PBP Stories: Arvi Sreenivasan PBP 2023

PBP Story #47: This week we have Arvi Sreenivasan who is originally from Canada, then lived a decade in New York City, but since 2016 has been a resident of Oakland, CA. Arvi currently rides with the San Francisco Randonneurs and completed PBP in 2023 with a time of 85:25.

‼️Please subscribe, like or consider buying Peter a beer at https://buymeabeer.com/pbpstories

Paris Brest Paris: PBP Stories and Tips
Join Peter Curley (PBP ’19, ’23) as he interviews the riders who have completed (and DNF’ed!) Paris Brest Paris, the most famous (and oldest) endurance ride in the world. Learn firsthand what to expect and how to give yourself the best chance of a successful PBP.

Paris Brest is a long-distance cycling event with a rich history. Established in 1891 as a professional race, it has evolved into the premier amateur endurance cycling event. Every four years, thousands of cyclists from around the world attempt to finish PBP’s grueling 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) route, within the 90 hour time limit.

10 PBP Stats (2023)
Participants = 6431
Finish rate = 76%
Average age = 51
Oldest female & male = 69 & 79
Youngest female & male = 17 & 17
Female participation = 7.24%
French participation = 29.03%
Charly Miller (56:40) = 12
Adrian Hands (88:55) = 62
Club with most riders = San Francisco Randonneurs

your approach was 90 hours and you wanted the full value of 90 hours so right you have strong opinions about give me the bulge basically oh yeah totally exactly so yeah I selected I had ridden a 600 um in 2022 so I had like a reasonably good um priority for registering but I definitely intentionally chose the 90 hour start and I will go on record as saying Rob Hawk is wrong uh that 84 hours is the best and if the reason is like I don’t know maybe this is the only time I’ll do PvP i wanted the full experience i was like just give me the circus like I want to be in there and that mass start is just so magic this week we have Arvy Shiny Vasan who is originally from Canada then lived a decade in New York City but since 2016 has been a resident of Oakland California rv currently rides with the San Francisco Ronde and completed PBP in 2023 in a time of 85 hours and 25 minutes arvy it’s a pleasure to have you thank you Peter thanks for having me um as I think you mentioned before we were riding together you like to listen to this podcast at 1.4 times speed so yeah that’s right i apologize if I’m a lot slower in person okay i’m probably like a point eight at this point so I apologize okay okay i’ll start with my usual question what does PBP mean to you well PBP is a dream i think that’s the best thing to say it like it’s a dream in advance it’s something that I had been like on the horizon i think maybe a decade before I actually did it um the experience of doing it is dreamlike and dream also kind of conjures that like you know beautiful impossible like um a hard to capture thing and and and that’s what it felt like i mean it was it was it was enormous and enormously rewarding yeah i think you’ve mentioned before you’ve quoted Greg uh Janness how he kind of describes it as you know your life compressed into a 24-hour period like it’s just trippy and weird and so much happens very much so yeah I’ve written the bug with Greg and I I saw his that quote in in the prior episode of this series and so apt cool i’m sure it was good even at 1.4 speed okay cool all right tell me about how did the finish line feel yeah I would say that it was just it was really gratifying i mean to to do it to think about it for so long and then to do it and as we’ll see there were some ups and downs on my ride along the way but then to to do it and to finish strong um it really felt joyful uh it was like it was very celebratory and I was lucky to I would say you know I finished in like biologically good condition like I didn’t have any I wasn’t like at death’s door i was I was really happy how about mentally Harvey you were you intact mentally you know I think as we’ll talk about I don’t think you can process it when you finish it takes a long time um it’s only in retrospect that you tell the story of it to yourself in a coherent and consistent way okay um but so I would think I was just floating yeah cool uh maybe let’s go back to this the beginning tell me about your start in cycling your first memories of being on a bike etc yeah sure i’ve loved bikes for a long time i think when you say literally the first memory I remember getting a bike for Christmas when I was I don’t know maybe five or something and I remember it well it was a like a BMX style bike it was white with yellow and orange um decals and it was like smooth and shiny and I was just like yeah like just just the the beauty of the object i’m from I grew up in Calgary Alberta it’s al obviously in December it’s a very wintry place and so the basement like the the bike lived in the basement like in the furnace room like leaned against the door for months and I would just go down to visit it and just be like “See you soon.” Yeah um so yeah I remember that and then um I got sort of swept up in kind of the mountain biking craze in the ‘9s and high school i got my first real bike shop bike i remember just like also just the allure of a bike shop as a place and like all the beautiful things and I I got this blue green um specialized rock hopper antique brakes and 26in wheels and a threaded headset it was just like once again just so beautiful um so the objects but also just the adventure I did i think my first like we was riding with friends and my first like multi-day ride I rode from Calgary down to Pincher Creek with a friend like when we were in our teens where his family had a cabin which was just like impossible and it was so long like we passed out at a picnic table at a at like a campground and like the ranger was like boys are you okay we’re like at a gross power bar kept going anyway so that and then um I got a road bike in college um purple track rode