The Paris Roubaix women’s race happened yesterday and today is the men’s race. It’s always an exciting race and it’s got an incredible history. We wanted to share one person’s story of visiting the Paris Roubaix both as a participant of the amateur version of the race and as a spectator of the pro race to highlight the opportunity open to everyone to be part of a future edition of this whole experience!

Patria and Rob of Ride Headquarters attended the 2015 edition of the race. This is Patria’s account, in her words:

Rob and I decided that it would be really neat to see a spring classics pro race and it didn’t take us long to choose this one to attend. Might as well start with they say is the hardest, toughest, and the one with the richest history. I wanted to get to know this race, and the people who make it what it is, for the first time. I got so much more than I ever expected in two days.

The Paris-Roubaix Challenge works like this: ~4,500 people from all over the world, nothing required skill-wise to compete, get to ride most of the same roads the pros do, just a day before the men’s pro race. Now that there’s a women’s version, the amateur event starts earlier than the women’s race so the riders are done prior to the women’s finish enabling riders to watch the pro women come into the finish if they wish.

Amateur riders bump over each of the 27 sectors of pavé just like the pros. The amateur ride is ~100 km shorter than the pro race at 105 miles total. The pro race begins in Compiégne, not actually Paris. The first ~113 km of the pro race are all or mostly smooth tarmac, so amateurs don’t miss out on the pro pavé experience.

The whole experience began Friday, the day before the Paris Roubaix Challenge, when we took a train from Paris to the modern town of Lille, France. There we me the head La Fuga Cycling guide, Richard, who was quick to greet us, and make introductions all around. He loaded all of us in vans (there were quite a few who'd arrived around time we did) and shuttled us the 1+ hour drive to Saint-Quentin.

The guys were friendly and it quickly became apparent that I was the only woman in the 18-person group. That wasn’t particularly surprising considering the nature of the trip, nor was it an issue for me or any of the guys. Rob and I got our bikes assembled in 30 minutes and went out for a quick warm-up/shake-down ride in Saint Quentin.

My Seven Evergreen moments after I assembled it in Saint Quentin. Its travel case is small, easy to fit in small European taxi cabs and roll onto trains and down rough roads. I paid nothing to the airlines to fly my luggage for this trip.

We traveled with our bikes because our they are practically made for the Paris Roubaix with its typical conditions of mud, rain, and rough riding. This is what our Seven Evergreens handle best, and they are fast for normal road riding conditions, too.

For the record, we were riding full titanium frames with carbon disc forks, one layer of Fizik performance bar tape, I was on 28c Continental Grand Prix 4-Season slick tires, Rob rode 27c Challenge Paris-Roubaix open tubular clincher tires. I initially set my tire pressure to 75 psi but let some air out of the front tire after I discovered how slick and ride-threatening wet cobbles are.

At a McDonalds stop during the Paris Roubaix Challenge. Where else to go for a clean bathroom in the beautiful french countryside?

Saturday morning, the day of the Challenge came fast. Having other people deal with the bikes and our stuff took away the tiredness that, had we had to worry about the logistics, would have threatened me having the energy to complete the ride. After two perfectly sunny, 70 degree days in France, the day of our Paris-Roubaix came as a proper Paris-Roubaix should: it started raining on the drive to the start in Busigny and the air temperature was chilly: in the low 40s. The weather forecast had called for <1mm of rain to fall in the early morning only. It turned out to be wrong.

The amateurs start early, around 7am. A timing chip was employed to keep track of each rider’s overall time and the time for three cobbled sections that were timed separately. Out of the 4,500 riders, very few were competing for the win, but few riders took it easy out there.

The morning light was soft and everything was just a little obscured from the light rain that was falling. The mood was calm among participants, if a bit muted from quiet nervousness.

