Thursday, September 8, 2011

Paris-Brest-Paris 2011: Postscript

I've been back from France for a bit over a week now and taken a couple of my favorite bike rides.  I've started planning my fall cycling and looking at my goals for next season.  I feel fine and I think I'm pretty well  recovered from the 1230k ride in France.  I'm sleeping normal and my resting HR is getting back down to the normal zone. My perceived exertion vs speeds are telling me that I'm at 85 or 90% already.  The post grand randonnee blues have passed without incident and I've found my way back to work.  I'm making plans for fall bike racing and trying to decide what events I will focus on next season.  Next season's list gets shorter the more consideration I give it:  Leadville 100 mountain bike race and the Texas Time Trials as my season focus events.  Other things on the calendar are a full SR series, velodrome racing, the Fiesta Island TT series, and the California Triple Crown.  Already the season looks filled and this year is not close to over yet.  But that is good, it means my appetite for riding is still strong.

My first encounter with PBP was around 1987 back in Missouri.  We were out on a club ride and this dude was talking about PBP.  I remember asking if he meant Paris-Roubiax instead but he was very clear that it was Paris-Brest-Paris.  His description of the ride intrigued me and I filed it away in my memory for further study.  As various things came and went through the years cycling is always something that found it's way into my life.  A few years ago I had started bike commuting to work a few days a week.  One morning I boarded the train for my inter-modal commute and wound up sitting across from a gentleman that was quite interested in my bike.  We talked for a short time and I vaguely recall him mentioning something about randonneuring.  After a few days of research I had mentally committed myself to PBP in 2011 and started my preparations.  That was three years ago, in late 2008.

Paris-Brest-Paris is a jumble of disjointed controls and food and sleep in my mind.  I thought that after a little time a clearer picture of the ride would present itself but that doesn't seem to be happening.  Unlike the Rando Stampede in Texas where I rode with a group of people for the last days of the randonnee, in PBP I rode with an enormous variety of riders.  I think that because of that variety of riders I'm missing the mental anchor that links me to people and to specific events and to specific places.  From Texas I have the most vivid and specific remembrances of the entire ride; PBP not so many yet. 

PBP was a huge undertaking, as is any 1200k, and quite an accomplishment.  The ride will inform my cycling in some way for the rest of my life.  When people ask how the ride was, I inevitably first answer that "it was hard, really hard."  That is certainly a gross understatement.  At home a week later, I'm still not sure that I would commit the time and resources to do PBP again.  Perhaps as randonnesia completely sets in I will find my way to more fully romanticizing those four days on the bike in France.