that around took a break for a while and then I came back to cycling joined the New York cycle club um in yeah New York City which like a roadie club where I kind of learned paceeline and really discovered like the the joy of group rides and um long distances there yeah uh here’s a question because I think about it a lot like there’s a magic even as an adult to owning a bike sometimes like you i just look at my bikes weirdly okay do you think that’s because you had a connection when you were young as a child or is that something I could have developed even without having that connection to biking when I was young that’s an interesting counterfactual i mean as we know many people come to cycling in in adulthood and find that same joy so I think that like Yeah you know I think you can find it anytime i just don’t think there’s many people looking at their Pelaton in the corner of the bedroom in the same way we look at our bikes what do you think no those things are just that’s that that’s like a a tool of duty it’s not a tool of of of adventure and escape and freedom it’s like it’s a torture machine basically in your bedroom yeah yeah whereas a bike is that but also it’s cool yeah that’s true the torture happens outdoors that’s good okay how did you originally hear about PBP do you remember the first time you heard those i don’t know if I can pinpoint it exactly um I when I was riding with the New York cycle club there were some people who did some randonering i was aware of uh New Jersey Randers which was and still is a really great and very active club um and I did my first bre I did my first two breks in 2014 um I did the 200k with the Long Island randers and another one with the New Jersey randers and I remember it rained both times and it was like it felt felt so long and I just was like wishing for like if I had a button on my stem that was like uh helicopter evacuation I would have been like make it but anyway it was cool and so yeah but around that time I was aware of it um I also like I think knew got to discover it through Reddit um there was like a randuring subreddit and there were like some randuring blogs so I think it kind of came on my radar around Yeah 2014 maybe and it was like seemingly impossible but tantalizing exactly you know just getting back to your helicopter rescue button like I think the reason the sport is maybe so successful is because the reason you finish is there’s no way to get home isn’t that right like that’s the thing like it really does as someone I just as I was just mentioning to you I just did a 400 and if that button had been on my handlebars after mile 50 I would have hit it very hard multiple times but there’s no way to get home you know i I remember doing a 400 I think it was it was Hopland and being in a bad way and like actually check towing my phone out and like checking like what is an Uber back to Oakland and it’s like $500 so I was like no no but like I definitely was thinking about it yeah you also have that conversation in your head what will you tell medical services or some rescue services you can’t just say you’re tired right you have to come up with a credible excuse for a rescue yeah yeah so self- rescue is where it’s at yes so anyway back to PBP um when and maybe why did you decide to attempt PBP in 2023 so I think PBP caught my attention because it’s such it’s such a big goal i mean it’s it’s it’s legendary you know it’s more than 100 years old everyone talks about it anyone you talk to like at the people have high veilance reactions to PvP most people who do it love it you get the odd person who will not be like that you mean people are normal people okay yeah maybe they don’t know about it okay but but um so the idea that it was so huge but it was like right at the limit of possible like you do the math you’re like okay 1,200 km in 90 hours you know converting that to imperial it’s like a little bit less than 200 miles a day it’s like doesn’t sound that bad actually you’re like “I can do that.” And I think that I tend towards maybe overconfidence so I was like “Oh I can do this.” Um anyway then you learn along the way really what that means but uh I I thought about doing it in 2019 which which would have been the year I turned 40 and I talked about it with my wife and was I was like “Maybe I should do this.” And I think she was like “Yeah maybe you should do this.” But we had two really little kids and then like within a week we were both like “Yeah there’s no way this is possible.” But by 20 23 it seemed viable so I went for it i I’m always interested by the dynamic with one’s spouse one’s partner whatever um because typically they have no real understanding of the level of your sickness okay or no maybe they do like how do you kind of think about that like do you try to explain to her what you get out of it or does she understand that kind of thing and well I don’t I think that like for non cyclists and for non ultradistant cyclists they just people don’t really parse like they’re like “Oh yeah a long ride 80 miles oh it’s a long ride 800 miles like it just kind of all like it breaks the scale for for people.” And my wife’s like is a marathoner like she’s she knows how you know she knows what it endures but you know it’s just like that crazy thing that you and those crazy people do it’s like that’s correct that is a correct assessment yeah it’s funny because again just got back from a 20our 24-hour ride and you know I’ll explain to my wife oh yeah like she knows I was gone for a day but it’s very difficult to communicate to her what exactly happened to me because I don’t even understand over those 24 hours you know um speaking of spousal communication I heard a really wise thing from George Swain who I don’t know if you if you’ve had him on this you you should have him on i wrote with him a couple of times in New York he’s like a New York and he he had a blog back in the day so he was like a source of rando inspiration and he was like you know one thing I’ve learned is just