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My personal fastest 24 hour split was about 600km, while riding the first half of the Paris-Brest-Paris brevet in 2019. I had my first sleep after that in Brest

My personal fastest 24 hour split was about 600km, while riding the first half of the Paris-Brest-Paris brevet in 2019. I had my first sleep after that in Brest and took much longer breaks for the return journey for a total ride of 1240km in 78:02:21 (with ~26 hours spent stopped). I'd done many 600km brevets before that comfortably in 35-37 hours with a ~4hr sleep in the middle, but at PBP there were thousands of other strong riders and it was fun to work together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randonneuring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randonneuring is a lot more "normal" of a way to ride your bike all day than the Ultracycling approach in the article. Instead of grinding out laps of a racecourse solo, ride from town to town on pleasant backroads socially.

jacquesm 5y ago
Hey Fred, that's insane. Wow. How was the aftermath of that ride?
- blasdel 5y ago
  Haha I just kept gallivanting around Paris afterwards, I spent 10 days in France and cumulatively slept maybe 30h total. I hadn't done much riding that summer because of a broken ankle and actually re-fractured it mid-ride from vibration/stress while descending into Brest. The biggest trouble was that it was impossible to get any ice for it, but I found nice self-adhesive bandages to immobilize it the next day and was fine completing the ride.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Oh, that kind of complication certainly doesn't help. I hope that healed up properly, ankles are quite vulnerable. And sometimes what seems to have worked out well catches up with you later on.
- windowsworkstoo 5y ago
  It’s not really, ask all us audax riders. it’s surprising to think that 250km in a day was so life changing when I/we do 1200km in 3 days regularly and at a leisurely pace
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    It all depends on what you are used to, and on the weather. A 30 km stretch of 6-8 Beaufort will take the piss out of anybody, trust me on that one.
_kyran 5y ago
My dad has done it twice and I believe the first time (56:13:00) he didn't sleep at all. The second time, 12 years later was 70:21:00. Congrats on the ride! I still don't quite understand what it takes to be able to push through beyond what most people would consider immense fatigue. Did you find it harder physically or mentally?
- blasdel 5y ago
  If he were an American, that time would put your father in La Société Charly Miller: https://rusa.org/pages/CharlyMiller https://rusa.org/pages/CharlyMiller I had fun the whole time! Mentally I don't really suffer anything, though I did cry like a baby while riding through misty valleys at dawn the third day. I had realized I'd crossed into Normandy, and got emotional from working out from first principles why I new that detail of french geography. In the first town I passed through in daylight the locals were hanging up large banners for their 75th Anniversary of Liberation by the US Army. I had a few serious physical setbacks from my ankle, losing a cleat bolt, a wrong turn — but it was easy to run into old friends out on the course to regroup and make new friends along the way helping each other out of predicaments. I lost a lot of my endurance abilities from Covid, so when I do it again I will definitely be shooting for a different goal: https://adrianhandssociety.com/ https://adrianhandssociety.com/

jacquesm 5y ago

Hey Fred, that's insane. Wow. How was the aftermath of that ride?

blasdel 5y ago
Haha I just kept gallivanting around Paris afterwards, I spent 10 days in France and cumulatively slept maybe 30h total. I hadn't done much riding that summer because of a broken ankle and actually re-fractured it mid-ride from vibration/stress while descending into Brest. The biggest trouble was that it was impossible to get any ice for it, but I found nice self-adhesive bandages to immobilize it the next day and was fine completing the ride.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Oh, that kind of complication certainly doesn't help. I hope that healed up properly, ankles are quite vulnerable. And sometimes what seems to have worked out well catches up with you later on.
windowsworkstoo 5y ago
It’s not really, ask all us audax riders. it’s surprising to think that 250km in a day was so life changing when I/we do 1200km in 3 days regularly and at a leisurely pace
- jacquesm 5y ago
  It all depends on what you are used to, and on the weather. A 30 km stretch of 6-8 Beaufort will take the piss out of anybody, trust me on that one.

_kyran 5y ago

My dad has done it twice and I believe the first time (56:13:00) he didn't sleep at all. The second time, 12 years later was 70:21:00. Congrats on the ride! I still don't quite understand what it takes to be able to push through beyond what most people would consider immense fatigue. Did you find it harder physically or mentally?

blasdel 5y ago
If he were an American, that time would put your father in La Société Charly Miller: https://rusa.org/pages/CharlyMiller https://rusa.org/pages/CharlyMiller I had fun the whole time! Mentally I don't really suffer anything, though I did cry like a baby while riding through misty valleys at dawn the third day. I had realized I'd crossed into Normandy, and got emotional from working out from first principles why I new that detail of french geography. In the first town I passed through in daylight the locals were hanging up large banners for their 75th Anniversary of Liberation by the US Army. I had a few serious physical setbacks from my ankle, losing a cleat bolt, a wrong turn — but it was easy to run into old friends out on the course to regroup and make new friends along the way helping each other out of predicaments. I lost a lot of my endurance abilities from Covid, so when I do it again I will definitely be shooting for a different goal: https://adrianhandssociety.com/ https://adrianhandssociety.com/