Start-wave panel + Q&A

let me just start my video here. All right. So the way that we're going to work this today, we have several presenters. We have Max Paletta, we have Deb Banks, we have Mary Gershma, we have Mark Thomas, and we have Narayan Krishnamurthy. And we'll be going in that order, and it will match for the segment on talking about start groups in the order in which they are started actually at PVP, which means then that we'll go 80 hour first, then 90 hour group, and then 84 hour group. So while each presenter is giving their presentation, if you have questions of that presenter, use the Q&A feature, please, and type the name of the person that you want to answer the question as the preface to that, and then ask your question. And as each presenter finishes, they will then provide answers via the Q&A feature by typing them in as the next presenter is giving their piece. And then when the second presenter finishes, they will then start answering the Q&A questions while the third presenter is doing their presentation. At the very end, what I've asked the presenters to do is to give the best question or the most frequent question asked, and then answer that in the group setting here so that it gets into the recording, and then we'll go in the order in which the presenters presented as well. So first off, I'd like to, this is something that I neglected to do in the first presentation, was to explain who the heck I am. So I'll take just a moment here to explain that. I've been a random nurse USA member since 2004. I finished my first SR series in 2005. And I've been to PBP in '07, '11, '15, and '19. I did not finish in 2007. And the whole reason why I've gotten into organizing first for my local Brevet region, but for now all other regions, these seminars is because I left PBP 2007 knowing that there was a lot that I didn't get done right and didn't prepare for, and came back in 2011, having worked very hard on fixing all of those issues. And out of that grew my desire to try and share that knowledge as widely as possible. So that's how all of these seminars came to be. They came from a long list of steps taken to prepare for PBP first personally, then for my club, and now for as much of Rusa as can possibly be. So the first presenter today is going to be Max Paleto. And Max is going to be talking about the 80-hour group start. And Max has been a Randonore since 2003, where he rode with the New England Randonores. And then Max moved west and rode for at least 10 years with the San Francisco Randonores, during which time he started our adventure series, which is the SR series of very challenging mixed terrain routes, a two, three, four, and six hundred K. And that we've tried to hold every year. Sometimes pandemics have gotten in the way of our holding the whole series. But Max is the person that created those routes. Max is the person that organized all of the volunteers and the dates and all of that stuff. And Max has now turned that over to somebody else locally because Max is now and has been riding his Brevets in Switzerland for the last four years. So Max, if you are ready. Yes. Can you hear me? Very lightly. Okay, I'll try to move. Is this any better? Yes, it is. Okay. I'm good. So I guess my video isn't working. But I'll see if I can share my screen. There it is. Can you see that? Yeah. Is that still working? It looks great. Cool. Great. All right. So this should take about 10 minutes or so. So just a quick recap first about my own GDP history to sort of frame this. My first GDP attempt was in 2007 in the 80 hour group, I DNF'd. My bike was lost in transit. I in an emergency purchased a bike that was far from small for me. The weather was cold. My hands got numb. It was a disaster. I quit and breast. But then I came back in 2015 and 2019. Again, both times in the 80 hour group and finished with relatively fast times in 53 to 55 hours. So in this talk primarily I'll be talking about my own experience sort of riding for time. But I'm hoping that there's information here that's also useful for riders who are interested in the 80 hour group and are not necessarily riding for a fast time. So, you know, quick context about what this experience is like for me. You know, a fast 80 hour ride plan means you start on the first day around four or five p.m. It means that you get to the Bilen-les-Jouels control 220K in, you know, sometime before midnight, 10 or 11 p.m. And your first sunrise is on day two finds you somewhere between Tintinyak and Ludaak. So you've covered around 350 or 400 kilometers at this point. So you can get into breast sort of in the middle of the afternoon of that second day. Head right back and arrive in Ludaak shortly after dark, nap there. And then continue on your way through the night. Sunrise will probably find you sometime around Tintinyak. And at that point it's about 350K to the finish. And you arrive in Paris as night falls on that third day. And this was definitely a sort of type two fun experience. You can see the expression on my face in that photo. A lot of the ride felt like that to me both times. One thing that I found interesting in my two successful experiences were that the start waves seemed very different. So in 2015 I'm not sure how many start waves there were. In 2019 there were five. In 2015 I was in the A wave. So it's basically the first starters in the 80 hour group. The first people to start PVP. And this group was mostly race bikes. Mostly riders with support. So they had friends or relatives meeting them at controls. They typically had very little gear with them. They were basically like going out for club ride. Each stage was like a club ride. There was lots of littering. So they'd peel open an energy bar and just not even bother putting it back in the pocket. Things just go on to the road. The start was very fast and dangerous. We saw several crashes just in the first few kilometers. On the plus side we got to Fougère which is about 307 kilometers in. In less than 10 hours. So you can really make good time at the beginning there. In 2019 my friend Brian and I chose the E wave. And this was still pretty fast but not quite as much as A. Generally less motivated. A little bit less skilled we thought. Sort of some sketchy sort of baseline and echelon dynamics. But still oddly competitive. So arguments would break out when gaps would form in pace lines and so on. And definitely our experience was that if we wanted to go really fast we had to be at the front and pull. Which was different from the A group. The A group we could not really hang with the front of the A group. They were too fast for us. One interesting note. There's a sort of start wave gamesmanship where some riders will wait for friends to sign up. And then start in a later wave. Because of the sort of psychological advantage of catching up instead of being caught by someone. Of course this can backfire if your wave is slower and you sort of spend too much energy trying to catch up to your friends in the earlier wave. A word about the return leg. If you ride out to breast quickly. If you sort of take advantage of these pace line and group dynamics on the outbound leg. And so you make it out to breast in say somewhere between 22 and 30 hours. That gives you a lot of flexibility for the return. If you decide to take it easy then you really have a lot of time buffer. Or if you're riding for time then you have a good chance of riding the last third or quarter of the ride in daylight back to Paris. One thing to note. My rule of thumb is if you make it. If you're trying to go as hard as you can expect to be about six hours slower on the return than on the outbound. So if you make it to breast in 22 hours it'll take you 28 hours to get to Paris. So far told right now 50 hours. If you make it out there in 24 then expect roughly a 54 hour ride time. Assuming that everything goes well. You don't have any severe mechanicals or anything like that. Some pros and cons of the 80 hour group. One definite advantage is that you cover a lot of distance on the first day in daylight. On both occasions we covered between 180 and 200k before it was dark on day one. There's this very strong pace line advantage where the first 300k go by in 10 hours potentially if you're in the right group. Which makes it easier to