don’t talk about it like just don’t talk about it like you don’t need it it doesn’t need it doesn’t need to take up marital air time like he’s not Irish Catholic by any chance does he sounds like a a coping mechanism right there well I think many cultures share coping mechanisms cool all right so back to PBP 2023 you decided that was the time to do it so how did you go about forming a strategy educating yourself that kind of thing yeah well I think one thing I say I’m lucky to ride with San Francisco Ronders which is like the most rando rich region in the country for sure like SFR is an amazing club but there’s also a ton of other clubs like Davis and um St louis Abyispo and um Santa Rosa all whom I’ve ridden with so there’s like so much collective experience here and on these rides so when you do do some rides um you learn from others which is the big way and then also building up experience on BVES is you know there’s really no match for that you can read and listen but the experience is where it’s at so I would I guess um I did my I moved to Bay in 2016 i did my first 200k with SFR and like had only really done 200ks i did my first ever 300 in 2019 and I was like “Well I’m going to die.” Uh I remember like it was I it was up through Cloverdale and like there’s that climb out of Cloverdale and it was so hot it was so steep and I just like had to stop and have a little cry break and I remember thinking being like this is stupid i like do this like I’ll never do PBP you know then I like walked for a little bit had a Coke and I was okay but then I did my first um 600 in 2021 i did a 600 without having done a 400 and I was lucky to benefit from the wisdom of I with Ian Kizu Blair who’s a friend and very experienced friend so he kind of helped me plan in advance and we went through that and then I did you know then I did I did a series um basically in 21 and 22 and then in 2023 the qualifying series so by the time I got to PBP I’d had enough experience where I was like I think I kind of know how to handle this yeah uh I I think we’ve talked about this before but it fascinates me just how humans work so that 400 in Cloverdale where you were unhappy like what pushes you to actually go back and then do well first of all complete it and then do a 600 and then a 1200 what is wrong with you Arby what is wrong with humans why do they do that well I think that we have our short-term self and our long-term self you know what I mean and like sometimes our like that kind of higher order planning and goal setting is is it’s so rewarding i mean if you only do what your short-term self wants like if you just do things on easy mode all the time it’s very pleasant but like it’s called it’s called living in the moment right we’re supposed to live in the moment yeah well you are but you also want to take advantage of the challenges that are out there i actually think that like we didn’t we talked about this before but there’s a lot of parallels between randering and parenting i think I think roundering is great for parents great great kind of cycling for parents and also it’s like it’s a challenge like you can like not have children and just like you know do fun stuff it’s totally fine you can also like go for a 30- mile ride and get a coffee and a like it’s it’s fun yeah but there’s like the big hard gnarly thing that makes you cry but it also make gives you so much joy that’s so huge and so sometimes you’re Yeah you have to like It’s funny because you think about evolution right not to get too deep here like we’re we’re programmed to evolve or whatever but there are kind of safeguards where we’re supposed to protect ourselves in the short term you know what I mean so if you don’t like something rationally you shouldn’t do it again but then to your point there’s another part of your brain that is saying well bigger picture long-term you can kind of achieve something even better if you just ignore your short term yeah each painful ride you acquire toughness that like girds you and enables you to do another hard ride or hard thing so yeah so it’s like it’s kind of self-improvement but also yeah it’s a little bit wacky it is a little bit wacky let’s just leave it at that okay so then your strategy okay let me see tell me about the logistics in getting to to France i always think that’s underestimated i do know that you’re a French speaker though so that’s huge so actually the logistics weren’t that bad one thing I definitely drew drew on the experience of other um of like friends and other riders in in SFR and other clubs so I like I had I had a lot of wisdom about like what theory is and actually doing it wasn’t that bad um I like disassembled my bike i put it in a bag i flew to Paris you know I took a car i like coordinated with some other people like because because I I did French immersion school as a kid i can get around fine so I like talked to some uh a driver we threw our stuff in a van i stayed at um Son and uh I just got there like a you know a couple of I think a day before just in time to basically assemble my bike do a test ride and then I took the train to Rambuay and off we went it wasn’t that bad uh you know I meant to actually touch on your training regimen if we can call it that right because that’s I think you have a pretty unique approach and it’s almost like I’m going to do the minimum necessary to ensure that I still have a good time and I complete PBP so maybe would would that describe your philosophy in general i think so yeah i mean I guess you asked me what was my strategy i think my strate So I so I formulated my strategy you know through tuning things like getting to know what to eat getting to know how to pace myself what to wear figing out my bike situation you know changing my bike over time tweaking bike fit like at each of those big rides I either confirmed or changed a small thing but having done all that my strategy is basically show up with enough fitness um and then try to ride steady and keep my stop short like that’s