Originally Posted by
unterhausen
... My experience is that people don't like to ride in the rain and find a reason to DNF if it keeps up for any length of time. Fenders don't really make that much difference. Strangely, I think the people that ride PBP may include more newbies than any other 1200k...
I think you are pretty much right on on both counts there. That's been my experience as well.
Originally Posted by
unterhausen
... My take on the BQ article is that it's the person, not the equipment. And to think that equipment choices guarantee success is just magical thinking. However, my personal experience says 32 hole wheels are a wise equipment decision. I knew a couple of people that had to buy a new wheel on PBP and I finished with a broken spoke. That wasn't much fun. The people that bought new wheels typically had to wait hours for it. That's a good way to dnf.
It's kind of funny, I've done 1200k's on 16,24 and 32 spoke wheels and the only wheel problem I had was with the 32spoke wheel. I had those wheels hand built prior to PBP in 03 and even rode Climb to Kaiser on them to break them in and I broke two spokes on the rear about 10kms outside of Brest. Luckily, I was able (barely) to limp into Brest where I waited for them to rebuild it. They finally finished two hours after the control closed. I got lots of sleep waiting so I was pretty fresh when I left Brest and was able to catch back up pretty easily. The guy who built me those wheels was really embarrased when I told him about the failure. He went through it again and I haven't had a problem with them since. If I was on the 16spoke wheels I would have been done but the 24spoke Zipps I can ride with one or two broken spokes only because the rim is so rigged that it hardly wobbles with a broken spoke.
The real key is to have your equipment in good running order and in a minimum of near new condition.