PBP 2019 - before the ride

The Ride Plan - Part One

Knowing how quickly all available lodging fills up, when I decided I was going to do PBP 2019 I immediately booked hotel stays at the start and finish near the velodrome in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and thought I'd take care of lodging on the route "later".

Then the ACP announced in September 2018 that the start was being moved from Saint Quentin to the National Sheepfold in Rambouillet. Panic ensued...

Me and several thousand of my friends immediately tried to get reservations at Rambouillet. As you might expect, anything that was remotely close to the start filled up immediately. After a number of attempts I gave it up and figured I'd keep my reservation at Saint Quentin and travel back and forth as needed.

Then, in a post ride conversation with Mark Thomas at Perth Albany Perth, he said he had 4 rooms at Rambouillet and I could have one of them. Thanks Mark! I cancelled my other reservation and was all set to stay at Les Viviales which was about 3K from the start. Sorted!

The Ride Plan - Part Two

In early 2019 riders started to formulate and announce their plans for the ride. These ranged from the impressively aggressive (ride in less than 56 hours, 40 minutes to gain entry in La Société Charly Miller to honor the first American to race Paris Brest Paris) to the more relaxed 88:55 to gain entry into La  Société Adrian Hands to honor an American randonneur and PBP Ancien who lost his life to ALS. My own goals were fairly simple:

1. Finish inside the 90 hour time limit.
2. Enjoy the ride.

Over the years I've developed a planning tool that takes as inputs the distance and amount of climbing between controls and calculates my average speed and arrival time at each. This is useful for planning stops and generally laying out how I want the ride to unfold.

At PBP 2019, my wife Marcia was going to come with me and provide support at the overnights. The rules in randonneuring are very clear: support may only be provided at the controls so for example, were Marcia to meet me at some random spot on the route that would be against the rules. I'm a stickler for rules. To those who carp about whether or not a given rule is "reasonable" I always say "a brevet without rules is called a bike ride. If you want to do a bike ride, go ahead but if you want to do a brevet, you follow the rules". 

So with that rule in mind, I laid out my plan. I looked at the list of controls provided by the ACP and decided I'd overnight in Saint Nicolas-du-Pelem (489K from the start), again at Quedillac (840K from the start) and then optionally at Mortagne-au-Perche (1094K from the start). I made hotel arrangements with these stops in mind. This plan would give me a long day while I was still fresh, a moderately long day 2 and then a stop not far from the end. My plan would have me finishing in somewhere around 70 hours.

The Ride Plan - Part Three

Less than a month (August 7th, to be precise) before we were due to leave for Paris I was reviewing my ride plan. I looked at the list of controls on the ACP web site - wait! Saint Nicolas and Quedillac weren't listed! WTF!

I'm not sure why it didn't dawn on me earlier but both Saint Nicolas and Quedillac were not controls. They were listed as "services only" and would have food and limited sleeping but were not official controls. Crap! (NB: Saint Nicolas was actually a "secret" control but given it's "secret" status, it couldn't be used to meet support vehicles).

Scramble time!

As you might expect, every place remotely near the route was booked long ago. After several hours I was able to find a place about 12K off the route near Loudeac. The plan now became: Loudeac outbound (445K), Loudeac on the retour (780K) and the stop in Mortagne at 1094K. 

OK, ride plan sorted.

The trip over was about as smooth as could be. We arranged to park the car at PreFlight parking, a few miles from Ohare, flight was on time, got the rental car at CDG and headed to Rambouillet. I opened up the bike case and had a look to see how it'd made the trip. Uh oh

Not going to buff out

Basically what happened was the TSA decided I'd packed my bike a little too carefully so they pulled it out of the case and wadded it in like I should have done in the first place. The result was the brake lever positioned directly over the rim. Add a bit of pressure et voila - a nice hole punched in the rim. This set up "anxious night with no sleep 1" as I fretted. Could I get a replacement? (likely) Should I set it up tubeless so it'd match the front? (I didn't).

I posted a picture of the wheel on FB and got a number of helpful responses including offers to bring an extra wheel from people who hadn't left the States yet. I also got a few "oh, carbon" jackass replies. FWIW, I had exactly the same thing happen to an aluminum wheel several years ago on a trip to Italy.

So next morning it was off to Paris to get a new wheel. Several people had recommended Cycles Victor and we were there when they opened. A few hundred Euros later and I'm back in business.

I got aluminum, Cycles Victor got plastic

I'd also noticed that the switch on my Sinewave Beacon headlight was working intermittently. This one is totally on me as I generally just wad it into the box without wrapping it in something first and I'm sure the switch just got banged around. At any rate, while at Cycles Victor I inquired as to whether they had dyno powered lights and they had two: a Luxos U and an Edelux II. I've got both at home and neither is my favorite for different reasons. I've had several Luxos fail during brevets, the last during LEL 2017, when they get really wet. I don't like the Edelux because of the coax wire they use. Yes, I know you can make a nice pigtail that connects to a Schmidt hub and Peter White will generously sell you one. I just think it's a stupid solution to a non-problem that's overly complex and failure prone.

At any rate, I decided on the Luxos and hoped we wouldn't get torrential rain (not forecast). Supposedly, they've improved the water resistance of the Luxos over several generations and my friend Dave Thompson uses one with success so we'll see. I'll probably take it off though and go back to the Sinewave after getting it fixed.

After getting the wheel and light we had lunch and headed back to Rambouillet. I finished putting the bike together and went for a test ride. Crap. They hadn't put a spacer in the wheel so the cassette was rattling on the freehub and it wasn't shifting for crap. Crap (did I say that?).

It was now after 6PM and all the bike shops were closed. Frantic phone calls later and I found a department store that sold kids bikes but they had a chain whip and lockring tool (I had the required spacer). A few minutes later and I was back in business. The mechanic didn't want to charge me anything but I gave him 10 Euros to go get himself a beer.

A short test ride confirmed all was well and now I was in business and ready to head to registration the next day.