that’s pretty simple if you can do that that’s good if you can show up with enough fitness if you can ride steady and keep your stuff short you’re going to be okay so that was my plan what is enough fitness um for me uh my sort of regimen is I try to do one long ride a month and a long ride for me is like 100k plus so either I’m just going to do that solo or if it’s a qualifying ride I’ll do that if I can do you know a brevet cool but if I can’t I’ll just go ride 100k by myself and then like once a month or something and then in addition to that I try to ride it on my trainer and like do some intervals um and I try to I aim for two 1-hour rides a week on the trainer and if I can do more cool but it’s important for me to set a minimum bar rather than like a overly ambitious and demotivating high bar and I just like make sure I hit the minimum so I think I averaged five hours a week on the bike in the years leading up to PBP and that includes all the qualifying rides five hours a week it’s it’s enough yeah that is amazing um because I think like it’s a really interesting approach as well because it can be very all-consuming training but if you really think about okay I’m going to set this minimum that will get me to where I want to be it’s much more um efficient I suppose i personally don’t really think about training i just ride a lot probably a lot more than you um but at the end of the day we’re pretty much the same speed so why am I doing all that anyway you know what I mean i mean for me I think it’s like you know know thyself so for me I know that if I set a overly ambitious goal that I can’t hitch I’m going to be like well whatever i guess I’ll do none where if I just keep it steady I can do that so I’m not trying to do the minimum it’s just like you know I have two children i got a busy job like that’s what I can do so that’s what I do cool all right so we’re going to talk about the actual ride itself and um what’s interesting about Arvy is he’s a data scientist in his career um so can we would we start with the graph would that be a good place I can put it up does that make sense yes sir let’s do that okay okay okay so maybe just give an overview of this graph that I’m putting okay so So this is a chart I I made after the fact um I had a plan about what I was going to do i knew I I I know what the mile sort of the the controls or other checkpoints were i figured out the distance between roughly how long I’d be stopped and roughly how fast I would go and so this dashed blue line represents my plan along the x-axis here is time you can see going all the way up to 90 and the y axis is miles so this is like the progress I would make over time now you can see in the blue line basically the slope is steady and then there’s you can see three flat spots right so my plan was like ride steady and have three long like three good sleeps that’s what I plan to do and just keep my other stops super short and I’m pretty good at keeping my stops really short in California like I can just roll up pop into the gas station grab a few things I throw in my random bag and I go and then I like re you know I eat I eat on the bike and all that but what actually happened was not quite that um this uh sort of coral colored line is what I actually rode and so the things to observe is if you look at the slope of the line it’s a pretty close match to my plan which means my rolling speed was pretty much what I thought in fact maybe even a little better but those stops are hard to keep short in France so for the first few stops I was like you know up through Fujer i didn’t stop at all so Fujer was the first time I got off the I was in the 700 p.m wave so um you I was rolling and uh I basically didn’t stop for 15 hours so that I you know rolled right through cool but then each little control point you can see me slipping against that plan and it’s because it’s these controls you know a control in uh well I guess we do EP electronic but even real controls here it’s really quick like you stop in you grab a receipt and you’re out and in at PDP every control is like essentially like a county fair like you show up and it’s like you know a school or some public and it’s just like this massive sprawling like chaotic beautiful chaotic insane zone there’s just like bikes everywhere you got to get your control stamp where’s water like where’s the bathroom where’s food it’s like Yeah rv I’ve I’ve heard you describe it like that before and I’ve never heard anyone else describe it like that but it’s exactly like a count a county fair it’s kind of chaotic it’s difficult to get a grip on what actually is going on the strange strange agricultural machinery and events and it’s just weird and it is very difficult to just focus your brain on what you need to do and get out of there quickly exactly one other thing this chart by the way I love how simple it is and I know this is your profession but it’s two lines but so powerful when you think about what all the things mean the flat lines the the the slope everything like that like if we zoomed in we’d see those mini flat parts essentially yeah fascinating yeah people should comment below if they feel like they need me to make a utility where you can plug this in plug in your Stravaride and it’ll spit this chart out for you i love it that’s a great idea that’s so cool but so anyway so narrate what happened um so all of my stops were a lot shorter and so I ended up sleeping the first night at uh my I think you can see my plan was to stop at KH i only made it to St nick i um I slept there um and then I got to rest at like 41 hours or something like that um which is not horrible but it was like behind the plan and are we can I go back one step how did you feel at the start line were you nervous oh I was giddy like it was the start line is magic there are 7,000 starters at DBP 2023 and like you don’t know what 7,000 bikes and cyclists look like until you’re in it and it’s not just like random bikes it’s not like you know Amsterdam cafe like