get to breast overall than if you are riding by yourself and gives you more buffer for the return leg. This also means the controls outbound are less crowded and if you choose to keep going at a high pace then you will also have less crowded controls roughly from Tintignac to Fougere all the way back to Paris. The disadvantages are sort of the complement of this. So you know that the riding at the start is quite scary. Especially the 2015 a-wave I thought was one of the highest adrenaline cycling experiences of my life. That year the the ride started not in Rambouillet but in Saint-Quentin-Livlin and so there's lots of road furniture and sort of lane dividers and so on and we saw lots of crashes. Some of them looked quite severe like broken fork sort of rider on pavement kind of crashes. And then the second disadvantage is that when you head back from Paris then by the time you get to Carré or Ludiac you meet sort of the large bulge of outbound riders which means that the crowds the controls are truly huge and also you have this continuous stream of bright headlights outbound you know beaming into you so that's quite unpleasant. So in conclusion I would say if you have a time goal like Charlie Miller or some other you know specific time you want to achieve then definitely the 80 hours is the the start to pick. Also if you don't necessarily have such a goal but you're confident that you can do one fast 600k then you could do the 80 hours and sort of ride the wave of fast outbound riders to breast and then have plenty of time on the way back. Otherwise probably one of the other start times might be safer. For example in 2007 when I had all of my mechanical problems with my small bike you know if I had had a few more hours in the bank to rest and sort of recuperate I may not have DNF'd and breast like I did. And then finally you know don't in the end don't stress too much about all these times and so forth you know don't forget the pastries and the other nice things that that France has to offer. And that's all for my presentation. Okay thank you Max. Max one thing before we go to the next presenter I wanted to ask you if if all of the 80 hour start waves are so frenetic as some of the experiences that you related in in some of the earlier start groups. So is all of the 80 hour start waves seemingly more like a race than what people understand PVP is? Well that was sort of the a little bit of what I tried to get across in the difference between A and E. So I think that every wave has some people in it that are definitely going for time. The A wave in my experience felt like everyone was going hard it was really hard charging and like I said almost dangerous. The E wave that Brian and I rode in in 2019 was much more varied there were definitely sort of riders who just seemed like they were going at a you know more gentle more sort of tourist space and then others who were maybe more aggressive and you know Brian and I certainly were at the head of that group. So okay well thanks. So I apologize to everyone I am not able to get the video feed for each individual presenter to show at this moment. We can as you saw show their their slide shows but otherwise I'm not I'm still working on this and let's transition next to Deb. Deb Banks. So Deb is a second time presenter for this. You may remember her from the first PVP prep seminar. Deb Banks has been riding Bravais. She began in 2007 and since then has accomplished a quite a number of Randonore achievements. Among those the Mondiala Award and the Cajon status. She's done a Super 6 and she has earned her Ultra Randonore Award. She's also a two-time finisher of PVP and Deb doesn't just get things from Randonore. She has also contributed quite a bit. She served on the board for six years. She just finished her sixth year. She is currently the head of the the chair of the gravel committee and news about the gravel program that Rusa will be introducing will be coming out over the course of this year. So Deb if you are ready. Deb I can't hear you. I had gotten my screen up and then I had not I had muted myself. All right can you guys see my screen I hope so. We can see Saba. You can see Saba. Yeah but go ahead and switch to your presentation. I have. I'm seeing my presentation. We are not. Huh that's weird. Okay let's try this a third time. Okay. Sharing my screen. I'm showing it right here. Sorry everybody. There it is. Okay so thank you. I might have moved out a little bit too fast. Here we go. Why choose the 90 hour start? That's my task to talk a little bit about today and I had to choose the 90 hour start all three times that I attempted PVP because I am not the fastest rider and so you know I'm perfect to talk about the 90 hour start because I couldn't do the 80 hour start if my life depended on it and I may be able to do the 84 hour start but I'm not sure why I would and here's why when you choose the 90 hour start you have got the best insurance policy for completion. If things go wrong if you have horrible mechanicals as Max described in his presentation with his first PVP you have digestive issues. You have horrible weather. I was on that same 2007 PVP and I was able to finish. You've got 90 hours. That's a lot of minutes. That's a lot of seconds. That's a lot of time to kind of take care of and maybe manage some of the problems that might come your way. So you can still ride quickly. I'm not going to offer up that you can Charlie Miller during the 90 hour although the original folks were able to but in this day and age I think with so many people that are on the ride that that's unlikely so if you really are looking for a fast race type time then 90 hours is not for you. I'll just say that straight up but here's some of the good stuff. On the day of the ride you get to get a full night sleep. You can nap in the afternoon. You can enjoy a fabulous meal. You can celebrate your friends as they take off for their wave and you don't have to worry about getting to the start but especially true for the 84 hour start which starts early in the morning the following day. So we were able to have a big meal. We wish our friends off and then we also got to watch the 80 hour group take off. This was in 2011 and you get to catch up with your friends and then watch everybody else take off which is really fun. Then also in the start at least in 2007 in the old days you would line up in the stadium and wait for hours to slowly work your way around to kind of get over the chip and get your Brevet card signed and there was this huge bulge and that bulge has been minimized in years since with this wave idea where people you know line up and you get a time that you need to be in your wave. This is our wave it's the J wave and there are a lot of people in it no doubt about it but the waves depart just about every 15 minutes so while there's still a lot of riders on the road they start to spread out a little bit faster than in the old days when it felt incredibly dangerous when you would kind of ride along within this bulge. And this is in 2019 within an hour and a half we had spread out on the road so this is us on our J wave and you know frankly it's not a huge horrible problem like it used to be in the old days. I'm not going to I am going to say that that very first start out of the gate in PBP. Every time I've done PBP there are a lot of riders and there's a lot there can be a lot of jostling around for position and pelotons getting into line and so you really have to watch your P's and Q's. I mean everybody's a little antsy, everybody's excited, everybody's a little bit nervous so you just have to really be a little extra careful but once you get going you know you settle in and you're riding and it's just like you're riding a ride and that's fabulous. So here's the other thing yes controls are more crowded but the organizers have gotten much better at managing food and people and lines especially on the outbound. On the return as Max mentioned you've got riders that are from different hours all ending up at the same controls at the same time and that's definitely a little bit harder but there's not much you can do about it unless you can get your cart stamped and then move out of the control itself and go find food at a restaurant or some place else, true for sleeping as well