PBP Update Wednesday Pt2: James Reaches Brest and Starts the Return

On Monday afternoon when we all took a nap before James started the big ride, James and I awoke before the girls and I jokingly mentioned that I hope I get more sleep than he does during his ride. I have to say it is difficult to get a good night’s sleep knowing he’s out there. The rain, the sleep deprivation and the excitement of it all (that we are both experiencing to differing degrees) has me struggling to fall asleep and stay asleep. I fell asleep tonight with the girls, exhausted at about 7:30pm, only to wake up alert at 9am wanting to check on James’ progress but knowing there probably wouldn’t be any news before 11pm. I had last checked late this afternoon and he had arrived in Brest 4:08pm local time. The joy, the feeling of weepiness again, surged through me and I found myself borrowing a highlighter pen from reception and highlighting his route on the Michelin map of Northern France that I brought with me. Some of the towns on the cue sheet for the ride are not marked on the map and I find myself looking forward to going over the detailed, blow-by-blow account with James when this is all finished and he can digest the experience.

In the meantime here I am at 11 minutes past midnight sitting on the floor in the open doorway of our hotel room to better hook into the wireless internet signal. I have checked again and James arrived at the Carhaix control at 10: 30pm-almost exactly 12 hours since he reached it on his way to Brest this morning. He is already more than 85km into the return journey home. I’m anticipating that he will stop for some sleep when he reaches Loudeac sometime before 5:30am. It seems the most obvious time to stop and regroup given that it’s the 800k point. I imagine his stamina is up to pushing through for three 400k stints. I'll just have to wait and see.

I spoke with two people in the hotel this afternoon who have dropped out of the ride and are obviously steeped in disappointment at being unable to complete the 1200k. Dan from Alberta, Canada only made it to Mortagne au Perche and abandoned with 140k ridden. He had just felt ill and his body started shutting down. From experience he knew that he wasn’t going to make it so decided to just abandon the ride and get over whatever had hit his body. Not an easy decision to make. Today he felt much better and went for a 10k run to burn up some of the adrenaline coursing through his body, which just wanted to be channeled on his bike riding in the PBP. He was very philosophical about the early drop-out. He had completed the PBP 16 years ago and had gone on to do other 1200k rides. He didn’t have any rain gear with him and, in fact, I think had been a little thrown by the rain, having only taken part in one ride in the rain this season.

I am hoping that this is where our Irish heritage and Seattle living pays off. James has cycled a good few rides in the rain this season and, in fact, one of his 400k brevet rides to qualify for the PBP he rode almost entirely in the rain and a good deal of that time was spent alone on the roads without fellow cyclists. I’m confident that physically and mentally he’s ready and that he’ll get through it.

The second person I spoke to this afternoon was Jan, who is a member of the Seattle Randonneurs. She arrived at the hotel in her cycling gear covered in grease, having just made the long and arduous trek back from Fougeres, where her dream of completing her first PBP ended. Fougeres is 310k from the start and from about 40k into the ride Jan’s right knee started to give her problems. She hadn’t experienced any problem with her knee prior to that and while dissecting experiences with Dan the theory arose that the dismantling of the bikes for the journey to Paris, and then the reassembling, could knock the fine tuning of the bike with the rider's body out of alignment.

I know in the preparation for the PBP riders, including James, have their bikes specifically aligned so that it is perfectly adjusted for their body. A great deal of time, effort and money goes into this process. James (and Jan) carefully marked everything necessary before dismantling their bikes so that they can be pretty confident that they have accurately returned their bikes to their optimal state of alignment during reassembly. Maybe something was off for Jan, maybe it wasn’t. I imagine there will be more future analysis on that point. She headed of this afternoon with her luggage and her bike box in a taxi to Paris, where her daughter is waiting for her. On Sunday they’ll head to Spain for the holiday they’d planned at what they thought would be the end of a successful completed ride in the PBP.

Dan, meanwhile, feels like he’s in limbo here at the hotel waiting for the return flight on Sunday. He has very little Euro in cash and hundreds of Euros in Canadian travelers checks, which he is unable to exchange here in St Quentin. For the moment he doesn’t seem to have the energy or the motivation to head into Paris to resolve the issue. I imagine nothing but time, and the next challenge, will ease the disappointment.

And so I wait. For the sake of taking care of Ashley and Caitlin tomorrow I will force myself to stay in bed and try to sleep through the control in Loudeac which James should reach in a few hours if my guess is right. The sound of heavy rain and wind will not be helpful and will take a supreme effort to ignore. But if James can do it so can I.

Stats to date: 699k down in 47hrs 33mins; 527k (the ride in fact is 1227k instead of the advertised 1200k) to go with 42hrs 27mins remaining.

Oh, final fyi, Paul O'Donoghue, the head of the Irish Randonneurs whom we met on Sunday at the bike check-in, reached Villanes tonight at 9:46pm. This is his forth PBP and he opted to try completing in in 80 hours. At the control in Villanes tonight he was only 222k from completion. I'll check tomorrow and see if he makes it!