PBP Qualifier Series
New Jersey and Pennsylvania ✅
This is the year of PBP (Paris-Brest-Paris), a global reunion of endurance cyclists the world over. Like the Olympics, it only comes around once every 4 years. Like the Olympics, you need to qualify. Unlike the Olympics, it's not a race (officially). People still like to go fast, but it’s a race against the clock (and themselves) vs each other. To me, this has the makings of a redemption song. Redemption from 2000. A comeback story from 2021. And so, I set out on the series of 4 qualifying rides - committing to complete the first two and play the remaining two by ear. After all, since the bridge, my personal mantra had always been "COMING HOME SAFELY COMES FIRST".
Batsto 200k
I completed the Batsto 200k in the requisite time, posting the second fastest time of a group of 30 riders, behind a velomobile rider who had been a bit of a mentor for all things “rando” over the past few months. Nothing too remarkable about that ride except:
1. Driving rain in 45 degree weather, and
2. 25 mph wind gusts with a 80mm front and rear disc wheel.
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Here are my rough notes for folks who like more detail:
Beforehand I ate a pb banana blueberry sandwich + coffee
Fuel During Ride:
3 Macaroons
5 Dates - started them at around mile 80 took one every 5 miles or so till I felt sufficiently energized (maybe mile 105?)
2 large slices of pizza
33oz 30 water + 320/caf mix
8oz water + Liquid IV
.9L of regular water
Total liquid consumed: approx: 2.3L
Fell on way to start. Wasn’t paying attention to road surface, doh! Ripped AmFib pants!
Check wind conditions in advance next time
Feet froze cold despite neoprene sock and shoe covers
Toes fully numb but left much worse than right (because of poor circulation due to prior injury)
Sideways wind gusts (28mph) dangerous and would move me. Need to ride further in center of road when conditions are like that.
Left shoulder began to hurt about 100 miles in
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Hacketstown 300k
Next up was the Hacketstown 300k. I had no idea what I was in for. North Jersey isn’t like pancake flat South Jersey. This ride had 8,000 ft of climbing and grades up to 19º. Despite all the virtual climbing I did to prep my leg muscles this past winter, I've never actually climbed a real hill. Like ever. So, I had no technique and suffered from front wheel slip, shifting irregularities, bad balance at slow speeds, and too small a cassette. Not going to lie: I had to push my bike up 2 sections of the hills because of a combination of the aforementioned factors. Not good. It felt like failure. But guess what, I didn't fail! I finished the ride and well under the time required to qualify for the PBP.
<tldr>
Here are my rough notes for folks who like more detail:
1st finisher across that line at 12hrs 10min.
After 200k, my skin at the front of my elbows and backs of my knees started to hurt. When I got home the ball of my right foot by the pinky toe was raw. Should use petroleum jelly there next time.
Thought I was going to fail at around mile 80.
Suffered from front wheel slip on big inclines 10°+.
Glad I moved from a 10-30 to a 10-33 cassette, still not big enough. Need to go 10-36.
Generally would like to avoid routes that have 10°+.
Need an integrated battery for Karoo2 or get different bike computer.
Lost Castelli Jersey and AmFib glove on ride home. They fell out of an open bag when the bike was on the car rack (doh!).
Rode with Matt Roy. Apparently, he's a big name in rando/endurance riding.
Was told I missed “R60” time by 10 min. Not sure what that is.
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So then I looked up “R60” time, and apparently there's a special group of riders who have finished their full qualifying series (called a Super Randonnée) in less than 60% of the total allowed time. You can redo any distance ride however many times you like and have 2 years to hit all 4 distances. I was 90 minutes faster than the R60 requirement on my 200k (flats) and had missed it by only 10 minutes on the 300k (with walked hills, getting caught at a long train crossing, and sitting at over 30 minutes of traffic lights in NJ suburbs). So, the lightning bolt struck: I CAN DO THIS.
Pinelands 400k
Fast forward a few weeks to the Pinelands 400k. 250 miles felt like a big jump on paper but one of the women who helped organize the events told me "it's not a big difference from a 300k", and that gave me the confidence to take it out more aggressively than I would have otherwise. I took the first century out in a 20 mph avg. Again, wind was a challenge. The 25mph+ cross-winds were so bad that gusts would blow me 2-3 feet sideways. Note to self: don't use a disc wheel when it's that windy out!
The closing scene was pretty awesome: the clouds came as night fell, and I got a few minutes of riding by headlamp in a thunderstorm. I was shooting for a sub 16:12 R60 time (i.e. 60% of the 27hr max allowed time including controls, el baño, and traffic lights). Finished at 13:40. 13 moving. :40 stopped.
I ended up finishing 2nd behind Mr. Bill Russell in his shiny new Bülk velomobile.