because to be clear there are a lot of people on Paris, Paris, 7500 of your brand new favorite riding friends are all riding together at the same time and that's one of the most amazing and wonderful things about PBP is that you are riding next to a group of Danish people and then you're in the mix with some Taiwanese and then all of a sudden you're with the Japanese and then you're you know with the Spaniards and then you're back and with your French and you might never see a lot of your own friends that you see all the time sleeping as a problem can be a problem unless you choose to get a hotel off off site and the bathrooms are a mess they're just a mess so bring your own toilet paper wipes whatever you need to do because they're a mess through it doesn't matter what time you start they're pretty messy but I guess my point is is think through think through your situation prior to going to PBP and then pre-ride spend a lot of time thinking about it and of course managing your expectations and your ride during the ride of course and on the ride when you're on the 90 hour start one of the other beautiful things is because you're not racing is you have time to catch up with friends on their journey you see them at a control and you can sit down for a minute and go find out what their latest story is you can meet new friends and you get to see familiar faces the top right corner of my slide is a young French guy that had joined our group riding and this is in 2011 and then all of a sudden this gentleman comes up in the brown sweater and we're like who's this guy and it turns out to be his grandfather who had written pvp in the 70s and was out to ride a couple of k's as his grandson you know cruised by that was an incredible experience and a really cool story it's pretty great to be able to stop and take in all the fabulous French all the stuff that's going on from the locals you know the pop-up craperies coffee on the side of the road whatever it is and if you're always really worried about every second of time that you're spending you don't get to do that or do it as often or as well and then when it's all all done you get to celebrate and that's true all across the board get to get medals you get to you know give people hugs you to cheer them on and in and that's a fantastic thing everybody loves that but finally there's only one thing that 90 hour people can do when they join pvp in the 90 hour and that is to become part of the society of Adrian hands and Adrian hands was a big advocate and an NCN he did pvp in 2003 and he believed that every ride should be an adventure every ride should be enjoyed to its fullest his pvp in 2003 was 88 55 or later is what you can do to become a to get completion and to be able to get into the Adrian hands i'm lucky i'm a two-time Adrian hands winner if you will i'm a full value gal my 2007 pvp finished in 89 50 with 10 big minutes to spare and in 2011 89 45 i stretched out for an extra 15 minutes so with that 90 hours worth every second thanks thanks deb so our next presenter who will cover the 84 hour group will be Mary Gersma Mary if you could introduce yourself give us some of your background here i've kind of misplaced my notes for a moment so if i can hit upon you you bet hey everyone it's really great to see everybody's name up there so many familiar names i look forward to hopefully riding again with some of you soon and then also with some of you perhaps for the for the first time in the in the near future my name is Mary Gersma and i ride with the dc randoners with my husband usually we're riding tandem together we rode pvp in 2011 and 2019 together on tandem and both times chose the 84 hour start so i've been riding randonering events since 2005 and i started um really more the transportation cyclist transportation cycling is my first love because i mean if you can get all your needs met on your bike i mean that's the best way to live but it's also fun to see how far you can take your riding to really push yourself and then with with what ed and i do to share an experience on the same bike it's it's pretty awesome so as i said 2011 and 2019 ed falker and i rode the with the 84 hour start on pvp and we finished both times um i within like 20 minutes of of each other so it was like um not with of each other we were like right by each other but in terms of in 2011 was like 20 minutes faster slower than 2019 so it was 81 and a half hours for us and that's the start that suits us uh the best so so far just a little bit of background about the different groups i pulled this up just so you have a frame of reference you can see that um the smallest group is the 80 uh is the 84 hour group and so sometimes it does feel like a much smaller ride um 917 riders started in the 84 hour group last time so that's quite a big difference than the over 4500 people who took the 90 hour start and then the 1200 riders who chose to pursue uh their pvp with the 80 hour start i also found it of interest i don't know what it means but that the uh dnf rate goes up for each each group and i don't know if that has i don't know if there's a pattern there if it's just um something interesting to note um i think when you're taking the 80 or 90 hour start versus the 84 hour start it's just a completely it's a really a different ride because you are starting that ride on the next day um after all the 80s and 90s have gone off so as you know on a on a brevet it's like the conditions can really change in in that amount of time so oops gotta back it up here um how does it work what what are you getting yourself into if you choose to take the 84 hour start just a few differences you have a sunday bike inspection versus the saturday bike inspection and you also begin your ride as i said in in the morning at five a.m which is almost to my mind a civilized time in the morning um and that for me that tends to work better with my uh biorhythms um you have uh 39 hours to get yourself from rambouillet to breast and then the control windows as you all know they expand out for that return leg back to rambouillet and you typically go out faster on the front leg than you do on the on the second half of of the ride um in this group we have folks that are from colorado and then san francisco in this picture and i just wanted to give a shout out um that for us the 84 hour ride we did um in 2019 it really was a great experience and i'm not saying this just because rob hawks is facilitating but we rode a lot with rob hawks and anson and brian and roi and it was it was really um just a great experience and i'm just glad we had so i wanted to mention that okay this is a little snap there are three snapshots of what pvp looks like you saw in deb's presentation the um waves of the 80s and 90 the i think of the 80s going off well here is the is the ride start for the 84 hour um riders and it's really just a bunch of people hanging around and it's a little bit more exciting actually than i recall uh from 2011 because they actually have this exciting um like start banner that you ride through last time it was like okay guys go out follow the moto don't hit anything just have a good ride goodbye so i was like wait this this is pvp like it doesn't and it feels kind of like a dc random nurse purvey and it felt that way for a while uh in 2011 in 2019 there were more people it seemed um to us relatively that we're taking that start and we intersected or excuse me the uh as special bikes we go off earlier than those that take the other 84 hour waves but it didn't seem to take the 84 hour riders uh long to catch up to us so i don't know maybe we were riding slower but the data doesn't exactly bear that out but it was still great that we got to um be in a group ride much sooner than we had in in 2019 so hopefully that will be the case in the future um but these are the early miles we're actually riding with Doug McLaren in in this uh particular part of pvp he's out of chicago i believe and this is the control in uh the lanes and you can see plenty of seating and it's pretty pretty low key um i just love the lanes so anyway and you know people the little kids that carry your tray i think that's the lanes right where they carry your tray to your spot oh i just love that okay so why 84 versus say the 90 so Deb has talked a lot about uh