My Paris Brest Paris 2019 report

I completed the 1200km Paris-Brest-Paris race in August, with a time of 79 hours 26 minutes, comfortably within the 90 hour time limit. There were 6374 starters and 1702 non-finishers/out of time (27% of starters). I got about four hours sleep during the ride. As usual I stopped for longer than most getting plenty to eat and drink at the controls every 100km or so. The roads were clear of traffic and of very good quality – no potholes to worry about when descending at speed at night. The support from the locals was fantastic, cheering the riders through the towns, offering free food and drink and then popping out from behind a tree in the countryside at 1 am.  I was surprised by how cold it got at night – several degrees below the weather forecast where there were temperature inversions in the valleys. Wind chill on downhills, especially the long one into Brest, made it worse. I had arm and leg warmers but missed winter gloves. On the last night I was struggling to keep my head up and a kind lady gave me a neck massage which got me through to the finish!

Here are some photos with the data on Strava - https://www.strava.com/activities/2644487266.

This site shows all the PBP results. I came 1926 out of 6660, and my time was within 3 minutes off the average finish time, 79 hrs 23 min: http://www.pbpresults.com/2019

This link has some photos of me on the bike: https://www.maindruphoto.com/en/photos/19e-paris-brest-paris-randonneur-2019/3838910/s235-fairclough-jon.html 

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