Paris-Brest-Paris 2023

PBP 2023 is scheduled to run between August 20 and 24. The starting town is Rambouillet (view on Google Maps). I've put the approximate route on cycling.routes.fun. This is a massive event, and 8000+ riders are expected to take part. There are also qualifying criteria, and a pre-qualifying period (starting from Jan 14) to get your entry in sooner.

Rider tracking

I have my custom dot-watcher which I am making free to the first 50 subscribers! It is a manual process of tracking, so you update your own location as and when you see fit (or remember). Here is the link: PBP 2023 dot-watcher on cycling.routes.fun.

Qualifying

The most significant criterion is having to ride a "BRM SR" in the same calendar year as PBP. A BRM SR is a "Super Randonneur" award where all of the rides are classified as "Brevet de Randonneurs Mondiaux" (NOT the same as a regular Brevet de Randonneurs). For confirmation, see these pages on audax.uk: event classification; randonneur awards.

Here are the dates when qualifying BRMs must be ridden:

• 200k: Sat 7 Jan - Sun 30 Apr
• 300k: Sat 11 Mar - Sun 21 May
• 400k: Sun 9 Apr - Sat 10 Jun
• 600k: Sat 6 May - Sat 24 June

Pre-qualifying

As far as I can gather, the ability to pre-qualify gives you a bigger choice of start times. The longer your qualifying ride in 2022, the sooner you can pre-qualify. Note that this year is unusual in that it includes London-Edinburgh-London (a 1500km BRM event), so there will be loads of people being able to pre-qualify with a 1000km+ distance. To pre-register, head over to this page on the ACP website!

There were 7600 places available (including 1550 starting early Monday morning); as of Jan 31 there are 3100.

First-timers

A UK pubinar was organised in October, aimed primarily at PBP first-timers. It was at The Compasses in Littley Green near Chelmsford, and there's a thread all about it on yacf. Also in that thread, Lightning Phil has very kindly given an overview of the timescales and what's required to get a place. Nick has made the audio available (with lots of background noise) at Nextcloud.

There's also lots of information supplied by Cambridge Audax: Cambridge PBP Pubinar #1 - The Red Lion, Histon (18 June, 2019).

For more info, see this Audax UK news item and the Audax Club Parisien website. There is also the official PBP website (English version).

Here's a useful write-up of PBP 2019.

Olaf Storbeck has put together an excellent comparison of LEL and PBP which can help to understand the wildly different atmospheres at these events.

View the post-event page