some of the reasons why you would choose the 90 so for us we like the morning start uh we actually stayed in soncatine and then we rode over in the morning to get to the ride start and it was uh it was fine it was good we had a lot of energy to burn so uh we were in great shape too so um and i was worried that we would get lost getting to the start but you you don't because you see other riders coming out and guess where they're going so uh you're all going to the start of pvp so you follow you end up having no problems really getting to the start of the ride so you maximize day riding by taking the 84 start the controls are quieter although in the con side here the they may be beginning to shut down on you even though you're you have plenty of time and this happens in particular at at breast the lanes is amazing both times going through lanes I mean you just are like wow i'm like the most popular bike rider in town so the party is really going when you're going outbound toward the lanes if you choose as Deb said she watched the 80 hours go off but if you choose you can also if you're taking the 84 hour start you can watch the 80s and the 90s go go off and we did that in 2011 and it was just the most exciting uh it was just so fun to see and watch people go by and see these uh just streams of riders um it was just a great it was just great to watch it so if you do take the 84 hour start and you're staying close to the start uh you can observe those the fanfare that happens with the the uh traditional 80 and 90 hour waves so uh someone talked about like not making the right decision by they put it in the chat about you know it it was a mistake for them to take the 84 hour group there there is you are a bit on the button um you know not badly but you have shaved off six hours from your finish time you're agreeing that you're going to complete this ride in 84 hours so you really want to make sure that you can get that first 600k done in good shape that you're that you're strong and fit so as you're going through the season you can kind of look at your times and see how those stack up against doing something like an 84 hour start this is a pro and con I think you have a it's a small field and uh it's easier to get into the 84 hour group compared to the 90 at least that's what I recalled last time is that people who registered late there were still slots left in the 84 hour group for them to register so we I think there were some people that took the 84 hour start perhaps because um that was all that was left to them not because they deliberately would have chosen it um so some other things to think about as I said if the small field might feel like a club ride um that can be good and and bad um I it's pretty fun to be able to really um see familiar well I suppose like the 80s and 90s you see new faces and you see familiar faces um but I um we again ended up grouping up quite a bit with uh Rob Hawks and Anson and Roy for for three out of the four days um and along and our friend Jerry who you see in this picture here so it but maybe that's how it is in the other waves as well you end up finding your group and um that's just how it goes for you that you're a little pod going through the ride together so you do spend the first two days catching up to the rest of the field kind of a weird feeling because you're like wait we are the 84 hour group but you were like last so you spend the first two days riding into the the 90s essentially the end of the 90s and when you do that it's it's kind of surreal and you have to be a little bit mindful especially in the night hours because people are very tired they're not in the generally in the same state as you they've been riding they are they've been riding that much longer and if you're catching the back of the field you know they've been riding that much longer and they've been riding that much longer without a lot of sleep so um that said it's also invigorating to catch the larger field it's super exciting um you know I think of the moment when we really start to see the field is when we're coming over the rock the travezel and then the folks who took the 90 hour start are coming back up and over the rock out of brass and it's just so beautiful and fun and just you're like wow like the best event ever um so so I don't know who else is on here that I don't know but um I hope you're all seriously thinking about pvp because it is just the greatest um again you have to make breast in 39 hours and then you have 45 hours to go back to ramboyer the controls are quieter but sometimes they are at the end that they're they're at the the very end of who they're going to be providing sustenance to and you as an 84 hour rider happen to be part of that one factor for consideration is that if you are going for an 80 hour or lower finish you can I shouldn't say easily because I chose to sleep when that opportunity presented itself but you can arrive into morton and then push on push through to the finish and hope for that for that 80 hour or so finish and I think you'll finish in the early morning hours if I'm not correct it if is that right ron I'm sorry say that again if you get to morton um did you guys finish in the morning because I know you pushed through for that uh 80 hour finish right or sub yes yeah we uh I was right behind anson and roy and uh we finished in mid-morning okay yeah and then we finished uh in the in the afternoon so that's our 84 hour ride in a nutshell I wanted to let all of you know that I do have a page I have a blog called chasing mailboxes and on that blog I have I don't even know how many reports like 80 ride reports from different riders and they I tried to divide them up actually before this presentation I tried to divide them by start wave so that um you can sort through those stories and learn a little bit more about individual ride experiences and also if you want to see what it was like in an 80 hour group versus an 84 hour group uh or a 90 hour you can certainly do that so that's I'm and if you have a story that uh from pvp that you haven't shared and you want it posted uh send it my way so and that is the concludes my presentation I hope I didn't go too over time but no thanks again Rob all right thanks you bet so if I could get you to end screen oh yeah stop no worries so um there are several reasons why I asked Mary to present on the 84 hour group one of them is because having observed her on the 84 hour group she and Ed were so efficient and and so they had their act together so I knew that she would be a good person to talk about this the other reason is that secretly while I am a committed 84 hour group starter um I wanted to stay the way it is small and quiet uh because I really really appreciate those things and so I wouldn't be trying to persuade people to do the 84 hour group so there we are so next up is Mark Thomas so Mark Thomas has been riding pvp since 1999 he's done every pvp since then he has finished generally in the 85 to 90 hour range there is one aberration to that where in 2015 mark finished in 55 hours uh he is um mark correct me if I'm wrong the only person to get both the adrian hands and the charlie miller miller society awards or if I'm not if I'm wrong about that it's a very small group still it's it's a it's a four person club the most notable member is adrian hands son ian himself ah yes okay there we go so mark is going to give a presentation that uh is best summarized as the ups and downs of pvp let me try to share the screen uh it looks like it's sharing um is that true uh just need to run your slide presentation there you go okay great um yeah pictures with me um so I'm the topic of the conversations the ups and downs of pvp I'm literally going to talk about the hills um I think that uh a deeper understanding of the details of the course from control to control is probably a next summer project but having some understanding of the overall train I think can help guide your training in 2022 and 23 and I think what I'd say about pvp is that it's not a flat ride there are no major climbs on it there are a few steep climbs on it it's very easy to underestimate it but deep into the second or third day I'd say pvp really starts to seem like a hill fest um that the jagged lines on this uh the shot of the um course give you