PBP 2015: American socks

I was happy to have made Brest on-schedule around the middle of the day Tuesday, a great psychological boost; I spent the afternoon and evening grinding my way back, through mounting discomforts, towards the relief of a shower and a bed at Loudéac.

The Paris-Brest-Paris parcours isn't really flat anywhere, but it generally doesn't have the rhythm of our northern California climbs and descents. The one exception I found was a decent chunk, lasting maybe an hour or so, on the Brest side of Loudéac: nice pitches, not severe, but enough to extract a steady effort, and long enough to settle in a bit; the only part of the terrain across some 760 miles to feel like home.

I got a nice second wind on this stretch, able to push a bit as my aches & pains seemed to ebb a little. Maybe it was the draw of the warm shower and bed, maybe it was the terrain that felt familiar to my legs, but I went with it, and I made a heartening pace that evening.

Sunset, Tuesday evening, on the return to Loudéac.

The sunset created a visually dramatic scene, and I made a rare stop expressly for a photograph. Soon after sunset proper, a gorgeous crescent moon appeared on the horizon, peeking below the clouds. Simply wonderful!

As I made my way, I reached down at one point, not really thinking, and scratched near my left heel. Ow! The surface of my skin near my Achilles tendon felt like it was on fire in response to the casual scratch through my wool sock. Ok, dude: don't do that again, keep pedaling, and figure it out later.

The blue segment highlighted on the map shows
Loudéac to Mortagne-au-Perche on the return.

I arrived at the control, bustling with riders and volunteers, around 10:30pm. The card stamping room was oddly empty of riders at the moment I walked in, so it was very calm. I chatted a bit with the volunteers, and even made my first-ever funny spontaneous joke in French! (Multiple people laughed at once, and I didn't even have to explain it, heh...)

I wanted to make a beeline for the hotel, and get that precious sleep, but I knew that the cafeteria food would be more palatable at that moment than what I had in my drop bag, especially if there were more of those mashed potatoes like the night before.

The cafeteria was crowded, but I got my plain mashed potatoes, no meat, no sauce. As the line slowly advanced, I began slowly taking small spoonfuls, so that I could go easy on the stomach, still recovering from the effects of coffee.

The whole language thing at PBP can be a real challenge, especially when combined with time controls, crowds, and lack of sleep. While there in line, a Japanese gentleman was doing his best to ask the cafeteria volunteers for shkon. He kept trying, as well as he could, to say the word: Shkon. Shkon. Then it hit me: I stuck my thumbs in my armpits, waved my elbows up & down, and I said "chicken?" He nodded, and I said "poulet!" to the volunteer.

Just moments later, advancing toward the register, another volunteer asked riders if they wanted any potage. I looked up from my potatoes with a simple "Non, merci." I realized that none of the other riders within earshot seemed to have understood her question. Wow...so much respect for these hundreds...thousands?...of volunteers; it must be a very, very tough job helping out at PBP.

I retrieved my drop bag, which I had re-deposited there the night before, rather than risk abandoning it in the hotel room if things went awry. Soon I was enjoying the comfort of my room at the Hôtel des Voyageurs...and had my opportunity to inspect my Ankle of Fire.

Well, it turned out to be the skin at the rear of both ankles. No swelling beneath the skin, but the surface was red for maybe a couple of inches along each Achilles tendon, and it would really, really burn when I touched it. But why?

I went over anything that might have been a cause...I had done laundry at a friend's place a few days before the ride, using local laundry detergent, but these socks for the ride were clean from home when I put them on. Could they have been rubbing? But it's one of my favorite pairs of socks, that I wear on & off the bike!

Ok, the clock's ticking, and I'm not asleep yet. Into the shower.

Out of the shower.

Heels still hurt. Ok...I have some Neosporin with pain relief, and some chamois skin cream. I mix the two, and apply it to the red areas, set my alarm for four hours, and fall instantly asleep.

The alarm goes off on-schedule, seemingly minutes later; heels still hurt.

I put my fresh, clean socks on...and the contact hurts my heels. The clock keeps ticking. I eat some food from my drop bag, and some pastries that I'd bought alongside my mashed potatoes, swallowed ~100mg of caffeine in tablet form rather than subject the stomach to more coffee, took my drop bag and my sore heels downstairs, and headed back to the control to drop off the bag and get going.

