As the evening gray faded to black, Branson Kimball felt something all too familiar hit his face, his arms, his legs. “Here we go again,” he muttered.Before long the spitting begat sprinkles that begat a light rain; the escalation was again under way. It was Wednesday night, about 8 p.m. Aug. 22. Kimball, who is 39 and lives in Durham, had been on his bike for all but maybe three or four of the past 45 hours, since leaving the outskirts of Paris at 9:50 Monday evening, riding his bike west to Brest on the coast, then turning around for the return trip to Paris. He’d ridden about 500 miles, stopping for a total of perhaps an hour to eat, maybe three to sleep. Of those 40-plus hours, more than half had been in the rain. A cold rain. At times, a cold, driving rain, almost always at night.
Now, it looked like he and riding buddies Glenn Himstedt of Bristol, Va., and J.D. Stewart of Greensboro were in for, unbelievably, yet another night of rain.
“I was starting to get a little down,” says Kimball, a former racer who has ridden his bike across North Carolina three times. He thinks for a moment, then downgrades his assessment.
“It was my toughest time on a bike, ever.”
Finally, when the rain became a deluge, he proposed the obvious: “This is insane. We need to stop and get some rest.”
Stewart was exhausted and couldn’t see. Himstedt was worse: He was wearing glasses and was relying on the taillights of his partners to squint his way along. Pulling over at the next village, checking into a warm, cozy pension and having a bowl of hot soup made perfect sense.
“Can’t,” the two shouted over the rain. “Gotta keep moving.”
It seems crazy
Every four years since 1891, distance-obsessed cyclists known as randonneurs have gathered to undertake one of the more ambitious challenges in sports: the 1,200-kilometer Paris-Brest-Paris bike ride. Twelve hundred kilometers — about 750 miles American — seems an insane distance to ride a bike. Couple that with the fact that the ride must be completed in 90 hours — or 31/2 days — and insane is redefined. By comparison, the annual Cycle North Carolina statewide bike ride takes seven days to cover about 450 miles.
Actually, not everyone who participates has to do the distance in 90 hours. Some elect to do it in less. The record: 38 hours and 55 minutes. That’s averaging almost 19 mph — without stopping.
The obvious question: Why? Why ride a bike 31/2 days on very little sleep? Why ride past some of the planet’s most gorgeous countryside in the dead of night? Why put yourself through an ordeal that can leave key parts of your body numb for weeks and months to come?
Stewart ponders the question. “Overall … It’s a good experience.” This from a man who once rode his bike 3,700 miles from Montana to the Arctic Circle and two years ago climbed Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth highest mountain at 26,901 feet.
“Psychologically,” he says, “this was worse.”
“It was the greatest thing I’ve ever done,” Kimball says three weeks after returning to Durham. “But it was also the hardest thing I’ve ever done. … There were some amazing things I saw and experienced,” says Kimball. “But that doesn’t mean it was all good.”
Exciting and terrifying
Kimball started taking long weekend rides last fall, took longer rides in the winter and by spring was ready for the rigorous qualifying rides. Paris-Brest-Paris aspirants must complete 200-, 300-, 400- and 600-kilometer rides, all within a set amount of time, over the span of about two months. Before he knew it, he was queued up with 4,500 other cyclists from around the world in the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, a stadium on the outskirts of Paris, headlamp ablaze, waiting to pedal into the heart of France.
Read More: News & Observer
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