an idea of what you're doing there there's just a lot of hills um it seems like the pvp town just route just stitches together all the towns along the way and the towns either seem to be down on a river or up at the top of the hill somewhere um and they seem to alternate from one to the other I guess these are towns are formed for transportation or fortification or whatever but at any rate you seem to find your way downhill and uphill sort of over and over and over again as you go through pvp um one of the questions people ask is how much climbing is there um they like to know it in feet or meters um I don't think it's easy to be very precise about the climbing can certainly give a sense for it um the overall elevation gain on Iraq can be measured on a number of different ways and people argue about it forever about what's correct um and uh you can tap into a lot of email discussions about that on various groups that's definitely beyond the scope of what I'm going to talk about here I'd say that um it's 11 to 13 000 meters of climbing I'm going to base the discussion here on the numbers um that I recorded and imported into ride with gps for my ride in 2019 which is probably a fairly similar course to next year it's got the same control towns probably the same start location and when I recorded that I got 11 850 meters of climbing it's funny when I started pvp sort of pre altimeter pre me having an altimeter pre me having a gps I always said it was 10 000 meters but looking at the records of the three rides that I have since I bought my first gps none of them been that low um but again take the sort of exact number where the grain of salt maybe use it to compare to the elevations shown in other ride with gps courses so you can get some idea of how it compares to something that you have ridden or or intend to ride um how to how to think about that 11 850 meters of climbing it's similar to a number of 1200 you'll see it's a little more than the Colorado high country 1200 for example um in in Colorado for some for those of you that have done that um if you think about the overall elevation gain by distance on pvp you're looking at about 10 meters per kilometer or um for those like to think about it statue units it's about 50 feet per mile so um compare that to say a super random a 600 some people have done those here they're challenging courses you get extra time for them they started nearly 17 meters per kilometer and many of them are more than that um some of you have written braves in florida cracker swamp 1200 when i wrote it was less than five meters per kilometer so we're looking at something between um those two extremes um the lowest point of the ride um the i guess the range of elevations on that profile is pretty narrow the um lowest point of the ride is at sea level and breast after you cross the bridge you go down basically along the river it comes as a matter of some of no small annoyance to be able to discover that the control in breast is not indeed at sea level the control in breast is up about 100 meter climb which seems very very painful at the time after 600 kilometers and you just want to turn around um but that's fairly typical just one climb after another along the ride um the highest point of the ride see if i can move this along is the rock trevizel it's only about 330 meters 1100 feet high um and it's steeper from the west than it is from the east but even from the west it's only 11 kilometers about 2 percent so people tend to talk a lot about it if you look at that elevation profile you see that it's the two highest points on the on the profile on the way out and on the way back but honestly it's a very easy climb and the top can be super fun you'll find lots of people out up there with campers with tables people pouring drinks and cheering on riders um it can be kind of a cool place um to stop and hang out a little bit in both directions and celebrating having reached the highest point of the ride um so again no big hills on pvp nothing like climbing the cold the beast or climbing a mountain pass in colorado or climbing up to mount mitchell in north carolina it's uh the climbs are um on a fairly narrow um a range of elevations um there are also honestly no really steep hills on the ride i think the steepest climbs on the ride are about 10 percent um i kind of looked back um at my notes and i didn't see much those higher than that and certainly those are not super long um the real challenge i think is the relentlessness of the climbs as i mentioned before they just kind of keep coming at you and if you look at that profile you'll see there's actually not very much on there that's very flat there aren't any sort of extended stretches along the lake or along a river that are kind of flat you tend to be going up or going down much of the ride um people ask where is the climbing the answer sort of everywhere i think especially with the adrenaline at the start the first part of the ride always seems really easy and almost flat um and then as you approach the first uh food stop and more time out perish on the way out um you get hit with a couple of climbs and you go oh yeah all right there are going to be some climbs on this ride and i think that's where it starts to signal to you what you're going to experience um on the way i tend to think of pbp always have kind of thought of it in sort of three big chunks um the start to ludiac um ludiac out to the turnaround at breast and back to ludiac and then from ludiac to the finish um indeed the first first couple times i rode this the ride um the start the 90 hour starts were pretty deep into the night and so this is actually kind of the way we rode it we rode out to near ludiac slept um rode back to ludiac and slept and then came through to the finish over the next day night and and early morning it's a little different now 90 hour starts start a little earlier and of course depending on the start times you've changed if you take the start times that max and mary were talked about it might look a little bit different um but when you look at this um the first part of the ride it's 440 kilometers it's a it's about nine meters per kilometer so less than less than the average the middle part the 340 kilometers from ludiac breast out to ludiac are honestly pretty climbing that's 11 meters per kilometer of climbing and then the way back from ludiac is is similar there's a lot of variation within each of those segments and how climbiness it is from leg to leg i think from breast back up to car hay is close to 12 meters per kilometer and then obviously between individual controls there are hillier stretches and flatter stretches but it's reasonably consistent throughout with more climbing in the middle let's see so what does that do to your speed as rob mentioned i did ride one pvp fast and on that one afterwards i was so proud of myself i looked at all my times and speeds by section etc from the start to ludiac it was nearly 29 kilometers per hour and then either because it got hilly or because i got tired it went down substantially and i think that's consistent with the notes that people gave earlier about how much more time to expect on your way back from breast than it took on the way out not only will you likely ride slower you'll probably take more time at controls etc so i guess i'd say the important thing to think about now is how do you get ready for these hills what's the what's the right thing to do over the next next period of time and i guess the primary thing is just don't shy away from hills in your training or your riding um and if you think about that middle section that i was talking about you're talking about having a 300 kilometer bervet with you know 3300 meters 11 000 feet of climbing or if you ride double centuries think of it as a double century with 12 000 feet of climbing so um that's not the hilliest those aren't the hilliest rides out there but they're definitely not the flattest either so it's worth um thinking about that and i would recommend actually sometime in the next years not so much for training your legs and your lungs but more for kind of training your head about how you're going to feel on a ride on this kind of terrain try to find a 300k or 400k with that that amount of climbing and preferably find one where the