449 km

It's funny about all the things that can crop up to complicate a seemingly simple plan to ride ride at least one 200km a month for twelve consecutive months. My own plan began before I was aware of it, when in June of this year I realized I had a string of six consecutive months with a 200km brevet completed in each month (Jan-SFR 200km, Feb-SRCC 200km, March-SRCC 300km, April-SFR 400km, May-SFR 600km, June-SFR 230km). An ambitious plan A did not get met, and plan B had to be put into effect. August's 200km permanent came off with out much drama, but then September rolled around. There were grand plans for high mileage for the month of September, and completing the SFR Russian River 200km was plotted for the 2nd weekend of the month. Not one, but two big obstacles arose to put the kibosh on that plan. On what was to be an easy 95 miler with a handful of fellow SFR riders, an oddly placed car stop in the parking lot near the Peets in Petaluma interrupted my ride in a painful...

In early 2007, I participated in a number of cycling events, of which the qualifying brevets were only some of those rides. PBP of course was a central discussion topic so many times and at those other rides I met a number of prospective PBP riders. The Grizzly Peak Cyclists , one of the clubs I ride with and an ancestor to the San Francisco Randonneurs, hosts a Tuesday Night Ride series aimed at the faster cyclist wanting to get in a mid-week training ride after work and prepare for the coming California Triple Crown Double Century series . The few times I showed up for those Tuesday Night rides, I had already done my ride for the day (I had plenty of free time from mid-November 2006 to early March 2007 when I was unemployed due to the implosion of my former employer Apelon). It was at one of those Tuesday Night rides that I first met Phil Morris, who had been described to me as a very strong, fast rider. Phil was working himself back into condition after a lengthy cycling layoff, an...

On the Sunday before the start of the 2007 Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) Randonnee, a large number of Northern California riders gathered after the mandatory, but this year much abbreviated, bike inspection. We sat at a cafe, indoors alas, and tried to ignore the falling rain outside. My friend Reid made a waggish remark about the experience we were about to have. He said that doing Paris-Brest-Paris in the rain could be quite easily simulated at home by standing in a cold shower in bicycling clothing while ripping up $100 bills. I thought about this remark and in the the long, dark hours of the first night's ride through the French countryside, and with the rain beginning to pelt us once more, I came to the conclusion that the analogy was inadequate. What was missing in the comment was that it failed to include any mention of first having to stand in line to get into the cold shower. Having now commented on the inadequacies of the analogy (and pausing briefly to state that I completed...

In August of 2007, I put my bike on a plane and along with several hundred other Americans, I flew to France to participate in the Paris, Brest et retour, the once every four years cyclo-touring event most commonly referred to in the US as ' PBP '. It is an understatement to say that my experience there was not what I was anticipating, but by any measure the trip and experience were simply fantastic, and it was fantastic in spite of near constant rain and in spite of falling far short of my goal. I named this blog after the distance I was able to accomplish on PBP that year. I registered this blog shortly after returning from France on that trip, with the intention of chronicling my preparation for returning to PBP in 2011, in whatever form that 'preparation' would take. In the days, weeks and months just after PBP I thought often about the trip. Again, an understatement. For weeks, I had nightly dreams of the ride. I would frequently dream of riding up a gentle slope...