metro stop or something it’s like 7,000 people who have dreamed and planned and they are there and you’re just like it’s it’s it’s wild so I like watched the a awave and I was just like yeah a glow slight tangent because that’s what I do like I know you I I know you love bikes you love old steel bikes etc what was your were there some interesting bikes across those 7,000 riders oh yeah yeah i mean the most interesting one was I think I saw I saw on the ride there was like a guy riding like a 1930s I don’t like an ancient ancient machine and like in an older gentleman like just so much respect for that um did he have a matching outfit as well cuz that’s typically goes hand in hand isn’t that right well ex I don’t think that he was like a affected replayer he was just it it seemed more like monkl like you know he had this devotion to this it was awesome there was like somebody on a fat bike i mean all the French riders were just on like random carbon road bikes yes uh like I was on there on a 650B like uh cosplay reenactor bike with the handlebar bag which was perfect for me i love that bike but like you see someone like that and it’s like “Oh they’re probably American.” Yeah it’s funny because it almost feels like the French since it’s their event they don’t really feel the need to recreate anything whereas Yeah people from other countries we kind of see the history much more you know yeah and and those bikes are really functional i mean like now having ridden a 300k like when we rode a 300k together the other week um I was just on a a bike with no handlebar bag or had like a like a you know burrito bag but like a big boxy bag oh it’s so functional for me i that that’s I would not ride a 1,200k without a big old bag of my handy bars cool all right so back to the start you were giddy you got going 7,000 people sorry yeah and I I think you know I was like I I was mindful to like not blow up my pace um that was like hard learn lesson for many other berets so I kept it steady and we kept going so it was really the stops that were the only thing that I didn’t go as short as I thought but anyway I got to Oh and I should have said also one nice thing was that I went to PBP um you know I knew a lot of people but I didn’t have a plan of a crew to ride with um but I ended up riding pretty much the entire event um with Mark from Brooklyn Mark Swire who he was like my PVP brother now it’s like such an intense bonding experience we ended up we’re at the same hotel beforehand so we had chatted a little bit and he was in a start wave maybe half an hour before me and I caught him on the road and then we were riding about the same speed so we were a So he he and I rode pretty much the entire event together so that was really nice yeah you say Brooklyn so I’m immediately thinking uh some steel bike as well did he yeah yeah he Yeah totally yeah i saw his bike before I saw him i was like “Oh this is a cool like nice Johnny Coast.” And then Yeah so we got to chat um so yeah we got to um we were we we kind of rolled into breast like you know a little better but like feeling okay but feeling a little bit nervous about time um not like crisis but like okay we got to get you know we have no time no time to lose every minute is precious and then rolling out of breast uh there’s like that climb out of breast and uh we we we’re rolling up it was like daytime and there was a a rise and a a light at the top and there was a bunch of riders just who were kind of stopped and like I knew it would be annoying to stop on this hill and there were no the intersection was clear and like you know I’m from Oakland he’s from Brooklyn we’re like traffic lights are for cars like that’s a totally optional thing like I don’t uh I wasn’t even thinking about it so we just like went up and we were just like yeah we’re just going to roll through um which is like it’s literally second nature i did not think about it at all and then it’s not it’s not a crime if you don’t think about it is that exactly so we roll through but then that was like the a big turning point in the ride for me there was a official on a moto just be like right behind us like we blew the light like right in front of him and he pulled us over and he was pissed and Yes yeah he pulled us over like he was shouting at us he and um he was like uh yeah penalty twohour penalty he he he he he uh barked at us and I was like you know did my did my best to very politely ask for mercy and in in French I was like I was just like we weren’t even thinking about it like hey we’re sorry like can we get a warning two hours is wild and it was right when we were like every minute is precious and it was like slow motion like So now instead of riding for 90 hours we think we’re riding for 88 hours oh my god like I I would imagine as soon as you left you just took off at speed that would have just stressed me completely out i was 15 minutes ahead of my friends and I joined them and those 15 minutes really bothered me because I had to get Yeah so two hours wow yeah yeah so we were like damn uh but you know in it was a turning point in the ride like it was like okay well you know gloves are off like what are we going to do and so I was like look I’ve I’ve been thinking about this for so long like my wife is taking care of our children on her own like there’s so many pe you know like I’m not I am not going to ride the one minute of delay and get and DNF that is not happening to me um and so uh you know so that that was breast and you can see um I you know to zoom in you can see I looking at this chart and and my you can see those little horizontal ones they just get shorter and shorter and shorter like I’m just going to not stop and I rode fast i rode negative slits um one thing that was great I think like riding in NorCal a lot like you really get used to climbing some people come to PBP and they’re like “Whoa these rollers are tough.” And I I you know I was prepared enough and I was experienced enough and it was actually kind of an amazing