climbing is really pvp like um and that by that i mean with a lot of short hills rather than big long past climbs you can get that same kind of elevation by going over a few long passes but that doesn't train you as well for the feeling you're going to have at pvp when there are a lot of shorter steeper quicker hills um it just feels different um or if you can't find a 300 or 400 like that you can find similar terrain and do a couple days of riding and i'm i'm aware that people living in different places have different access to terrain um and some people might have to travel to do this and there have been plenty of successful finishers at pvp from flatter places so it's not impossible um but i certainly wouldn't want you to underestimate the hills and not have at least had some opportunity to to see how those those go when i titled the presentation highs and lows ups and downs somebody said well you're going to talk about emotional ups and downs and i said well i suppose i could um and um because there will be ups and downs along the ride there i think for almost everybody at some point on the ride there places where do you want to quit i'd say surprisingly many of those emotional lows are probably more box than anything else so have some food as somebody said here in si are early when i joined never quit till you've had an apple turnover um i don't know if they have apple turnovers in france or what they call them but look for a pastry um things to do when you're experiencing a low look for food um take a nap maybe you're just tired a nap may pay off you may have additional speed after a nap that'll offset the time spent find a friend to ride with stop thinking about the whole ride and how impossible the rest of it seems and how nothing seems to work um focus on the next bit make it to the next control or even to the next town or even to the top of the next hill and i think another thing that happens is sometimes you need to let go of some things you let go of expectations maybe that you had for the ride or pacing or time at a certain place that's become unrealistic because of for whatever reason or maybe you have to let go of that group that's traveling just a mile an hour faster than you're comfortable with folks instead maybe on how much fun it'll be right fun it'll be just to ride the next five miles out there in the french countryside far from home far from work um that's pretty cool highs um there are lots of highs on pvp for me i think um have fun um i have some friends that i ride with and at pvp they say what are we doing we're riding bikes where are we doing it we're in france we're riding bikes in france with friends how cool is that um meet other riders find the commonality in community you have with your fellow travelers um as many people have said about pvp enjoy the hospitality the folks along the way they absolutely love the event and they genuinely want to help enjoy their hospitality appreciate their cheers which will be out there for you day and night it's pretty cool um and just revel in the event um pvp is that big randoner party you and thousands of other people from every corner of the world have spent years trying to get to pvp and now you're here that's just awesome that's all i have to say well thanks mark can i get you to stop sharing i am trying that's okay so um just a reminder if you have questions for mark uh you can ask those in the q and a feature just preference the question with mark and then ask your question uh you can there's still time if you have questions for some of the other panelists um go ahead and ask those too in the q and a feature and uh we'll get those answered so right now i want to switch over from presentation mode to more of an interview mode here uh and the reason why i wanted to do that um is because let me see here mark it looks like you are still um it's right there in the middle of all that there we go so um as i was saying i want to i wanted to have an interview with a past pvp participant who could then give you um some of the uh first person uh reactions to well i've got a whole series of questions to ask of maryan and trying to put him back into the time frame of when he was first pondering doing pvp at all so first off let me uh more formally introduce naryan here uh he started randonoring in 2004 with the bc randonors and now he rides with the seattle international randonors um he explains to me that he is a card-carrying member of the cyclo sescargo and loves the camaraderie the challenge even the convenience food um convenience store food but most importantly uh the trinkets that he gets in from riding pervades so um so i first met you i believe it was uh in france at pvp 2011 yes yes uh one of the things that i remember so much was just your openness and friendliness that made a an impact on me and for those that are considering going to pvp um of course you're going to see parts of France of course you're going to see uh the the residents of the french countryside but this is also a very unique opportunity for you to meet randonors from your own country which you almost would never see people from other regions that uh you don't make trips to their area much you might know them from discussion groups but you only know the name you might recognize the electrons coming from their email but that's it um so i got to meet Marianne there and um uh enjoyed doing that and wanted to bring him into uh these presentations these seminars and ask him to think back uh so your first pvp was 2011 although you you considered doing it in 2007 i think you dodged a bullet there by having life overtake events and you're not being able to go then but um put put yourself back into that time frame and and first off uh how did you find out about pvp and then take the next step of deciding yeah i could do this i'm going to try that um hi everybody um i found out about pvp from ken peterson um on the touring mailing list uh where they were discussing the difference between breves and permanence and uh other audax rides um and that immediately picked my interest and that was 2003 i want to say 2000 after the event finished um and uh in 2004 i did my first 200k um and people were still talking about what pvp 2003 was at that event um so it was very interesting to me that somebody would talk about an event a year after it happened um and so i was i started reading write reports and um tracking things down so the the the basic idea to me that was uh appealing to me personally was the fact that we typically get harassed on the road directly you know if somebody throws eggs at you or you know you say you know get off the road or whatever but here was an event where um people were actually celebrating cyclists for being out on the road so i wanted to do that ever since and um i i think i know the answer here but you found that you you you expected that and you actually found that to be true yes yes it was it was an experience unlike uh nothing else um you know like the first you're writing with people from every country you know uh random you know most of the random union countries in the world are represented there um and uh it was just a mind-boggling experience even if it meant that i couldn't hang with any of those people because yeah i'm not particularly athletically gifted so uh do you have a favorite experience uh small experience within all of the pvps that you've done one that that you think of and always brings a smile or um was a turning point or something uh yes i think i think by far i think this is also a funny memory uh and that's why sticks in my memory at least is it was uh coming back into uh coming back into uh villains as well i'm pretty sure i'm murdering the pronunciation of that but there's this little town called little bay uh which is where the the course crosses the n-12 highway um and a little before that is a town called hardage i think hardage um and uh i pull up and i'm you know i basically have like maybe an hour in the bank maybe an hour and 20 minutes in the bank and i pulled it and i'm out of water um and so i pulled this little roadside stand and you know the moment you go like 10 people show up right you know like me and another french writer we're a recumbent writer we're together and we we pull in i lean my bike against the wall