Listen to the full podcast with voice memos from throught the night.

This past weekend, Will and I completed the BRM Altea 400. It started and ended in Altea, Spain, and traced a big loop through the southeast of the country covering 400 kilometers, about 250 miles, with 5,000 meters of climbing, which is roughly 15,735 feet for the Americans in the room. It was the longest single effort either of us has ever done.

What's a BRM?

BRM stands for Brevet des Randonneurs Mondiaux, which is a French acronym that roughly translates to "brevet of the randonneurs of the world." I still have to look up what a randonneur actually is, but I believe it refers to the people who do brevets. Whether you can also call an ultra-distance cyclist a randonneur, I genuinely do not know. That is a question for another day.

What I do know is that BRMs are organized cycling endurance events of 200, 300, 400, or 600 kilometers, completed within a set time limit. They are held in almost 70 countries across five continents. They are non-competitive, relatively inexpensive, and a great way to practice long-distance riding either solo or in a group. We paid 20 euros for this one. Ten for the medal, ten for entry. I did the Traka 100k last year, paid over 100 euros, got caught in rain and mud, had to wade through a dirty ravine, received zero medal, and I was upset about it for a long time. So 20 euros and a medal already felt like a win before we even started.

Why We Actually Did This

This was not just a fun weekend ride. This was a pre-qualifying brevet for Paris-Brest-Paris 2027.

Paris-Brest-Paris is a 1,200 kilometer cycling event held every four years in France, and it is one of the oldest and most iconic endurance events in the world. It is also limited to 8,000 participants, and the registration process is, let's say, involved. Will tried to walk me through it the night before the race and I did not absorb everything he said, so I looked it up afterward and I will do my best here.

To start the registration process, you can complete a qualifying BRM between November 2025 and October 2026. This is optional, but doing it allows you to pre-register earlier than everyone else, which matters because of those limited spots. The longer the qualifying brevet you complete, the earlier your registration window opens. After we finish the 400, ours opens in February of next year. From there, between November 2026 and June 2027, everyone who wants to participate must complete a series of four qualifying BRMs at 200, 300, 400, and 600 kilometers. Then, if everything checks out and your paperwork is in order, you are in. Paris-Brest-Paris takes place in August 2027.

So doing the 400 now gives us a head start on registration, but we still have to complete the rest of the series before the deadline next year. And yes, I was very confused about all of this until I read it myself. Will was patient with me. Mostly.

The Night Before

We stayed near Benidorm, which is right near Altea where the event starts. When we checked in, I went to roll my bike into the apartment and it hit me immediately: I had left the mount for my Exposure Lights Toro 16 at home. I was devastated. I have this recurring fear of forgetting something important, and here I was having actually forgotten something important, and I had been so cavalier about packing this time. I threw things into bags and trusted myself and that is exactly what happened.

But after a few minutes of genuine disappointment, I thought: I always travel with two lights. The backup light was not ideal for this situation, but I could duct tape the big light to the bars and make it work. And then I remembered that in Spain, duct tape is called "American tape," which made me laugh. I went to sleep feeling okay about it.

Will explained the brevet card situation before we fell asleep, which I will attempt to summarize: there is a card you carry, and at control points you get it stamped or verified. But since everyone rides at different paces and the event starts at night, if no one is manning a checkpoint when you arrive, you take a selfie with the town sign. Your face has to be in the photo because you could otherwise just pull town sign photos from Google, and that would not be fair. You send the photos to the organizer via WhatsApp. I had imagined some kind of elaborate paper stamp system where you had to mail things. I do not ask enough questions and my brain fills in the gaps with increasingly unlikely scenarios. This has always been true.

WhatsApp Image 2026-06-20 at 07.28.49.jpeg

0424c5ac-335c-41f9-af0c-d7898d2467a5 3.JPG

The Ride

The event started at 7pm. There were six of us total including the race organizer who lead the way, number 7 couldn’t make it for some reason that was explained to me in Spanish. So of course I didn’t understand. We rode the first stretch with the group before stopping to get a battery for Will’s power meter. At kilometer 96, the first checkpoint, we had caught back up to everyone. We each had a Coke for caffeine and calories, and kept moving.

By around kilometer 186, in a town called Tous, I had taken off my shoes and was sitting at a bus depot letting my feet breathe. We had done about 1,600 meters of climbing at that point and had roughly 3,400 more ahead of us. The flat sections were truly wonderful while they lasted. We were approximately at the halfway point, depending on who you ask. Komoot said yes, math said technically not quite.

On the way into Tous at around 4am, we hit gravel backroads in the dark. Not ideal. Not what I would have chosen. But we got through them, and we got through the 18% climb that I genuinely could not ride up and had to walk, and the 22% section after that. I had some very strong questions for the route designer, who we assumed to be race organizer Pau, which means "peace" in Catalan. I have suggestions for Pau. Although I’m realizing he probably didn’t even design the route. lol.