But what if the heels get worse? I should stop by first aid. Ugh, that's going to take forever! Dude: try taking your sorry a** 45 minutes down the road, and then decide you should have gone to first aid. That'll be real clever now, won't it? Drop off your bag, park your bike, go to first aid, and let people help you.

I felt a little better already!


There were four or five first aid volunteers, secouristes, staffing the station. I approached the person at reception, and explained that I had a small problem that I wanted to nip in the bud: the skin on my heels was irritated. Monsieur asked for my stamp booklet, as is routine, and directed me to an exam table.

There was another patient being helped nearby. Not quite sure what he was in for, but it almost seemed like he was sick. He was lying down on a pad on the floor, and folks were tending to him.

The secouriste assigned to me had me take off my shoes and socks. I pointed out the reddened areas -- they were quite obvious -- and described the pain. It's your shoes, isn't it?

I was so relieved to be able to carry out the conversation in French. I wonder if I would have skipped going to first aid if language had been more of a barrier?

My shoes only come up to here. I think it's my socks, if you can believe it!

She looked closely at my heels, and then looked me straight in the eye, and asked:

Are they American socks?

Wow. This was great! An explosion of associations in my head, all at once. Cultural relativism, allergies, globalization, New Zealand sheep, politics, humor...it was wonderful.

Even with all of that going on in my head, while our gaze was still locked, I responded with the most natural of answers:

Oui.

Madame nodded knowingly, and got right to work taking care of the problem.

As I waited briefly for her to retrieve supplies, another secouriste, who had been speaking decent English with the ill rando, asked one of her colleagues, in French, how to say température in English. This language thing is so hard sometimes, even when it should be easy! I was able to chime in with "temperature," pronounced in my best American, and she was grateful.

My helper soon returned with some ointment and bandages. She applied the soothing ointment to my skin, and did a nice, careful job of wrapping gauze bandages around each foot.

I put my shoes & socks on, and my heels were PERFECT: no pain! I was so glad I'd stopped to get myself squared away before leaving the resources of the control behind.

I gave Madame one of my little wooden nickels. This took her quite by surprise, and she thanked me with la bise (cheek kisses).

My skin didn't bother me one bit that whole long day. Many hours later, I arrived at my hotel in Moratagne-au-Perche for a brief sleep on my final night. I unwrapped my ankles to get in the shower. Not only was the skin red along the Achilles tendons, but more skin around my lower legs, under my leg warmers, was similarly red and irritated. Argh!

After 90 minutes of sleep, it was time to get out of Mortagne-au-Perche and wrap up the final 140km to Paris, with a fairly generous twelve hours or so left on the clock.

Unsurprisingly, the skin of my lower legs was still irritated, I didn't like the prospects of covering the irritated skin with clothes, I didn't have more of the ointment used the previous morning, and the gauze wasn't readily reusable.

I checked the weather: it was the warmest night of my ride, at around 60F. I could do without leg warmers. What about socks?

I packed up and left my hotel room, barefoot, with shoes & socks in hand. I met the réceptionniste downstairs, explained my situation, and asked if he had a pair of ciseaux that I could use to cut the tops off of my socks!

He paused for half a second, made a beeline for the kitchen, and came back with a hefty pair of scissors. I cut my fresh (and almost brand-new) socks so low that they barely peeked over the tops of my shoes, and thanked him profusely.

The hôtelier surprised me when he told me that he'd done PBP three times, but wasn't riding this year due to knee pain. He jotted down my frame number so that he could follow me on my return. I gave him one of my wooden nickel tokens, too, of course!

It was a bit after 2:30am when he stepped outside with me to show me the most direct way back to the course. He asked me when I was due in Dreux. I tried to explain that I had an easy sept heures or so to make the 77 kilometers. That language thing is tricky: he understood me to mean that I had to be in Dreux by 7am, and he suddenly became concerned that I was cutting it too close.

How to say it? La durée, c'est sept heures. No, that didn't do it, I guess that wasn't quite right either. Argh... I finally managed to say that I had to get to Dreux by about 9:30am. This language thing can be hard!

My bare legs didn't bother me on the rest of the way to Paris, but clothes were still uncomfortable. My lower legs also started to swell a bit post-ride, and my shoes bugged me, too, so I picked up some late-season clearance Birkenstocks and some low-cut socks at the Carrefour.

The irritation lasted for more than a week, even after returning home. I am curious about what caused it, but I would be glad to never see it again. However, if it should reoccur, I now have some nice pairs of low-cut French socks!