The route is ~13 km of smooth pavement, then the sectors begin at fairly even intervals, for usually ~.5 to 2.5km distances each. In between sectors is silky smooth pavement that I felt was the carrot getting me through the cobbles. Feeling the immediate relief offered by the smoothness all but took away any discomfort left in my body from the previous cobbled section.

This was the smoothest cobbled road of the day!

The roughest and most difficult sector for my body was the first one. My feet instantly went numb and I was wondering if shaken baby syndrome applies for adults riding the Paris Roubaix. Is that like getting a million little concussions in a day? If it was, it was worth whatever brain cells had to be sacrificed for the experience. Fortunately, my feet came back to life within a few kilometers and were fine for the rest of the ride. Some believed that everything was harder and more painful before relaxing on the pavé. I’m sure that makes a big difference. Don’t steer too much, just let the bike do its thing – but hang onto the bars so they don’t get thrown from your control. It’s a careful balance that requires relaxing. Since it’s important to power through the cobbles, standing up and relieving saddle pressure isn’t much of an option.

A random rider out there during the Challenge.

I didn’t end up with any other physical pain aside from leg tiredness by the end and a little sit-bone discomfort. I had doubled up my bike shorts because I didn’t want to risk a bad day due to saddle issues.

After the ride, a quick survey of the tour group reveled one guy had a blister the size of half of his palm and most people felt they'd aged by a few decades in a single day.

Throughout each sector, I passed people who’d flatted on that section. Once the cobbles met up with the smooth road, there was always a group of people on the tarmac – some awaiting their friends so they could re-group, but there were often 10 or more people involved in changing their flat tires or sorting out some kind of mechanical issue with their bikes.

Rob flying over the cobbles, he’s a classics rider through and through.

Neither Rob nor I had a flat all day. Most flats happened from pinch flats, and, dare I make a big assumption based on stories that I heard: most of the tires that experienced flats were narrower than 28mm because they were more susceptible to pinching since they had to be run at lower pressures so as to keep as much rubber on the road as possible. Wider tires can be run at lower pressures without risking the pinch so that’s what makes them safer in a Paris Roubaix situation. Of course, I’m not talking about the pro race where the speeds are so much higher on those pointy rocks.

Someone described each sector as having its own personality. It’s true. Some cobbles looked easy to ride because they looked smooth but turned out to be very rough and extremely challenging. On other roads, the crown – or the high center of the road that’s typically smoother than the rest of the road, was as smooth and easy as it looked. But sometimes the crown turned into a tiny point that felt impossible to keep the bike teetered on while being jarred through the sector.

When the cobbles are wet, they are slick. Some feel just like smooth ice. The slickness may have been some kind of organic slime. Or it's just that the mud is made up of very fine dirt. It took quite a few sectors to know how to ride the cobbles. The moment a rider would feel comfortable, the next sector would throw a curve ball proving any theories the rider had developed up to that point as being perfectly flawed.

Most of the dirt, mud, and dust on the route was a high percentage of animal manure considering farms border much of the route. Ewwww. We saw the pros breathing in large dust clouds when they were racing the next day which was warm and dry with their speeds and close proximity to each other. I heard that the pro racers tend to be sick for a day or two after a dry day on the cobbles. That is a lot of nasty dust they end up ingesting.

Weather

Throughout the day I found the temperature to be quite comfortable. There were three distinct rains that hit during the day, interspersed with strong winds at times, and even sun at the very end of the ride. I stayed comfortable with a wind vest that I kept on the whole ride and a rain jacket – that I took on and off at least 3 times. I’m certain the only conditions I couldn’t have handled as well would have been a hot, sunny day. That would have been hard.

Hell of the North

Paris Roubaix isn’t called the “Hell of the North” because it’s such a grueling day on the bike. That name came from a scouting trip post-World War I that took Paris-Roubaix race organizers through battlefields that were heavily scarred from the war. Hell refers to the war and what happened there.