feeling i felt like a sort of super superhero strength because I think having slipped back in the bulge a little bit I was now among maybe slightly slower average um speed than I had been before and so we would come over all these rolling climbs through Britany and I would you know you’d you’d come up you hit the top and I like to descend fast so I would rip down and then I would hit the climb and there would be like just all these riders stretched out before me and I would just make my way right through and I was just like I’m doing it you know it’s it’s funny because you had a maybe a sense of righteousness there’s no way I’m going to let that cop you know take my PB totally exactly what you needed exactly mark and I were That’s exactly our was our mentality and Mark was he was completely on the same page because people kind of react differently to things like that but it sounds like he was also No we were like totally shoulder-to-shoulder on it that’s funny yeah um anyway so that was great and um can I can Yeah can I ask you just another random question because I remember you talk about this before um you know you your approach was 90 hours and you wanted the full value of 90 hours so right I think you have strong opinions about give me the bulge basically oh yeah totally exactly so yeah I selected I had ridden a 600 um in 2022 so I had like a reasonably good um priority for registering but I definitely intentionally chose the 90 hour start and I will go on record as saying Rob Hawk is wrong uh that 84 hours is the best and it’s the reason is like I don’t know maybe this is the only time I’ll do PBP i wanted the full experience i was like just give me the circus like I want to be in there and that mass start is just so magic i if who if I ever do it again maybe I would choose a different start i don’t know maybe not you got to do it at least once it’s good i I agree with you it’s the full experience and it’s not as pleasant in many ways trying to sleep in all those different places um but yeah even doing the 84-hour ride that would have been after that policeman met you that would have been an 82-hour ride which stressful you know yeah totally so anyway so what I discovered was a few things one is that like oh you know I’ve been training endurance for years i got it like I I I felt my body felt okay and then the thing that I discovered on PBP was the power of the ditchnap i had never been a ditch napper like all my 600ks I you know rode and had a real stop a shower I slept uh and I was like that’s the way to do it that’s the that’s the comfortable way to do it and the ditch app is just too much torture it’s it’s masochistic but when you’re that tired it actually is amazing um and I discovered that it’s not so much that your body is gassed it’s just that your mind is just scrambled so what I would do is we would ride and then I get to the point when we were feeling like too droopy I would get up you know just get off the road a little bit and it was pretty warm this year so that maybe helped um and I had a little emergency I had like a bivvie that I in my seat back so I would just like pop into that and if it was if it was night or just not even if it was day and I would set my phone alarm for like 12 minutes and like lie down with my phone like here uh and then you know in a in 12 minutes off the bike time you could get 8 minutes of sleep which sounds if for people who are listening who haven’t done it they’re going to be like that sounds horrible no it’s like it’s it’s blissful and it’s just what you need and it’s enough was there any feeling cuz I remember I perfected the ditch nap on my second visit i was I’m not good at sleeping in general but I remember like the biggest anxiety is what if I sleep through the alarm the alarm goes off i wake up 12 hours later right any thoughts about that i mean I was definitely worried about it a little bit that’s why I did the like phone like next to my head but it was okay it was okay i think you know you’re still like you’re you’re not in deep sleep like you’re just under you know it’s just like a little bit of chloroform to the brain like uh and it was and so that enabled me to keep going and then I guess one thing that you know I rode most with Mark but um he’s a little faster on the flats and I’m maybe a little faster in climbing so we also just kind of realized well we don’t need to constantly wait at every you know turn or rise for each other like we can let the distance expand and contract a little bit like we’re averaging the same speed over a long chunk even if not over a short chunk so I got to ride a lot with writers from with with from India from France like all over i always find that interesting did you verbally discuss that with Mark or it just kind of you just fell into that kind of rhythm i kind of don’t remember but I feel like we were just like had like good psychic connection i’d be interested to hear what he says about that but you should do you should do him next okay um uh but yeah it it it clearly worked out and like we were definitely you know sticking together waiting for each other at controls neither of us had even one flat like we had no mechanicals so that was good yeah the road surface is incredible isn’t that right that’s was remarkable yeah it was great and um yeah so it was like it was it was cool to to to fight back through it um I remember I like uh found Kitty Gersol on the road who’s like a legendary SFR rider and uh she was mad because like some Belgian rider had like close past her or like yelled something at her and she was like “I’m mad at this guy.” And I was like “I’m mad at this cop.” And like I rode with Katie for a little while and we like had like a little you know let it out yeah again they should kind of manufacture some incident for every rider so we can just hang on to that righteous anger to get us to the finish yeah and then anyway so so uh I guess make a very long story short um I I kept that momentum and you know as you if if you you can