That stretch between 3am and 6am was the hardest part emotionally. We were both tired in that deep, underwater way where you don't really know what you need and everything is slightly funny because nothing makes sense anymore. I put on house music at one point because I knew it would help Will, and offered him a gel, which he accepted with less resistance than I expected. If my man is taking a gel without argument, he is very tired. It worked. We both came back to life. We kept moving.

We stopped at a bakery because it was the only thing open and sat on two small benches facing a wall eating bread that was not great but was fine. It felt ridiculous sitting under peoples windows fighting for our lives eating baguettes at 6 something in the morning.

The group caught up to us shortly after and we all went to a bar that had food. From there, we rode together for the rest of the event, and honestly it was really nice. The pace was more moderate than we had originally planned, but drafting is drafting, the company was good for morale, and when we finished I did not feel empty. The hardest part was staying awake. Auntie needs her sleep.

The final climb was Coll de Rates, which is about 14 kilometers of sustained climbing and the crown jewel of the route. Before we hit the climb Will said he might have to call Taxi Tony, but we were fine. I am a little curious to know if Tony has people down south tho.

We finished in around 23 hours. I have a selfie timestamped at 5:46pm so I am calling it around 5:40, which means we successfully finished within the 27 hour cut off with well over four hours to spare.

After

We had to ride twenty minutes back to the apartment. I saw Will layed out on the floor, so I joined him and we both fell asleep immediately. We both moved to the bed and when we woke up it was 10:30pm and we had missed dinner. We shared dried meat sticks and some crouton-adjacent crackers that was enough to stop my body from shaking. I then drove to a vending machine for milkshakes, a Fanta, and water. Girl dinner is dinner.

Equipment

Ayesha's setup:

QuickPro AR:One road bike with SRAM Force, a 48/35 crankset in the front, 10-36 cassette in the rear, Zipp Firecrest 404 wheels with Goodyear Eagle F1 29mm tubeless tires. One tall 750ml water bottle in a cage, and a small storage bottle with tools in the other. I wore the POC Ultracycling vest with a two-liter bladder for water and used the vest pockets to hold most of my food. I also had a POC 0.7-liter top tube bag for the small stuff like lip balm and shammy cream, and a 0.3-liter saddle bag. For repairs I brought a hand pump, an electric pump, a patch kit, tire levers, two tubes, and a Dynaplug kit.

I forgot my light mount at home, so I used weatherproof gorilla tape to attach my Exposure Toro 16 directly to the handlebars. I had an Exposure Sirius 11 rear light, and a small knog light on my POC Amidal helmet as a backup. I wore Castelli Cargo bibs, a summer jersey, and Quoc Motion shoes. I also had reflective stickers on the bike left over from the Lost Dot 101 (I never took them off) and added more reflective material to the vest because I wanted to be as visible as possible. My bike is orange, my helmet was orange, my vest was orange. I looked like a traffic cone. I love that for me.

For fuel: gels, gummy bears, Snickers bars, electrolyte tabs, salt pills (which we never touched), and carb powder. I brought a 20,000mAh Anker power block to keep everything charged overnight.

One thing I would change: the shoes. I used my Quoc Grand Tour III shoes for the Lost Dot 101 and had zero comfort issues. Road shoes are just too stiff for something this long. I broke my ankle a few years ago, so foot comfort is not optional for me, and around 180 kilometers I started getting hot spots.

Will's setup:

Much more minimal. His bike was running a 50/37 crankset in the front, 10-36 in the rear, 32mm tires, standard setup. Two regular-size insulated bottles to keep his drinks cold because it was very warm during the day. Castelli Climber's AC jersey and Espresso bibs. Two lights, one front, one rear. Quoc M Pro lace shoes, which he wishes he had swapped out for his BOAs, not for any comfort reason, but because those beautiful white laced shoes got truly filthy and he would have preferred to ruin an equally nice pair he cared less about.

Looking Back

Will's biggest challenge was staying awake, which is relatable. He never hit a dangerous level of fatigue, but around 5 or 6am he was genuinely struggling until we found a Starbucks pre-made coffee at a gas station. Once he had caffeine, he was fine for the rest of the ride. Physically, he felt good. His legs were not the problem.

Same for me. I was never physically incapable of doing what we were doing. My muscles held up. The hard part was just the deep, pervasive sleepiness that settled in around 4am when we’d been riding for nine hours and it was dark. There is no workaround for that except to keep moving and take the gel and turn on the music.

Would we do it again? We have to. We still need to complete the 200, 300, and 600 to finish the qualifying series for Paris-Brest-Paris. And honestly, after a full night's sleep and a real meal, I am not even dreading that. I kind of want to do it again soon, which either means we did something right or I have completely lost my sense of perspective.