The Road to Paris-Brest-Paris: A Journey Within

When people see the photos—two cyclists grinning atop a mountain pass, bikes gleaming in the sunlight—they invariably ask: “Did you have fun?”

Fun? If this were fun, everyone would be doing it.

I completed Paris-Brest-Paris, the legendary 1200-kilometer endurance cycling event often called the “Tour de France for amateurs.” But this triumph didn’t begin in France—it began months earlier in the pre-dawn darkness of Chennai, with a simple yet audacious dream that had me wake up 4.30 am daily.

To even qualify for PBP, I had to complete a series of progressively brutal rides: 200km, 300km, 400km, 600km, and finally 1000km. Each one felt impossible until it wasn’t. Each weekend, I sacrificed time with family, comfort, sleep—all to chase something I couldn’t quite explain to anyone who asked “why?”

The iconic ride from Paris to Brest and back—three nights and four days on the bicycle, countless climbs through the French countryside—was the culmination of that journey. We finished 120 minutes ahead of closing time, but those numbers tell you nothing about the moments I wanted to quit, the tears mixed with sweat on lonely mountain roads, or the silent conversations I had with myself in the darkest hours.

The Brutal Truth

Long Distance Cycling is an unforgiving teacher. Gale-force winds push against you like a physical wall. Heat waves extract every drop of fluid until your lips crack and bleed. Bone-chilling night temperatures seep into your bones. Your body rebels against the calories you desperately need. Headaches pound. Nosebleeds come, staining your jersey with the price of ambition.

You’re constantly at the edge of an abyss, hanging on by the thinnest thread, asking yourself with each pedal stroke: “Can I do this? More often Why am I torturing myself like this?”

What Changed

The answer emerged slowly, painfully, beautifully, over thousands of kilometers.

Long-distance cycling strips away life’s complicated stresses and reduces you to the most primal basics: water, food, breathing. In that brutal simplicity lies a clarity I had spent years searching for in all the wrong places.

Every climb teaches profound humility. When you finally crest an arduous mountain after hours of suffering, you don’t feel like a conqueror—you’re humbled by the sheer magnificence of creation and your own beautiful insignificance within it.

You discover that resilience we all possess but are too comfortable to test. You find reserves of strength buried deep beneath layers of self-doubt and fear.

The Real Reward

Here’s the truth: cycling isn’t fun during the struggle. At kilometer 800, when you’ve been awake for 40 hours, when every muscle is screaming—there is no fun. There is only the choice: give up or keep going.

But after—when you cross that finish line and the impossible becomes your reality, when you return forever changed— When you become a storyteller and watch people’s eyes widen as you share the Zen you discovered on those endless roads-that’s when the joy floods in, pure and overwhelming.

The sport has transformed how I approach everything. Where I once saw obstacles, I now see challenges. The glass isn’t just half full—it’s overflowing with possibility. Every problem has a solution. I laugh more freely and worry less deeply, because discomfort is temporary but regret is forever.

Long-distance cycling proved that our limits are illusions we create out of fear. And when we dare to push beyond them, we don’t just find physical strength—we find who we really are.

The Journey Within

In the end, standing in Rambouillet as the sun rose over the final checkpoint, I realized something profound. The road to PBP was never just about the kilometers conquered or mountains climbed. It was a journey within—a voyage of self-discovery disguised as a bicycle ride through France.

Every pedal stroke stripped away another layer, revealing not just physical endurance but courage, vulnerability, determination, and surrender to something greater. The limitless capacity of the human spirit—not to conquer, but to endure, adapt, grow, transform.

I left for Paris as one person and returned as another. Not better or worse, but truer. More real. More alive.

That transformation—you can’t capture it in a photograph or explain it in words. You can only live it, one kilometer, one pedal stroke, one breath at a time.

That’s not just a lesson for the road. That’s the lesson for life.