see on that chart I made up the time and beat the time actually by a little bit and in the end they never assessed me the penalty no that’s the incredible thing you can imagine if that cop maybe wasn’t even a cop he was some guy dressed up as a cop and he’d meet random people and say five hour penalty six hour yeah really so I have never heard a story like that wow that is the boogeyman breast yeah the finish line how did that feel well we talked about that before but just in the context were you with Mark for example yep yep we came in and we picked up another rider a woman from I don’t know somewhere and like we were paselining and like we were we were really giving it the juice um and we came in like I guess let’s see it was it it like Montano Parish was night we had a little bit of downtime there but it was like you know dawn had dawned and we finished in the morning sometime i don’t even know it was daytime anyway and it was it was jubilant it was really great like nice strong finish like I remember um like you described yourself giddy at the start but definitely the last 50 miles you start getting giddy because you feel oh my god I think I’m going to make this thing you know which is great um tell me about the people of Britany supporters that kind of thing well you know everyone says this but they’re so so right that that the um the human spectacle or human not spectacle that’s the wrong word the like the celebratory environment is what makes it so special i mean the route is nice but I don’t think it would make sense to like go and ride the PVP route like if you were planning a bike holiday and you were choosing it for sort of beauty or excitement of the route this PVP route wouldn’t be like in your top 40 places to go it’s you know it’s rolling green hills it’s totally nice but what makes it amazing is the human geography um and yeah you’re riding through these little villages and there’s all the you know the the the kids and the old people la you know roadside and it is like you it’s it’s um humbling and so heartwarming that the sincerity of it i mean we live in insincere times you know like like for good reason like everything is crazy and terrible and you know it’s like it’s very easy to sort of be sort of cynical and detached but like this is this is a moment where you are attached you know you are connected and it is sincere to the other participants to those you know to those who you don’t know and the people on the roadside I I actually I feel like being able to to speak in French to people help really helped me um get like a deeper view and that was nice yeah you know I think I think about that as well because sometimes I feel maybe I I overromantize the experience because I don’t speak French so it’s much more alien but it’s nice to hear as someone who speaks French you understand a lot more the context which is great I wrote with a guy from Britany oh sorry say I wrote rode with a guy from Britney for a good chunk on like the return and he had um that like sort of white and black like checkered flag like stuck in his saddle flapping along the way and you know Yeah yeah yeah and we like rode through his village too and anyway it was cool it was cool and also he was like putting down some power so I was like “Oh I was really happy to be able to draft him.” And he was like “Oh this like American guy who speaks a little French and like you know it it was really nice.” And then I rode with some riders from India a bunch um which was cool um you know my my dad’s from India and so you know feel some connection to that and I’ve been sort of following the Indian rando scene which is like really exploded there were so many riders like there’s some people who I like know from Instagram and Straa who I met and that was great ari I love how you can navigate so many different people’s so we’ve got the Canadians where you’re from United States both coasts the French leave anyone else out like it is pretty remarkable you have But that’s I mean but anyone’s going to have that experience because you’re all you’re connected by this huge thing that you’re all doing together like you have so much more in common with them than you don’t so it’s like oh it’s easy to talk about the tiny differences at the margin yeah did you bring the little pin metal things at all i did i did uh I think I even have one on my desk do you recommend bringing them well that’s not it yes it was great uh it was really nice to be able to give something back a little token oh wait yeah so I actually didn’t even manage to give them all away look I even I I have one on my desk here these these these things um these little SFR pins and yes I I kept like a clutch of them in my handlebar bag these are the ones that were like in my drop bag at Ludiaak i didn’t like refill them um and yes it was like so nice to be able to give them to a kid and like oh San Francisco that’s a thing that I know and yeah it was a really nice connection just to give to give back in a tiny uh you mentioned the drop bag service there would you recommend it oh yes that was huge big thanks um to Deb Banks and the the others you know around Davis who organized that for American Randos um yeah I just like was able to um keep like a second set of like a New Jersey new bibs and like Oh yeah I think I had them before i committed the international pastry crime of transporting Pop-Tarts from the US to France like you don’t go to you don’t go to France to eat Pop-Tarts but that’s the rando food that I know and train with so like you know I was able to like just reup some of that stuff in my bag and it was really handy and just seeing Deb was like in Ludiac on the way out it was just it was just you know she’s so supportive um and Eric like it was it was that was a nice uh bit of support any comments about the food in general well um I so learning what you eat is very important uh on in in when you’re training and so I like have a pretty well- definfined like how many calories per hour I need to eat i’m like