Paris Brest Paris 2023

Inverness (5 riders)
The Flatish ACME Grand (25 riders)
London-Anglesey-London (17 riders)
LEJOG (50 riders)
Overseas 1400 and 1200 (19 riders)
Bristol-Glasgow-Bristol (18 riders)

And LEL (890 riders)

Assuming no duplicates, that’s 136 riders in 1000+ events excluding LEL. The point I’m trying to make is that because of the delayed start of LEL, there may well be a lot more riders who are pre-qualifying with a 1000+ ride than you might normally expect.

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Agreed but my point was there’s enough choice of excellent 1,000km + events excluding LEL in 2022. They just are not marketed as much or hold cachet of LEL. But they have excellent routes, better than LEL in many respects.

Thanks for the advice. I didn’t realize the train goes straight through!

About to mail a few hotels in the Montparnasse area. Try to find one that will hold the bike bag for the time out on the ride.

You could always try booking.com as well. You can book hotels with free cancellation and message any requests through the app. In my experience, most hotels usually have a room you can leave a bag.

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Yes, I rode PBP 15 and PBP 19 on my road bikes. I had started riding recumbents by 19 but wasn’t confident enough to ride one at PBP that year. Here we are four years on and I have the distance in the legs and confidence to go laid back for this edition.

I’m looking forward to not developing numb or achey bits.

I pre-registered over the weekend, this will be my first PBP and I’ve only been riding brevets for a few years. Very glad I got the chance to ride a 1200 last year so I have a better sense of how my body will respond! I focused on strength training through most of the winter so far but am now giving TR a chance as I get back into form.

I’ll be at the 84 hour start.

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Pre-registered and looking forward to my first PBP
(Sunday, 6pm start for 90 hours, going for full value)
I was one of the 17 in London-Anglesey-London, so got to early entries.

Training this year will be a repeat of last year:

  • 3 TR workouts / week
  • 2-3 commutes to work / week
  • 1 longer ride on weekend
  • SR series as required (repeat of last years Kingston Wheelers series)
  • London-Lands End-London as final “warmup” in July
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I was reminded recently how cold it got at night on PBP 2015 and 2019. Expect temps to drop to lows of around 3-4C overnight. It’s a timely reminder as the kit I’m wearing during day time at moment will be perfect for overnight in August.

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How are folks “training” for sleep deprivation? Anyone planning on riding through the nights? I’ve been an 80+hour rider the past few times, but am trying to tighten up stops and see if I can finish faster this time. Tips and tricks for staying awake welcome!

I’ve got a half dozen 1200’s under my belt (which makes me far from an expert). Only one was horrific with under five hours of sleep the whole damn event (due to incessant headwinds). Here’s my cheat sheet:

  • Talk to someone. This is HUGE.
  • Chew gum.
  • Sing out loud.
  • 5-15 min ditch nap.
  • Wean yourself from caffeine between now and August.
  • Carry caffeine and use in limited volumes during your lowest lows.
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My plan is to include significant “bonus miles” before/after most of the qualifying brevets I ride this spring, to start reminding and training my body what this is like.

At some point I’ll start adding night rides to simulate conditions: sleep for a few hours, get up and ride for a few. Not yet though – at this point I’m shifting from a strength training heavy winter workload to base miles.

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@mimod: Mimo! All good advice, of course, and from a seasoned randonneur (yes, I said you’re seasoned). Hope we get to ride out on the road again one of these days. @frenata: Yes, I need to get back out on the road too; my body needs to be threatened into remembering how to ride! :slight_smile:

PatCH!! - Hahaha. Always good to sorta see you! Can’t wait to join you on the road as well. Nothing but smiles, corny jokes, questionable music, and poor fashion choices (us in spandex).

No PBP for me this year. Daughter is starting college and move in week is the same week as PBP. Let’s talk via email or text and coordinate some good times in 2023. I can’t keep up with blondie near me anymore so need some new friends.

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Personally, the game plan is not to have significant sleep deprivation. The conservative plan is 4-6h/night of sleep in Loudeac. True sleep deprivation makes me ride slower, faff around at the controls a lot, and increases unplanned stops. Also makes enjoying the ride more difficult, and increases the risk of DNFing just due to poor mood.