and these 10 people start coming and start bombarding me with questions right like where are you from you know uh what are you you know uh how did you know about pvp you know all of those questions um and of course i couldn't try you know understand most of what the questions were the french writer translated it for me and at some point you know my my confidence kind of grew um and maybe i should also mention that at this point i've had 300 half hours of sleep over the last three days right so i was not particularly uh mentally sharp and one of the questions uh that was asked was do you have family here right whatever and uh i said uh we and i said mom marie a long time meaning i wanted what i wanted to say was my wife is in london and what i ended up saying was my husband is london um and uh the the crowd was like voto marie i go wait wait voto marie you know like confidently wrong right because you have no idea and then like 20 seconds later um it hit me that i had made a colossal blunder and i said oh no no no mafam mafam and then they all just burst out laughing right so even today i don't know that memory rings a smile to my face so every time i get too aggressive in speaking french or thinking i know french i go back to that one instance to damp my enthusiasm down a little bit and go your french is not that great so yeah i have a similar um experience myself uh 2015 leaving um um filan la juel and i'm coming through one of the next small towns and at i had written past uh a setup that somebody just local had had done to provide comfort to the riders and i noticed that there was um available a bathroom and so i i had passed by this and then of course after you pass by something is when it dawns on you that you could make use of that so in the in the center of this small little village i stop and everyone is is pointing like this is this is where you go and i turn around and ride away and go back to take care of business there but when i came back through town they're all like what are you doing here again and i just said duble they say and they all they all laughed and understood that i had turned around to take care of some pressing business so um these sorts of things um you you mentioned hearing ride reports and talking to people about uh pvp before you showed up that's what helped frame your your um perspective on whether you wanted to do it or not now i want to kind of switch gears and say why did you go back a second time um that's an interesting question um so i think fundamentally my first goal in 2011 was to finish right and being slow um i realized that i wouldn't be able to hang in any of the towns um and savor the experience for people as much as i wanted to so um what i did was take notes uh about what i wanted to go and how much time i wanted to spend where um and so that's why i fundamentally went back is to see if i could a improve uh be you know uh get a better bike you know change equipment uh you know do all of those things um that would get you further down the road with the explicit purpose then cashing that into places to stay or or experiences to savor or people to meet and and spend more time with uh villanza should all start uh that is um you know i left villanza almost in tears uh because you know they were everybody applaud and collapse on the way in and on the way out right um and you know uh that is like it was an emotional moment and but more than one of my fellow writers since then in 2019 have been moved to tears actually tears at the lamp so i say i the reason i went back was to a see if i could do it better and be um uh to enjoy the experience uh and stop in towns like for example i love i wanted to hang out in ambria laval on the way back um i wanted to hang out in season i wanted to hang out in villanza as well a little bit more um and that is why i went back so uh after recounting that could you say that any of these things were um in the category of i wish i knew them before i did my first one uh or were these only lessons to be learned going a second time um i think the you get a sense for what the event is but unless you experience it you truly don't know um so to me um like for example ken krichman told me that hey don't mess around between villanza juel and morton and what did i do the first time i went there and messed around more villanza juel to morton right just you just don't mess around and i made morton you with three minutes to spare and that is not something that i would have expected um so in hindsight yes as much as you know these things or hear about these things until you experience them you can't really get a sense of what they are sort of like being a parent right yes and also at that point i have never gone above a thousand kilometers ever right so when you hit me on the way back you're a thousand and nine k and that is truly uncharted territory right so the last 200k you truly don't know how you're going to be but in 2015 you know you know i knew at least how i would be and i knew i'd be trash so the experience was much better so um i want to ask uh would you ever look at any of the three pvps that you've done as duplicative of any of the others or are they like for my experience they are so individual from each other they're completely different things so it's not like really doing it the same thing again it's it's a different experience no i mean i i heard a quote from somebody that you never step into the same river twice and if there is any bride where that is true that is pvp in 2011 we had really nasty rains for a little bit you know and then it completely changed right it was gorgeous afterward in 2015 we had a gorgeous you know three days and then a horrendous eight hours and in 2019 the overnight lows were unlike anything i'd seen before um you know so you literally no you it is impossible to recreate the experience uh it's sorry it is as much as you write the same course mostly it is not a duplicative effort yeah okay so um i wanted to ask if there was anything that i haven't asked you that you would like to impart to the the viewers today yes i think the the the things that i changed between 11 and 15 were bike and body right you know and i don't think that i quite understood what it meant to do pvp again and improve um with what i had done right which is i got a new bike which is an awesome bike and it definitely was not the tank that i rode the first time around um however the one thing i would say is that a lot of us focus too much on the distance riding aspect of it um to the point where we go oh you have to do a thousand k you know you have to do this you have to do that um in terms of being on the bike right but the biggest change for me was the realization that it is off the bike work that really puts you over the top especially when you're a slow rider like me um you know like with a little bit of weight training uh with a little bit of core work and my friends will all my friends will roll their eyes now uh is uh to do some core work you know do some planks do some front planks and side planks um because it doesn't really take that much time you know all you need to do is do like maybe two or three one minute planks front planks and you know side planks for like 30 seconds or 45 seconds once a day right um and you find yourself holding yourself up on the bike better uh you know you have fewer neck issues um you have your back is stronger and overall i arrived at the finish in much better shape having done the weight training and the core work right so my my the my biggest takeaway between all three pvps is that off the bike work truly makes a difference in how you feel on the bike okay well i want to thank you for joining the presentation today um and will i see you in 2023 in france yes even if i have to pedal one leg i will be there okay great so um now i'd like to switch gears to uh the wrap up session uh section here um and i would like for the presenters to go in the same order to read out your um selection of the best question that was asked of you in the q and a feature there's a few unanswered um questions right now in the q and a feature so while max is starting out to read out and then answer the best or the most frequent question um the rest of us can take a look in the q and a section uh go ahead max um let's see