you know I just like eat like a disgusting raccoon i mean like Pop-Tarts and gummy bears basically they’re easy to carry uh that’s what works for me so uh I eat a lot of those and then at the controls you top up with kind of whatever is there i mean like once again if you know France is the internationally renown food country that’s not the experience you’re going to have on PPP exactly cool all right so then the million-dollar question actually anything else you want to say on the ride itself otherwise I’ll move forward um yeah I think we Let’s move forward okay so million-dollar question will you do it again i’m a solid maybe on this um it is so if you have not done it like anyone watching this video is thinking about doing you haven’t done it you got to do it you got to do it it is so my words of wisdom on this are if you’re a cyclist and you don’t do PBP at least once you are totally missing out um but for me personally if I were to do it every year I think I would also be missing out because there’s other things to do you know like um there’s things that are not on the bike like you know spend time with your family um but there’s also so many other events I’d love to do so like there’s um coming there’s like the gold rush round there speaking of events it’s gold rush round is coming up later in Davis you know through the Sierra to Nevada i’d like to maybe try that this year maybe the thousand I don’t know um I would love to do New York Montreal New York which is um 1200 American 1200K that it’s I think they put on twice but that’s like connecting two places that I lived for a long time think that would be cool um so maybe um one thing I also think about is like it’s interesting TV happens every four years like you can you can chunk the rest of your life in like a finite number of PVPs um and so sometimes I think about like wow wouldn’t it be amazing to ride PBP with one of my kids or either of them who are like you know eight and nine now and so by my calculation uh like 2035 through 201 those are the that’s the range when they are legally old enough and I’m maybe not too old so yeah maybe I’ll maybe maybe again we’ll see have you have you mentioned this plan to your kids yet oh yes yes already okay good the art of indoctrinating your children to your own hobbies is like a really it’s a delicate balance like you have to nudge them just enough but not be so overbearing to scare them off so I’m I’m really bad at it because they see that biking brings me joy therefore they will never do it okay to suppress that joy yeah cool okay so then let’s end with uh your three unique tips that guarantee a finish for PBP okay so I guess like if I were to say my three bits of advice for prospective PBP riders just the first thing is that tip one is like believe you can do it like you totally can do it it it is like I said you know you do the math it’s right at the limit of you know hard but so doable the real limit is do you actually want to do this like most people don’t want to do this some people see it and they’re like of course I don’t want to do this and some people discover that like actually this isn’t for me um I can remember I think I was riding with um Kyle from Outerhell Bags on the way out who’s a faster rider than I am for sure um but we were riding together for a lot of the way and then I think he decided to pull out he’s like I’m just not having fun anymore um I don’t want to be like he was we were riding together so he we he could have finished if he wanted but he’s like I don’t want to do this totally valid choice if you want to you can finish it and I guess so my to wrap up this tip tip one is the amount of you have to show up trained but the amount of training you need it might be a lot less than you think at least in my experience you have to hit that minimum but the minimum is not that high so thing one is believe it you know believe in yourself and and you can do it cool okay thing two is I would say to enjoy the leadup and to learn as you go as much as possible some people like discover randenering and it happens to be like the year of PvP so they’re like “Yeah just let’s do it.” And that’s that’s cool for those who are in that route if you know about it well in advance like it can be a big dream that slowly simmers for a long time which it was for me and which actually I relished you know slowly bit by bit working my way up learning things doing new distances you know building a different bike changing my uh like eating or nutrition or uh I guess that’s the same thing eating or you know clothing like all those things that there’s a real joy in that in like cultivating your readiness so I would say like you know enjoy the leadup and learn as you go nice cultivate your readiness i like that that’s a good Yeah okay yeah and then third and I’m going to borrow the Charlie Parker quote um maybe apocryphal but you know the the famous jazz saxoponist and he would say to musicians like that you have to learn your instrument you have to learn the music master those things practice practice practice and then you know once you fully internalize it just forget all that and just play and I think that’s what it comes down to like you know you need to get fit learn your bike you know know how to fix your bike learn know what to eat make a plan be aware of the plan but then once you’re out there like you know got to play jazz uh Arvy it’s a has been a complete pleasure i really appreciate it and thanks for all the insight and again I always forget this but we actually met on the train coming back from PBP 2023 and I remember being exhausted and probably less than verbal at that time so that’s right yeah I remember rolling up onto the platform and seeing that cool land shark once again like see seeing a beautiful object and then yeah we had a yeah we had a nice chat so it’s been been a pleasure to be your friend and and riding sometimes riding partner in that time and thanks for doing this great podcast no thank you okay cool see you later