Long Hard Ride: Will Martin ’79 races the Paris-Brest-Paris
Last August, Will Martin ’79 pushed himself to exhaustion
to complete a 760-mile ultra marathon cycling event known as
the Paris-Brest-Paris, riding day and night and sleeping less
than four hours.
The Paris-Brest-Paris, or PBP, was first run in 1891 as a professional
bicycle race. Over time, the event evolved into an amateur event,
and now is held every four years. The distance, 1200 kilometers,
must be completed  within
90 hours. The best cyclists make the round trip in half that
time. Some never finish. Martin set his personal goal: to finish
in 60 to 70 hours.
Martin had been on plenty of long-distance rides. He once traversed
the state of North Carolina on a ten-day bike trip, and years
ago—before marriage and kids and law school—pedaled
2,200 miles from the Canadian border to Key West. But it wasn’t
until last summer that Martin put himself to the ultimate test—a
600 km ride across northwestern France, and then back again,
in under three days. He trained for more than a year and had
to qualify for PBP by completing four rides within specified
timeframes that ranged in length from 125 to 375 miles.
Martin, now general counsel for the North Carolina Association
of Realtors, has always enjoyed the great outdoors. A soccer
player in college, he enjoyed roaming the countryside and crabbing
on the Chester River. It wasn’t until he graduated, however,
that he took up long-distance cycling. He first learned of the
PBP in Bicycling magazine, in 1991.
“The thought of participating in Paris-Brest-Paris had
been lodged in the back of my mind since then,” Martin
says. “I love the physical challenge of riding long distances.”
For Martin, there was a certain romance associated with bicycle
racing in France. “The French people have a real affection
for PBP and the riders, or randonneurs, as they are called in
France,” he says. “Villagers yell ‘Bon Courage!’
or ‘Allez! Allez!’ from their windows. People stand
along the road, cheering and clapping. Children pass out sugar
cubes and pieces of chocolate. The many accounts of PBP I had
read were filled with stories about remarkable acts of kindness
extended by the French people to weary, hungry, lost, and injured
randonneurs.”
Martin experienced that kindness first-hand, when he developed
muscle spasms in his neck so severe he could not bend it to
see the road ahead. He had 85 miles to go.
“On the climbs, I looked straight down, keeping an eye
on the distance between my front wheel and the right edge of
the pavement,” he recalls. “Every so often, I bent
my neck back just enough to peek over the handlebars at the
road ahead. On the descents, I sat up ramrod straight in the
saddle, hands off the handlebars, and coasted to the bottom.
In this way I struggled into the checkpoint at Mortagne-au-Perche.”
At this stop, Martin had what he called an “extraordinary
series of encounters” with the locals. “It started
with the man in charge of the dorm (where he attempted unsuccessfully
to sleep) and culminated with a baker at a boulangerie,”
he says. “In between, there was a beautiful woman who
escorted me to the showers, a volunteer at the checkpoint infirmary
who tried to treat me for sunburn when what I wanted was sun
block, a little man with a mustache and a mechanical voice box
who led me to pharmacy, and the pharmacist who finally understood
and sold me a tube of 60-strength sun block to replace the one
I’d lost. I was deeply touched by their efforts to help
me. By the time the baker handed over the ham and cheese baguette
sandwich she’d made for me, I had tears in my eyes. There
I was, feeling pretty bad and facing more of the same for the
final 85 miles, but I was experiencing an incredible joy.”
Notwithstanding his neck problems, Martin managed to finish
PBP in 69 hours, 48 minutes. His performance placed him among
the top 20% of the 4,000 riders from around the world who undertook
this grueling feat. He says that although there is a part of
him that wishes he had been able to finish sooner, “I
wouldn’t consider trading anything I experienced for a
few hours off my final time. Paris-Brest-Paris is a long hard
bike ride, but it is so much more than that. I guess I knew
that before, but I really understand it now.”
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