i think the one the only one that was directly asked of me um was uh if i were targeting charlie miller would i try for the a wave or would be one of the later ones be a little less dangerous but still mostly as fast you know it's a little bit hard to say you know it's obviously in my case a sample size of two but based on those samples i probably would avoid the later star waves like d and e and so i would probably if i if i decide ever to try to attempt charlie miller again i would probably go for a or b um there doesn't seem too much difference in a and b i think it definitely you know the first 20 or 30 kilometers are definitely risky and they are in fact my main uh consideration in deciding whether to try to do such a thing again or not um um but i do think that they are most effective for for having that kind of performance i suppose oh so max will we see you in paris in 2023 i hope so i uh as some of you know i had a pretty bad injury uh in the fall of 2020 that i'm still sort of mentally recovering from uh it was a very bad leg break caused by a collision with a badger in the middle of the night on the 400k um so uh you know but uh but i am uh you know if you had asked me this a year ago i would have been much more dubious and now the sort of randonese setting in also about badgers right so despite this experience you don't hold anything against wisconsin oh yeah i guess it's bad i don't know that much about you know states and they're they're the badger state thanks max so deb uh do you have a favorite or best or most frequently asked question of you uh no there were i only got one question specifically to me um that was about the rack that was on the slide i believe in ramblay and it was uh jill's bear two rack and uh jill's bear two back that was on the back of it everybody uses a different system that actually is a picture of my partner's setup that's not the setup i use but again everybody's got to figure out what they're going to use and get comfortable with it way before you go to france okay thanks deb oh you're not going to ask me if i'm wearing a pvp i know that over a beer in sometime very very soon you're going to be telling me yeah maybe we'll see okay so mary did you get many questions and i didn't get best or the favorite i didn't get too many questions someone asked about the time splits how they compared to what mark had put up and i um i don't know how they stacked up against what mark presented but our first the first day of riding we had a 50 mile 15 mile an hour average and then for the remainder of the days of riding we averaged 13 and a half miles an hour so although it's so funny speaking of randonese i could have sworn we were going faster on those last three days but um and then we target to sleep uh three to four hours a night but you know once the ride starts you just roll with what you get so and i guess the last thing i would say is that on 20 pvp 2019 um i didn't anticipate that the nights would be so cold um and so to this day i still hear talk about how he left this jacket behind that he if he had only been wearing it he would be warm so um just know that when you go to pvp the weather can be really anything and if there's something you think you need then you should find a place for it on your bike yeah so should we be looking for ed's jacket when we go no he's got it now oh good it was in a closet it was safe in a closet at home the entire ride all right thanks so mark did you get questions and were there good ones or best ones that you want to ever count here i don't think anybody um asked any questions about the terrain at pvp since you know i said it was hilly and that's probably all you need to know um there were a couple of questions about um there's one question that probably people want to know the answer to which is if you choose the 80 or 84 hour start time do you have to finish within that time in other words is 80 or 84 a limit and not a soft goal and it's important to know that it is in fact a limit if you choose the 80 hour start time and you finish in 81 hours you didn't finish um similarly with the 84 um i think a couple people asked and i may not have the most up-to-date information but a couple people asked whether rambulea has been confirmed as the official start location um and i believe that the last we heard officially was that the start has not yet been decided but should be rambulea whatever that phrase means um and that an announcement will be forthcoming as soon as possible but as far as i know that has not been made yet okay um naran did did you get any questions um to answer uh no the only question was for all of the panels um and that is so whether fenders or no fenders in pvp my personal recommendation is that if you if the forecast does not call for rain don't carry fenders uh sorry don't put fenders on carry them to france please uh just don't put them on uh if that is your style uh but if the forecast calls for rain there's a lot of manure on the roads in in france in especially along the course um and so please put fenders on if it's going to rain well uh one thing that i would point out is that i've been to pvp in 07 11 15 and 19 and have not done pvp without getting rained on so take that into consideration um one thing to note is that the effects of rain were different on the different start groups i believe in 2011 um people in the 84 hour group got a lot more rain than those that had started the day before in the 80 and 90 hour group um so you'll hear stories you'll have to put them into the context of the person telling you that story so i think we've covered everything here we've got all of our presenters in um i want to thank all of them for taking the time to make this presentation and then to be here today to present it to all of you um just to remind it to everybody that's watching that uh eventually hopefully this week i will get the recording of this session up on youtube uh and uh for anybody that this is their first uh rusa pvp prep seminar there are two others already recorded and up on youtube and i'll i'll include that when i send around the link to all the people that had signed up um i think that will end here unless any of my panelists have any final uh thoughts to make thanks rob go ahead max um well i also want to thank you i think like mary justin sorry for cutting you off mary okay uh but but i know but i the other thing that i want to say was uh gregg asked this question of you know whether i should i think was tongue in cheek as to whether pvp is a race or not right and uh you know this is right after my presentation and i think it's definitely not a race right because not everyone is like sort of racing with you and i think but it is it can be sort of a athletic challenge like an individual time trial kind of thing like how fast can you go in this sort of historic event um but it's also i think you know what people make of it right so people who are in there for the food for the sort of culture and some social aspect um and i think that's what makes it really wonderful is that it's it can be many things to many people and also multiple things for the same person at the same time and i should add that you know certainly if you're trying to do like charlie miller you are not going to get to interact with lots of like french people in the villages that's like very unlikely um however you do make lots of great friendships on the road right like because there are gonna be people from all over the world here you go you know even if you're riding hard and sort of struggling um you will meet people and might be able to talk with them depending on linguistic barriers um and that can be quite fun and lead to you know long-term friendships like uh people i'm still in touch with you know 10 years later so thanks anyone else rob just thank you for putting this together and i sure hope to see all the panelists and all the participants in france next year okay so just a reminder to everybody that is attending today uh there is a questionnaire uh as you exit and one of those questions is to suggest uh future topics for other seminars uh later down the road so please fill out that and um i thank you all for attending and again i thank all my panelists and we will see you next time have a good day everyone thanks everybody