Bike Messengers for Paris-Brest-Paris 2007

20-24 Aug 2007

So, who's pondering this idiocy?

Ok, I talked about this a little bit around PBP 2003 - getting bike messengers into the randonneuring thing. It's an obvious choice, to me - messengering may be lousy training for speed or racing, but it's great training for endurance and recovery, which is perfect for rando stuff. Ride all day, sleep, wake up, do it all over again. Repeat ad nauseum. Perfect! In my opinion, there's not a messenger out there with decent daily mileage under their belt who can't knock out a 200 or 300km ride in one go without really batting an eye. They may not think so themselves, but I know it's true - and if you've got the physical condition to ride a 200 or 300km brevet with no "training", the only real barriers to riding a 400 or 600km brevet are psychological. Seriously, the only thing keeping you from riding PBP at that point is your money and your mind. While I've enjoyed long rides since time immemorial, PBP 2003 was the 5th randonée I'd done in my life - the other 4 were the qualifying brevet series. No training, no fancy bike stuff, nothing. Just ride.

First, a little history.

In 1891, the editor of Le Petit Journal set out to trump the organizers of Bordeaux-Paris with an even longer, more difficult race (Bordeaux-Paris was just over 500km in length, and the winning time was about 27 hours), so he came up with the route from Paris to the coast at Brest, and return - 1200km in total, completely epic, especially if you consider what roads were like in that day. This first Paris-Brest-Paris was a smashing success (and eventually, after its second edition in 1901, the impetus for the fledgling Tour de France, which was intiitally conceived as an even longer, harder race than PBP, once again, in order to boost newspaper sales), and the race continued to be held every 10 years - but beginning in 1901, the groundwork of the modern PBP was laid with the division of race entrants into two classes - the racers, with all the options of team support, and the tourists, who were largely self-supported. However, the tourist class was done away with in 1931, and the randonneurs (as they were now known) began their own, simultaneous PBP alongside the racers, but separately organized. PBP 1941 ran into a little bit of trouble with some military maneuvers, but it resumed in 1948 and 1951. After 1951, the racing community lost interest in PBP (it would basically trash the rest of your season...), and races in 1956 and 1961 were cancelled, while the rando versions went on as planned. For the next 20 years, the event continued at 5 year intervals rather than the preceding 10 year stretches, and then switched to the current 4 year interval. Paris-Brest-Paris remains the oldest organized cycling event in the world.

I've characterized PBP myself as "a 4-day festival of pain threshold management", often with some sort of perverse expression of glee on my face. Anyone telling you it's easy is lying - but it's worth it, if only for the views of endless streams of bike lights trailing off into the darkness of the french countryside, and the hospitality of the people whose houses you'll pass on the route, who will make you feel like a star of the TdF. Nothing since my first cyclocross race gave me anything near the feeling of hurting all over, but wanting nothing more than to do it all over again.

So why should you, a bike messenger, want to engage in this sort of of madness?

Well, Charles Terront, the first winner of Paris-Brest-Paris, way back in 1891 - was a bike messenger (and a professional cyclist, as well). And when you finish PBP in the time limit of 90 hours, and become an ancien, your name goes down in the big book of PBP finishers, along with his. Personally, I think that's pretty damn cool.

Oh, and because it's a huge challenge, with an incredibly gratifying (if meaningless to the rest of the world) payoff - you become part of the history of the oldest cycling event in the world. Because of the camaradie you'll feel not only with your local friends, your new rando friends you've ridden your qualifying brevets with, and everyone you'll meet on the road during PBP. And heck, just because you CAN. If you've had any interest in doing things like the Raid Californie-Oregon, the Route 1 stage race, the 24-Uurs race or any of the other similar long-distance messenger events starting to be held in the past few years, trust me, you're partway there already. Oh yeah, and they don't make you wear a helmet, and they serve booze at the checkpoints.

In 2003, myself, Rob Saybolt and Kathleen Hannon from SF, and Simon Firth and Pat Gaffney from Philly were the only messengers (to my knowledge) who rode PBP. I'd like to think that should be able to field 5 times that amount with a bit of organizing. So here we go, over a year and a half in advance. If you're a current or former bike messenger, planning to or even merely thinking about riding Paris-Brest-Paris in 2007, please get in touch!

Looking for more info on PBP,
your regional randonneuring association,
and local qualifying brevet series?
Try these sites:

I know there are more than just these - from 2003, I remember seeing organized groups of randonneurs from Canada, Norway, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Ireland, Austria, Spain, and a host of others. For US (and to some degree, Canadian) riders, a good place to start looking for more local organizations is the RUSA lnks page. I'll add more links to more local organizations here as time goes by, and others notify me of their intent or interest for PBP 2007.

So, who's pondering this idiocy?

back to joel's main page

home