For me, stopping and sleeping properly for a few hours is typically a better decision than pushing through with occasional ditch naps. However, my goal is 28kph moving speed/30min per control/65h total time, so this may not work if your plan is to ride slower.

Otherwise, my thoughts would be:

  1. Stop caffeine a few weeks before, to maximize benefits of caffeine. I “like” energy drinks too, so plan to bring some with me/in my drop bag, as they are hard to find in rural France.
  2. Bring a bone conduction headphone and listen to high-tempo music or something similar with them.
  3. Have music that I enjoy singing along to - singing helps me stay awake/somewhat focused.
  4. My circadian rhythm is always lowest between about 3am to 5am, so plan to sleep even for 30min at some point during this window.

There’s certainly something to be said about gaining experience riding through the night as well. The most difficult part I think isn’t even the sleep deprivation or fatigue, it’s just pushing yourself through such unpleasant sensations, rather than letting yourself make up excuses in your mind and then using them to allow yourself to stop.

Practicing riding through the night allows you to experience this feeling/these thoughts earlier, and start inoculating yourself against listening to them. Get a sense of the degree of effort it will take to push through, so that it’s a known quantity - it is always easier to quit a difficult task in the middle of it when you have no frame of reference for the amount of suffering the whole task will take.

You get to 3am and it’s dark, you’re cold… the night seems like it will last forever, it seems like the suffering will last forever and you tell yourself, “I can’t push through this anymore.” Whereas if you’ve done it before, you get to 3am and it feels like the night will last forever… but you remember and tell yourself, “no, I know exactly how much suffering is left. I can quantify it from experience. I know I can conceptualize this degree of suffering and I know where the end is, and I can make it to that point.”

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Very much agree with all that @cnidos said above, even if I aim for 85h (80h in 2019, 118h for LEL last time, with ~23 kph moving average).

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Thanks for the very thoughtful response. Much to think about!

No problem. While some people obviously get by on less sleep than others, when it comes to riding through the night/when exhausted, I don’t think there is any particular physical skill required. You can already do this physically just as well as everyone else.

It’s just a matter are you willing to do it? I think the people who can do this successfully are just better at mentally pushing through the discomfort and suffering.

They are better at both ignoring the signals from their brain to stop, as well as have successful behaviors/strategies that help them ignore those signals more successfully than other people (ex: singing?).

I am not one of those people, so that’s why I’ll be sleeping a few hours each night, if things go according to plan :sweat_smile:

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I’m not so sure. Just like the extent of digestive issues during endurance events has been shown to have a strong genetic component; I’m sure there’s something different between those who keep going (and doing it well) without sleep and those who don’t.

There are those who are able to maintain performance on no sleep, where as if I go too long without sleep, even if I’m nailing everything else, performance drops away.

Some people perform better in morning, some better in the evening. Some wake early, some sleep late. There’s all sorts going on inside, and there are differences, no matter what you do.

All you can do is make the best of what your genetics has gifted you. Plus realise others genetics enables them to do things you can’t or at least not to the same degree.

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How are qualifiers going for everyone? I wrapped up the 400K last weekend on a flat route but very rough conditions (high winds through the middle of the day, 7 hours of night rains to finish the day!). 600K is in two weeks and is more elevation per K than PBP, so I’m thinking of that as a good test of timing.

Training:

  • was sticking pretty closely to the TR polarized plans until qualifiers started fiying; conceptually dead simple: 1/week threshold work, 1/week VO2, then as much long-slow-distance as I can fit/recover

Learnings:

  • after a winter of strength training I felt much less “damaged” this year than last after tough rides – I’ll stay in maintenance mode on this through August
  • for the 300/400, I’ve used the same equipment load-out I plan to bring to France, including a bikepacking style saddle bag that fits extra tools/clothes: so far so good
  • my back light went out despite my being sure it was charged – need to acquire some simple backups

Possible equipment tweaks:

  • could I reduce neck fatigue with a lighter helmet? Mine is ~400g and I’m eyeing a few that are closer to 200g
  • replace insoles (I have the stock specialized ones)
  • find a more packable / less bulky jacket/gilet for when things get colder
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Bon Chance to everyone riding PBP!! I’m looking forward to reading some ride reports.

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