One such battlefield in the race (I'm not sure if it was a battlefield in World War I, it was a mining area) is the Arenberg Forest otherwise known as the Tranchée d’Arenberg. I understand the road was originally built by Napoleon. This is the most anxiously anticipated sector by racers. It can make or break one’s day. It comes at ~63 km in our ride (so ~163km for pros) which means there are still many sectors and ~100 km to go after it’s done. But a crash or mechanical is likely to take a contender and have him turn into a chaser for the rest of the long day. The cobbles are more irregular in this sector and there is no gutter.

After I rode Arenberg, I took photos of others trying to get through it in tact.

It wasn’t raining when I entered Arenberg, but the cobbles were drenched and the slickest feeling cobbles of the whole day – by a lot. People were crashing left and right. An ambulance was attending to a rider just 50 feet or less into the sector when I started riding into it.

I found my bike slipping around underneath me. At first, I was unnerved and slowed waaaay down. Then, as I realized the only option was to ride it, I got more daring and pedaled faster. By the end, it was obvious that letting the bike slip around, staying off the brakes completely, and keeping the pedals going around evenly was the secret to staying upright. The worst part was worrying about the others who were crashing or riding the line I wanted.

That was the only frightening part of the day. The next hardest pavé sector was sector 4, I believe this is Carrefour de l'Arbre. That was the last timed sector and one of the longest, if not the longest. This one is where it felt like everything came together. At that point, finishing was likely and I wanted to leave all of my energy on the route. I rode it the hardest of any of them and it felt quite good to come out the other end, greeted by the smooth tarmac.

Elevation

The route was relatively flat at ~2,000 ft of elevation gain for the whole day. There is no way we could ride that far in Massachusetts and not log at least 4,000 ft. It's hard to describe the pleasantness of the silky-smooth roads that gradually twisted and turned through many small towns, past lucky homes who get front-row seats and through countless fields. I was delighted to see so many towns and even be greeted by locals who had come out to cheer for those of us doing the amateur race. Women riders got extra loud cheers, it was cool.

The conclusion of the Paris Roubaix Challenge, like the pro race, ends in a lap around the Roubaix Velodrome. How awesome to finish such a long, hard day in such a place – and, amazingly, in the warm sun of France, too. This velodrome has hosted a long history of cycling superstars racing in it; it's played the host to the end of the Paris Roubaix since 1942.

One can’t ride this velodrome without feeling cold chills throughout the entire lap. This is me finishing my ride, feeling so great from the whole experience.

The showers are something everyone makes a big deal about and I was more than ready for a good, hot shower. After looking for them and inquiring as to where the women’s showers were to be found, I was educated on French tradition/culture/whatever you want to call it: there were no separate women’s showers.

The fabled showers. Photo courtesy of Inrng.com

The large cement room with partial cement walls – with no doors or curtains – full of showering men, was where I was going to have to shower if I wanted one.

I couldn’t get the “American” out of me to suck it up and go in. There are ample photos of the showers on the internet. I wonder if I missed something by not going in, but I’m also perfectly okay with having enjoyed a hot shower back in the hotel after our hour drive to return there from Roubaix.

Though I thought the day was over at that point, little did I know what awaited us. We arrived late to join the group at dinner at 9pm (my hot, not-rushed shower took priority over everything).

We inhaled our food. I found myself eating an admittedly tasty slab of meat because there were no protein options for vegetarians; I had to have protein after a carb-rich day at the feed stations. The French don’t understand vegetarianism similar to most Italians, and I don’t expect them to. I had to stray from a veggie diet a few times in France for the sake of my sanity.

It’s at this point that the day had a twist thrown in so unexpected and wonderful, it made for the ideal ending that we couldn’t have ever imagined.

While we were eating, we looked up and two gentlemen were standing in the doorway to our private room in the restaurant. They both seemed confident, I assumed one of them was likely the owner of La Fuga. But who was this other guy? A couple of people at the table looked shocked, but I didn’t know why. Both of the gentlemen left for a moment – long enough for us to learn that Magnus Backstedt was joining us for dinner!