Cape May 600k
Which brings me to this weekend's Cape May 600k, the last PBP qualifier. Going into this year, I had previously done a 160 mile ride on my own last year, so while a 200k (125mi) and 300k (185mi) were well within the limits of my confidence, the 400k was a stretch, and 600k seemed even more unobtainable since it would consist of a 400k + a 200k the next day. Only one problem: this pesky R60 concept that had been planted in my head, and I couldn't shake it. I could go back and hit any number of 300ks and check that one off the list if I could get this 600k in R60. But on a 40 hour limit to qualify for PBP, the R60 meant I needed to finish 375 miles in under 24 hours. <cue Beastie Boys>"No sleep till...DAYS INN!"<again don't judge me>
The route was as varied as the state. People who aren't from New Jersey think of what they've seen on TV: HBO's Sopranos or MTV's The Jersey Shore. Well, there are 4 distinct parts of the state and both of those TV shows represent 1 of them: the Northeast part - the suburbs of New York City. The Cape May 600k circumnavigates the other three parts: 1. Central/Southern NJ (rolling hills/flat summer-camp-esque pine forests), 2. South Jersey Shoreline (mainland backroads across the bay from Ocean City to Cape May, beautiful country), and 3. Northwestern NJ (foothills, small quaint hamlets carved into the hillsides).
First 400k: flat and fast - pretty much solo, equally distanced behind Bill and ahead of a fast group of riders behind me. Took out the first 100 miles at 20mph again, but then I hit Cape May's 15 miles of multi-use-pathways (MUPs) which capped speeds at 10-13mphs to navigate what felt like 200 road crossings and avoid pedestrians, families, and other equally frustrated cyclists on one of the busiest weekends of the year. Bonus: I got to experience a bit of comic relief at mile 123 when a Karen on a motorized bike yelled at me for not warning her (one of 300 people I passed in that hour stretch) that I was approaching from behind.
During one of the road crossings a bump in the road at a bad moment in my slow pedal stroke caused me to hyperextend my knee a bit and put the tiniest crack in my foundation which over the course of the next 10 miles would escalate into a pain that had me questioning my ability to do another 240 miles. I studied my pedal stroke and leg extension (or lack thereof) and came to the conclusion that the hyperextension only exacerbated a problem I already had brewing. Rides over a certain distance have a way of identifying looming gremlins in your bike fit, and I had my pedals too close to my seat. So, I extended them out at the next control point, and the pain thankfully subsided.
Pretty uneventful ride from there back to the Days Inn. That's where most people turned in for the night, but 4 riders rode on. Bill was about an hour ahead of me, and two strong upright riders were about the same distance behind me. I stopped at my car, refueled, attached two sidebags to the back of my seat. One had a reflective emergency blanket, an ultralight sleeping bag liner, and a spare headlamp battery in it. The other contained cold weather gloves, arm warmers, leg warmers, and foodstuffs. It was supposed to drop from 70º to 45º over the course of this leg of the journey.
Long story short, the night contained A LOT of climbing, some swear words, about 200 deer who just stare at you but aren't spooked (very eerie), a number of complements from Princeton students (the intelligent ones understand the brilliance of the recumbent!), having to walk my bike across the Delaware River bridge at the behest of the Stockton-New Hope security guard (adding 10 min of precious time to the clock), each control stop gas station attendant knowing that I was coming. "You are riding over 300 miles aren't you?! The guy ahead of you told me you were coming!!" More deer. Lots of opossums. A few foxes and raccoons. Very neat to night ride on empty hilly forest roads. After all, it was my first time riding through the night and my second time ever climbing hills.
Then it was dark. Like pitch dark, at speed. My battery died. No clue how. I had a massive 25,000 mah battery that I had tested to last 15 hours w/ my light but somehow out there in the middle of nowhere, it died after 6 hours. Luckily, guided by the randonneuring ethos of redundancy, I packed a spare.
Hard climbs, more cursing. I finally got to the penultimate control point, a Wawa at mile 358. It was 17 miles before the Days Inn finish where we had to scan a QR code to alert the volunteers so they could ready the cowbell for our return. The second I opened the door to get back on my bike, I knew something was wrong. It felt 20º colder than when I dismounted my bike 5 minutes earlier. I felt wet. My adrenaline had run out. Can you get hypothermia riding a bike when its 45º out? I was feeling the fatigue of having ridden for 22+ hours on 2 hours sleep the night prior (hopped up on coffee and excitement). My body and heart felt fine, but my head felt like I was...well, how do I put this?...drunk and hallucinating.
If I felt like this at the end of the 400k I would have called it. If I was still back at mile 300, I would have broken out the emergency blanket for a nap. But here, 17 miles from the finish, I needed to press on. After all, was I going to DNF this close to the end, and would it take them as long to come get me out in the cold as it would for me to ride it in slowly? So, I opted for the latter, I took the last 17 miles at an extremely slow pace - probably around 10-14mph. I propped myself up to a 60 degree angle, essentially turning my v20 into a v60, and I coasted / slow pedaled my way back to the Days Inn safely.
I now know what my limit is, and it's riding 375 miles in 23.5 hrs on 2 hours sleep.
Solo 600k R60 accomplished. PBP coming up. Until then, I need to figure out which 300k I'm going to circle back and grab that last R60 on...