This is a 1200 km randonee, a “non competitive” event, though you know what cyclists are like, if you’re given a time for finishing the event, it becomes a competition.
I started the 2003 Paris Brest Paris with the 8pm group, the “vedettes” who are allowed 80 hours to complete the course. I was about 10 rows back at the start with crowds of friends, relations and supporters on either side of the barriered road shouting to riders they recognised in the tightly packed bunch.
An announcer on the PA system built the atmosphere until he counted down, the klaxon sounded and we were off to the sound of a thousand cleats being engaged.
The first few kilometres through the new town were all stop start but after a short while we were speeding along past flats, under a motorway and out into the countryside at the northern edge of the Rambouillet forest as dusk came. Motorcycle marshalls came past and stopped at a rider lying in the road with blood coming from his face, only 20 km along the course. Large bunches of riders formed and split and reformed. It was a thousand man road race in the dark.
By 100 km, the elastic had snapped in the bunch I was in (I estimated it was the third group from the front). We came into the small town of Chateauneuf en Thymerais and the remains of the bunch sat up and there was a lot of shouting. I thought somebody’s lights had fallen off and carried on to the end of the town where two German guys were waiting. We continued on but the next village was very quiet, and the next, too quiet. We all thought the same thing and decided to turn around. If we were on the route we would see people coming anyway.
After about five kilometres, there was a sign on another road to Senonches 12 km away and I said that it was on the route and we agreed to take the road. We battered along, they were both very strong riders, though the black woods and a nugget of doubt entered my mind. If I was wrong we would be even further off course and I would be lost with two very angry Germans. Fortunately, at Senonches we picked up the route, we had probably lost about half an hour. The shouting in Chateauneuf en Thymerais was because we had missed a left turn in the town and I really should not have been so keen to carry on up the road with the two other lads as in hindsight we would have gone back into the town if we had thought for a moment.
The first stop was at Motagne au Perche at 140 km, as the name suggests, its all hilly roundabouts. This is only a feeding station on the outward leg and there was a makeshift bar in the town square which was being besieged by riders. I dived into the scrum and bought some Orangina and Badoit sparkling mineral water for my bottles. This, along with coffee, croissants, pan au chocolate and ham baguettes became my staple diet for the ride. Most controls in the latter two thirds of the event offered a breakfast meal at the “bar”, which was a bowl of coffee, croissant and a baguette with jam. This was quicker than using the restaurant as the bar was usually nearer the control area. I can’t remember having to queue at any controls which was probably because most of the 80 hour group have support which they would go to at the control towns. In each of these town, I rode past rows of camper vans and cars with chairs outside and knackered randonneurs being tended to.
After filling my bottles in Montagne, I dived back into the action and rode with an ever changing number of groups to Brest. Lots of German and Danish riders who were very strong and mostly using Schmit dynohubs, some British riders occasionally and of course a lot of French riders.
The landscape changed as we rode into Brittany, with smaller fields bounded by overgrown stone walls and bracken. The hills increased again and between Lodeac and Carhaix the route was a succession of hills and small towns with large grey churches with steeples. I had a twenty minute snooze on the grass outside the Carhaix control in the late afternoon and then tackled the largest hills up to Roc Trevezel which is about 350 m but not really steep, just long. The hill has a large telecoms tower on the top and fine views, it looked like you could see all of Brittanny spead out below, but it probably wasn’t.
The lead group passed us on the return as we came up the lower slopes of the Roc near Huelgoat. There were about twelve and they looked to be travelling at a sort of fast training run pace. There was a big gap and then dribs and drabs of chasing bunches and single riders.
Our group grew as we crossed the hills and descended to the coast so that we were about twelve by the time we crossed the bridge over the estuary as the sun was setting.
At Brest I felt quite good, having done the first half four hours quicker than any 600 km ride I had done before. A change of shorts and a liberal application of chamois cream made me feel even better and I headed out into the late evening in good spirits which was soon to change.
As I left Brest, I joined with two French riders who told me, “We are going to sleep here.” I thought I don’t want to sleep, I want to carry on and I thought they were going to ride me off the route and attack me, beat me up and steal my stuff (what stuff? Some smelly kit and few euros?). They were concerned that I had followed them off the route and one of them told me to come with him and he would show me the route. I thought he was luring me into an ambush but, of course, a few hundred metres down the road he showed me the arrows and wished me luck. They had been riding to their pre-arranged sleep stop but I had not realised
this as I was starting to get confused due to lack of sleep. It was now properly dark and on the climb back up Roc Trevezal I saw two red lights up ahead, only instead of dots they were two wavy red lines that I couldn’t even focus on never mind catch. I was weaving around the road and had to stop a few times to slump over my handlebars and rest my eyes. For some reason I didn’t want to stop before the next control even though I had a space blanket with me so I carried on very slowly and was hallucinating
the lights of Carhaix and odd things at the side of the road.
When at last I reached the town I saw a couple walking along the street, it was 1.30 am and I thought, “People stay out late in Spain . . . I’m not in Spain . . . Where am I? What am I doing?” I threw myself down on an empty bit of floor in the control and slept for about two hours. After the usual breakfast menu, I set off in the early hours of Wednesday morning, free from hallucinations and paranoid delusions, feeling really quite good after I has warmed up.
The nights were pretty cold and it took some time to warm up but every day was dry and sunny and eventually very warm. I met up with a very strong little group from Central London CTC and we rode together from Loudeac, across Brittany and into Normandy. We amused ourselves a few times by grabbing cups of water held out by children at the roadside. We had enough water with us so we didn’t want to slow down and they stood still so the water went everywhere.
Oddly enough, the third night went far better than the second even though I was still surviving on the two hours sleep at Carhaix. As a group we were gradually slowing and taking longer at controls and I’m ashamed to say I was getting impatient. I had my aim of getting round in under 60 hours and I thought it could still be done. At Montagne au Perche, I said to the others that I was going to go on. I felt guilty about it, though obviously not guilty enough not to do it, but I supposed we had only joined up on the road and I had done my turns on the front so I felt that I hadn’t just used them and then dropped them. I charged off into the blackness and the hills around Montagne, hugging the white line in the middle of the road, imagining that I was going at racing pace but I don’t think it was really that fast. Up and down, through woods and across open fields, occasionally I would come across two or three other riders but it felt like we were the only people still on the road, as if everyone else had packed up for the night and left us alone outside. On some open ground near the last control at Nogent le Roi, I saw lots of lights on the horizon and fancied that they were the lights of the Paris. Maybe.
I reached Nogent le Roi, 60 km to go, in good spirits, as 60 hours seemed possible and I had got through most of the third night without sleep. I was looking at the glasses of wine at the control and thinking of celebrating when I saw a group was leaving and I jogged out to my bike, eating my pan au chocolate. I got into some fast moving groups through the Rambouillet forest at first light. The forest contained the last few hills before we descended into the towns on the outskirts of Paris.
Outside Elancourt, about 20 km from the finish, there seemed to be some arrows missing and the group broke up. I picked up the route again and rode into the finish at 7.30 am with a group of about five Frenchmen and a German. It was quiet at the finish with riders coming in small groups. I was very relieved to finish at the gymnasium at Guyancourt and pleased that I had got a sub 60 hour ride. The controllers took my route booklet and that was it, no more cycling, remembering your booklet, having to eat and drink, thinking of time. I tottered over to the spectators benches at side of the gym and slept.