PBP Recap, #1

You can chose one of three 'time slots' to start PBP.  The 80 hour group is the first to leave, 5pm on Sunday, and this is where the elite racers are, those that ride all the way through with no sleep, finishing in under 50 hours.  The record is something like 42 hours!  Other fast riders can chose this option too, and I know many from Rocky Mountain Cycling Club did.  This group leaves first and mostly stays ahead of the other riders so they can get through the controls with little fuss.  Next is the biggest group, the 90 hour group, leaving at 10pm Sunday night.  Finally, an intermediate 84 hour group leaves at 5am Monday morning.

This is the group Colin and I chose, mainly because the start time is similar to many of the rides we do here in the US, that start in the wee hours of the morning - so it was familiar territory.  Riders are sent off in pelotons of 300 at a time, 10 minutes apart.  Colin and I decided that we wanted to be in the first or second group to leave, so we figured we had to get there about 4am.  A 2:15 wakeup call had us at the Gymnase des Droits de l'Homme at 3:50 and we were with the first 50 riders.  Perfect.

The first riders arrive for the 5am 84 Hour start

An hour later we filed through to get our first control stamp, and lined up under the start banner.  Then we were off, and the first 10 or 15 miles or so is all about surviving the Paris suberb road furniture, and there is a lot of it.  Most of these riders are also racers and know how to ride in a peloton, so it wasn't too bad.  As we got further out, the roads open up and the lead group began to get down to some serious riding.  Colin and I made our way to the front 30 or so riders to make sure we would be in any group that began to separate itself off the front.  Colin in fact rode in 4th or 5th position for much of the time.  We had a pace car and motorcycles leading us through all the lights and intersections, that was pretty cool, like we were in some kind of big race or something!

Eventually, I looked around and counted about 25 or 30 lead riders, and we had left the rest behind.  I was being careful monitoring my heart rate to make sure I didn't start too fast, which has been my downfall in the past, but also I had been practicing faster starts.  Hit my pre-set limit a couple times on some of the longer rises, but not for long, and the pace felt really comfortable.  I saw Colin take his turn on the front for a while, and thought that I'd like to do that too.  Made my way up and eventually the last rider ahead of me pulled off at the end of his turn, and here I was, behind the motorcycles, leading our start group's peloton through the French countryside in one of the oldest bike races around.  It was a pretty sureal feeling.

As dawn broke, we could start reading the jerseys of our fellow riders, and we had a nice diverse group.  Prominent was a group of 4 or 5 Austrians in their country's special randonneur jersey, a similar number of Germans, at least one Brit and a Dutch, a handful of Italians, and many French and probably a Belgian or two.  Colin and I represented Randonneurs USA.

As you can see from the data at the first checkpoint, we rode pretty fast, 30kmh for the first 200km+ (that's 18.5mph for the first 137 miles for the imperially-minded).  In fact, at 100 miles, I saw our time was 4:58 - my first sub-5 hour century.  But in a large group with no long or even steep hills, it felt easy.  And that average includes a 5 minute resupply stop at 80 miles.

OK, gotta go have dinner and catch the highlights at the Louvre this evening, will continue later...