Fwd: [PBP_prep] PBP_prep: some history, some resources, and 2027

[Michael O'Connor]

Fyi, for all you folks interested in PBP next year.

Best,

Mike O

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Rob Hawks <rob....@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jul 31, 2026 at 7:07 PM
Subject: [PBP_prep] PBP_prep: some history, some resources, and 2027
To: PBP_prep <pbp_...@googlegroups.com>

Hello all,

The pbp_prep list was created in April of 2018, largely as a way for my home club, The San Francisco Randonneurs, to have a place to talk about getting ready for PBP 2019 away from the regular SFR chat list. Crazy to think about it, but some people that rode brevets didn't want to talk about Paris, Brest, Paris. Imagine.

Very quickly after the inception of the list, it became clear that a lot more people outside of the region wanted to talk about getting ready for PBP so the list became national, and then international and has been open to all interested in riding PBP since then.

My own history of supporting riders getting ready for PBP goes way back to 2010 when I organized in person seminars for my club and any other nearby riders. Early on, we had Claus Clausen, who ran the US based Des Peres Travel agency which specialized in travel arrangements for US riders going to PBP. We also had a number of seasoned PBP anciens on had to give presentations. By the time PBP 2015 was on the horizon we'd have upwards of 4 different in person sessions. What got me motivated to offer seminars and later videos and more for PBP hopefuls is that I was given a huge amount of background suport from a friend but at the same time I realised others might find it as hard as I did to collect info from so many different sources so why not have as many people who might ask me questions gather together in one place where I had also gathered a bunch of people who knew a lot more than me about PBP and were ready to share their knowledge.

Ahead of PBP 2023, I helped organize an online series for RUSA of seminars along with people like Mark Thomas, Deb Banks, Bryan Kilgore, Rose Cox, Dawn Piech, Greg Merritt and Eric Norris. Initially those seminars were live, with later segments with no audience. That 2023 series wrapped up with a series of interviews with past PBP riders. The full series of those videos plus some more recent videos aimed at preparing for PBP 2027, can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@robhawks/videos  There are 15 videos total and I'd say all of them have some valuable info for PBP 2027 aspirants.

If you know of someone that might like to join this list, have them go here: https://groups.google.com/g/pbp_prep 

and be sure to tell them to answer the question of why they want to join. There is no one right answer, but the question is a very mild way of weeding out some spammers.

To the people on this list now, perhaps you can comment on whether you find online discussion groups, videos, or in person seminars to be the best way to help answer your questions, and why that might be.

rob hawks

SFR RBA

PS: Please sign all posts you send to the list

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[Esther Lumsdon]

Scott and I moved to Portugal in late 2022.

I hope to convince him to visit France with me and operate a peanut butter sandwich stop somewhere on the PBP route next year! Calve is not the same as Jif, but I think you'll like it.

This time we have Portugal driver licenses and we can legally drive.

Esther Lumsdon

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--- Esther L., esther...@gmail.com
"Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I have hope for the human race." ~ H.G. Wells

[Dan Driscoll]

Let all of RUSA know where you plan to set up, I’ll buy a couple for each side of my jersey pocket. 

Lone Star Randonneurs has two couples that have moved from Texas to Portugal. 

DanD 

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