You have to enjoy something a lot to do it non-stop for up to ninety hours, except for snatched doses of sleep. Cycling the 1,200km of Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP), the world's most celebrated long-distance amateur ride, requires just that.
It's not a race, of course. As participants will stress, before talking details about timings. Riders get little chance to enjoy Brittany's rugged scenery, culture or cuisine en route. The maximum time allowed to do it in is ninety hours; the average is around eighty hours; the best is a delirious 42hr 26min by Germany's Björn Lenhard in 2015.
It's not the longest non-competitive endurance ride (variously known as a 'randonnée', 'brevet', or especially in the UK, 'audax'). London-EdinburghLondon (LEL) for instance is 1,500km. And 'P'B'P' doesn't even start in Paris, but in Rambouillet, 20km south of the capital. Nevertheless, it's the one to do, the audaxer's bucket-list challenge.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 2023-Ausgabe von Cycling Plus UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 2023-Ausgabe von Cycling Plus UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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GANARY A COALMINE
The James Brown tune 'It's a Man's Man's Man's World' comes on the radio, filling the coach, and does nothing for my pre-event nerves as I sit surrounded by serious-looking, wiry, tanned men in Lycra. It's 6.30am, pitch black outside and I'm feeling very out of my depth as a relative newcomer to the world of clipless pedals and hurting for fun. Last night's stress dream involved being very unprepared to get married and being handed my great-grandmother-in-law-to-be's hideous silver dress with lace trim to wear minutes before the ceremony was due to start. I'll let you psychoanalyse that one.
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