I’ve had no major issues since then. Though I think increasing my core strength and sleeping with a flatter pillow at night also helped.

2020 came… and so did our second child, followed by the first wave of COVID literally a few days later. I had been training regularly indoors all winter and was in the best shape of my life. It was at some point that winter when I’d finally decided I was going to tackle PBP no matter what in 2023. There wasn’t an exact day or event that lead to this conclusion, it was just more I started the winter considering it, and by the end I’d made up my mind. COVID restrictions delayed the start of the rando season, but it still happened eventually. The 200k and 300k came and went uneventfully, but then it was time for the 400k – completing this was still new territory for me. After a PTSD-inducing flat early in the ride, where friends killed thousands of mosquitoes while I frantically tried to change my tube as quickly as possible (I still ultimately counted over 100 mosquito bites on my ass because none of them were willing to slap my ass I guess…), I was feeling pretty good. Until fatigue from working a bunch of overnights that week caught up with me coming into Morden and I died. I gave up and got a hotel to go get some sleep and called my wife to see if the family wanted to come out and rescue me… I mean, spend a day at the museum there… yes… but by the time I’d laid down for a few minutes I was already feeling a lot better. Looking at the closing times for the subsequent controls, I came up with a new plan where I’d rest for about 2 hours in Morden, but then continue onwards.

And so I did. And after digging very deep and riding in the dark for the first time ever, I limped back to the start a bit before 1am. I recall aggressively eating a quarter-pounder immediately after this, but then there is a large memory gap for the next day or so. There was a lesson learned there about never making a decision to quit until you’ve at least eaten and rested for a bit. The 600k came and went relatively uneventfully (well, other than riding for several hours through apocalyptic rain that destroyed both my lights and my bottom bracket) and with that, I was a super randonneur for the first time.

By then, I’d started approaching my preparation for PBP systematically. I read everything I could find about the event, watched all the YouTube videos that I think existed about it, and started making notes in a Word document about all the ideas I had, or potential problems I realized I needed a solution for (lighting? Is it better to start Sunday night and have 90h, or start Monday morning but only have 84h? Knowledge of the French language? Normal weather conditions at that time of year in that part of France? Etc.).

2021 and 2022 brought more successful brevets, completing my series each year, and collecting more experience along the way with things like weather (cold, heat, wind, pouring rain), equipment/gear, bike fit, nutrition, etc. Doing the full series every year for 4 years before PBP was a deliberate decision to try and build experience leading into PBP, and in retrospect, one of the best training decisions I’d made. It was a great way to collect the sort of experience needed to deal with all of the various unpredictable things that come up on really long rides and are typically the reason you DNF – it’s rarely a matter of physical capabilities. There were many long hours spent riding with various local riders and that was worth a lot too – there are many things to learn by talking to other people, or…

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