I’ve heard enough about Magnus to know that he was one of the top riders in the sport when he’d retired. He commanded respect from the peloton and from fans. He also won Paris-Roubaix in 2004.

Conversation with Magnus Backstedt, quite the surprise right on the heels of feeling the cobbles for ourselves. Photo by La Fuga guide, Fabrizio.

Since we were the last ones to dinner, we sat on the side with all of the open chairs. This meant the opportunity to talk with Magnus about the Paris-Roubaix. I got to ask him many questions and hear how he did it. Had we been at dinner with him the previous day, before doing the Paris Roubaix Challenge, the conversation would have had different meaning. Being fresh off of the cobbles and hearing what it was like to win the Paris-Roubaix and how he did it, made for very rich, interesting conversation.

It was awesome to see both of Magnus’ daughters out there racing Paris Roubaix’s women’s pro race yesterday! Back when I did this challenge, a women’s Paris Roubaix race didn’t exist.

Magnus was down-to-earth. He really wanted to talk about his days of pro racing, he wanted to offer complete answers to our questions. He loves bike racing, and it’s pretty obvious he’s smart. He knows that winning comes down to being the best prepared on race day which means months and years of product testing, riding the cobbles many times in advance, thinking about every aspect of the race. There’s a fair amount of luck that influences the final result, especially with a crash-marred, unplannable race like Paris Roubaix. However, Magnus maximized his chances.

He told us of how he would train: he motopaced into the infamous Arenberg Forest hitting the cobbles at 60-70km per hour (much higher than race pace) in order to discover the best line to take. The best line shows up more obviously at that break-neck speed.

He told us of how he worked with a bike manufacturer to build a full-titanium bike with oversized tubes in order to have the ideal ride qualities. It was nice to hear him say that he felt that it was obvious that titanium was the best material for the task: that it would most effectively damp the vibrations of the road while being stiff enough to propel him to victory. He showed me a photo of the bike: it was painted to look like a Bianchi, but underneath was titanium. I believe he said it’s now in a museum somewhere.

This is Magnus’ Paris Roubaix winning bike. Photo courtesy of Bianchiusa.com.

He discussed how many different forks he tested out in training to select the right one. He studied each sector of the route so he’d know each one and the best line for each well going in to the race. The time and energy he spent working with his sponsors and trying to push the standards of the time led him to be the first racer to ride wider tires in the race: 27c , to be exact. He said he was flatting frequently with the narrower ones, but the 27c tires survived the punishment of the race. I asked him about tire width, I had to know.

Another question I had was about bar tape. Many people doubled up the bar tape on their handlebars to protect their hands. His answer to keep his hands in tact so as to be able to lift the large cobble trophy that the winner receives: pipe insulation placed at just the right spots and bar tape went over that.

Magnus was a 207 lb rider, and he stands 6’ 4" tall. The perfect product tester! He learned how to increase his power without reducing his weight since losing weight yielded hits to his power output.

Here is “Big Maggy” discussing his Paris-Roubaix win.

A moment after I stopped recording is when he concluded by saying, “The race win was special – very special.” He paused to allow a moment of reflection and his eyes glistened with the emotion that his win 11 years ago still conjures within him.

Magnus was interested in how the day had gone for us and was an excellent speaker. He’s featured as a commentator on EuroSport and had just covered a race in the Basque country earlier in the day. He’s the real deal; we got to chat with him at the perfect time in the most ideal circumstances.

That was the day. Awake at 5am, asleep by midnight. More ride experiences squeezed into a single day than any other day of my life up to that point. Then the next day we watched the pros show us how they did it in the dusty, dry conditions under the sun. It was awesome to get to be part of thousands of fans out there, see the speeds of the pros, the mud on their sweaty faces from the dust, and watch cycling history being made.