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The original was posted on /r/randonneuring by /u/aedes on 2025-01-16 14:16:56+00:00.
Memoirs of a Rabbit
Part 4: In the Zone
The events during the actual ride are unfortunately the hardest to tell because the story breaks down. There was simply too much that happened during those three days for my brain to make sense of things. And things are further complicated by the fact that near the end, I wasn’t even certain what was happening around me anymore due to sleep deprivation and some degree of resulting psychosis. But let’s start with the more certain parts.
The process of getting from central Paris to Rambouillet seemed complicated. You could take a local train, but maybe needed to buy tickets in person (?), but bikes weren’t allowed, but maybe they were… so I said screw it and decided to just ride there. It was only 55km anyways. I loaded my bike and bags up for PBP itself, then put everything else for the hotel Sunday night into my daughters purple dinosaur backpack and started my ride to Rambouillet. Riding in Paris is frankly hot garbage due to cobblestones, disjointed and poorly signed bikepaths, traffic and oblivious tourists (like me); but once you pass Versailles, the roads are very nice. I arrived at the Bergerie Nationale for check-in and received my frame badge and various other swag, then headed over to my hotel for the night.
Upon unpacking I realized I’d forgotten to bring my sandals, leaving me with only my SPD shoes to walk around town in. This was a nuisance as I needed to get lunch, supper, as well as buy breakfast for tomorrow morning (the hotel laughed when I asked if they would have any food available at 3:30am). This ended up being a very busy afternoon with essentially no down time from when I arrived, until when I went to bed shortly before 8pm. And 7km total of walking around in bike shoes left me with blisters on both my feet. Perfect.
At 3:15am my alarm went off.
I’d actually managed to sleep quite well and felt basically fresh despite the early hour. This was highly unusual as I normally sleep terribly the night before big rides, so I took this as a good omen. In addition, the somewhat maladaptive anxious-excitement I’d been feeling the past few days had transformed overnight into a feeling of calm and focus - I was in the zone. When I was younger, I never had any problems getting into this mindset; but since COVID, I’d been having more anxiety in general, and wasn’t sure I could still do it – apparently my brain still remembered how.
I scarfed down three of the croissants I’d bought the day before while (unironically) listening to DragonForce, and strapped the fourth to my saddle bag as an on-bike snack. I’d had high hopes of weaning myself off the 5-10 cups of coffee a day I normally drink before PBP… which of course I never even bothered trying to do, so I had some instant coffee I’d brought, then hit the road.
We were supposed to be at the start for around 4am – the only problem was there were no instructions on exactly where at the start we were supposed to go (Bergerie Nationale is a large area). However, given that there were several thousand people starting this morning, and hundreds of volunteers around, I didn’t expect this to be an issue, and it wasn’t.
Over the next hour there was a lot of standing still in a group, then walking a bit, then standing again. We had our bike/light/reflective vest check, then made our way towards the actual start line, where the ~250 of us in wave W queued up. I was at the front and looking back behind me hundreds of cyclists stretched out into the night, all wearing neon-yellow reflective vests. If the weather had been cold or rainy, this would have been an absolutely miserable process.
While my wife and kids were going to stay in Paris while I was riding for logistical reasons, my parents had gotten up at a very early hour to come see me off, and we talked for a bit as we were waiting to go. However, my mind was fully focused on the imminent start of the ride, so I wasn’t really able to have a meaningful conversation. There was a small stage at the starting line with an MC cranking out loud music and talking about various things that I don’t remember anymore. I do recall that it was someone in our wave’s birthday, and he had all of us sing happy birthday to them.
We counted down the last ten seconds until 5am on the giant electronic clock, and then we were off. The first 10k were moto-paced at “30kph” (reality: random speeds between 15-35kph) to help dissuade people from riding recklessly… however, it was immediately clear to me that this not successful. I came into the ride having no interest in riding with the front group, as I had wanted to generously pace myself. However, many riders were either too excited or too inexperienced with riding in a large group, and frankly their riding terrified me and I wanted to be nowhere near them. The riders at the front seemed to be safer and more predictable, so I decided to stay up there. Part of rando is knowing how to be flexible and when you need to deviate from your game plan.
The first two hours of riding passed in a blur of darkness and red taillights at a frantic pace reaching 40+kph at times. I only start to have snapshots of memories again as the sky started to lighten and dawn began. Golden fields, yellow vests, a touch of mist, and continuously passing recumbent and tandem bikes (the special bike wave had started 15 minutes before ours). “Don’t forget to eat. Don’t forget to drink. Don’t forget to stretch. Don’t go into the red.” I continued to stay near the front as we settled into a ~30-34kph pace, which was feeling sustainable. If there’s any parts of Manitoba that the first few hundred km of PBP remind me of, it’s the stretch between Notre Dame and Manitou - fields of crops and gentle rolling hills. But, no canola. And the roads don’t just go in a straight line, and the fields aren’t all perfect squares. And the land is left somewhat wild along the roadside, so trees provide some shelter from any wind or sun.
On the way out, Mortagne at 120km is just a food/service stop, not a control. As much as I’d love to stay meditating and just keep riding straight past there, I knew it was unwise to not take at least a quick breather to refill bottles and whatnot. My motto on these rides is to “be kind to yourself” – if there is any uncertainty about what to do, always defer to the option that involves pushing yourself not as hard. We arrived in Mortagne in a bit under four hours, and I knew I needed to keep my stop time as low as possible – even an extra 10 minutes of stoppage time equates to undoing several hours of an extra 10-20 watts of work – and in 11 minutes I was back on the road again. There had been no communication or talking at all in our paceline about anything, let alone plans at or after Mortagne, so I’d just assumed I was on my own at this point. However, within a few minutes, myself, a Swiss rider, and an American had come across each other and started riding in a paceline. Over the next kilometers, we picked up more and more riders and soon the spicy-W-train was back, and we were flying through the French countryside at 32+ kph.
Time also flew by, and soon it was a bit after eleven and we were at the first control in Villaines (203km), almost two-hours ahead of my planned pace. It had been six-and-a half hours of riding by this point, so it was time for a proper break. The control was quiet, as the riders who departed Sunday night were all still ahead of us, and we were at the pointy end of the 84-hour group. Despite that, the controls are physically very large, and there is much walking around to do: from where you leave your bike, to the place to get your card stamped, to the washroom, to the water station, to the dining hall. Easily 5-10min just walking (make sure your biking shoes are comfortable to walk in…). While eating some croissants, I chatted briefly with the American rider from earlier. He was from New York and just recently started doing rando rides. We both agreed that we needed to turn the pace down going forwards; but by this point it’d been almost 60 minutes at the control and I was anxious to get going again, so we went our separate ways. It was obvious that my 30-minutes per control assumption was too optimistic – going forwards, I’d need to be even more cognizant of stoppage time at controls.
The next control would be Fougeres (293km). It’s early afternoon I’m riding solo, and it’s getting hot out, but thankfully not unbearably hot. Much of this stage passed by in an unremarkable thumb-smudge of afternoon sunniness, monotonous countryside, indistinguishable small towns, and rolling hills. I was also starting to pass the occasional rider who had departed in the Sunday night waves – they were already hours behind the time the Fougeres control would close for them… but they were still going. Maybe halfway to Fougeres, I was passed by a few riders on a climb… who I then caught up to again immediately on a small descent (I’d noticed by this point that I’m faster at descending than most other rid…
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