Liège-Paris-Liège 2024: 1200 km unsupported | Race report

By koga, 31 August, 2024

Deutsche Fassung hier: Liège-Paris-Liège 2024: 1200 km unsupported | Rennbericht

I overtake Bart early in the morning as he's getting ready in the hotel. The finisher's course with its 400km and 6000m has eaten up all the other top 10 candidates ahead of us. Shortly before the finish, the route takes us over the legendary classic climbs of La Redoute and La Roche aux Faucons (Falkenstein) in the midday heat. And then the unbelievable happens!

But first things first ;) Three weeks ago, when I was offered a place at the last minute, I didn't realize that we would be riding through the Ardennes and the Eifel on the way back from Paris. It was only when the road book with the gpx files arrived that I realized it was going to be a tough ride. At least half of the route is a compulsory parkour, which makes preparation a lot easier.

Off to Paris

60 riders and 4 couples set off on Thursday morning at 6:00 am for the 1000km course. The first compulsory parkour takes us north on the cobbled Rue Pierreuse over a 12% gradient for 700m out of the city. This is good to prevent groups from forming. Because slipstreaming is not allowed. I am quite far in front, my legs feel good. Most of the riders head back down into the valley. I and a few others stay on the hill for the time being. That's where I meet Bart for the first time.

The route to Paris first takes us to the Meuse, and than to Dinant. At the spectacular Bayard rock, we ride in a circle on the second compulsory parkour so that the media team can take some nice photos and videos. On the steep climb, the photographer can lie down on the ground and relax, as his subjects are barely making any progress. I feel a bit famous.

I take my first short break at the Trappist monastery near Chimay (km 165). Fill up with water, go to the toilet, apply ointment, take out my sunglasses and pack away my safety vest. A stop like this needs to be well planned to not lose time unnecessarily. As far as Laon, where the next checkpoint awaits, the route leads through a fairly barren plain. The headwind is really sapping my strength. I realize that I don't have a lock with me and therefore large supermarkets are not an option for shopping. Pity. So I skip the Intermarché and ride to a small kiosk. This is where I put water ice in my shorts legs for the first time. I should have left it there, because in terms of taste it ranks somewhere near the top of the list of disgusting chemical flavors. Apparently pineapple flavor, because the pineapple soda tastes the same. No matter, there is sugar in it.

The cathedral of Laon (km 248) is situated on a hill, with boules and chess being played on the forecourt. The photographer shouts after me that I have missed a turn on the compulsory course. I turn around and head back towards the cathedral. Ah, the view is so much better! Everything is planned out here! The route is perfectly scouted and the photographer is everywhere. I allow myself a 20-minute break and enjoy the peace and quiet.

It's 8 p.m. and the chances of finding open supermarkets are dwindling. In Compiège (km 330) I meet Thyl, who has found a small supermarket along the route. Bingo, I also need provisions for the night. I buy a packet of toast, ham, a Coke and look for a place to have dinner. Half an hour's break and then it's off on the next compulsory parkour that will take us through Paris. We cycle through small villages on winding paths through the Oise-Pays nature park. On horrible cobblestones past the castle of Chantilly. A few ups and downs and suddenly we are in Saint Denis, in the middle of Paris (km 440).

Paris at night - but where to sleep?

Travel tip: Sacré Coeur on Montmartre is not illuminated at night. And without light, the basilica doesn't even look that glamorous. There were not really any other highlights in Paris either. Instead, endless red traffic lights (no problem at night), “Paris 2024” lettering everywhere (Olympia), “Sexdome” and “Pussy's” opposite. Well, onwards then.

It takes a little longer to get out of the city, we ride briefly along the Seine and then along the Canal de l'Ourcq. Tiredness sets in, but most of the places to sleep are occupied by homeless people. Even far outside the city center. At some point I come to a bridge where I just lie down underneath it (km 485). It still “smells” of the city, but that's ok for 2 hours sleep. I wake up after 1.5 hours. No bedtime heaviness, pack everything up and carry on. The stay didn't last longer than 2 hours, 3-4 drivers overtook me.

In Meaux, at the next early Gothic cathedral, the parkour comes to an end. Now it's off through Champagne, there doesn't seem to be much else here apart from vineyards.

In Château-Thierry (km 556) at 10:30, 28 hours 30 minutes after the start, I discover a caravan site behind the McDonalds, in front of which there is a suspicious racing bike with light luggage, where I wash the sleep out of my eyes, fill up my water and organize myself a little. I start to feel the exhaustion and tiredness. I cycle along the Marne as far as Damery before another compulsory parkour over the (steep) vineyards to Reims.

In Damery, Ewoud waits for the supermarket to open. Jeremy makes do with the bakery opposite and then flies off. In the replay on followmychallenge, I now see that Jan and Nick also started the parkour just before us. The later places 6-11 are very close together here. Only Bart is missing. Together with Mathilde, he passes by 1 hour 20 minutes after me. Mathilde is the later first-placed woman and 12th overall.

The forced break

In Reims (km 650) in the afternoon, I notice that things are no longer running smoothly. Preliminary diagnosis: strain in my right thigh. I buy some ice to cool it down, a cooling ointment (in germany we call it "horse ointment") from the pharmacy and a hearty lunch. I then sit down in the park to avoid the demonstrating youths (yellow vests?) with their drums and the convoy of dozens of motorcycles. I'm not interested in this form of entertainment right now.

My team doctor says: try a few different sitting positions. No sooner said than done, it's better with the saddle a few mm higher. I ride on slowly, it's flat for now. But it doesn't really get any better, there's now pain in the other knee, probably due to the unfamiliar sitting position. I cycle around 55km like this. After almost 500km in the first 24 hours, I only manage half that on the second day. I look for a decent place to sleep and decide to take a good break and then see if I can continue. 8 hours of sleep do me good. Divine. Only interrupted by a few passing trucks and a teenager looking for his buddy (but assuring me that he doesn't want to dispute my bus stop cottage).

DNF or not to DNF?

The next morning I can hardly get up from the sleeping mat because everything hurts. My knee doesn't feel any better. Shit, that's probably it. DNF. And that's before the challenge really begins. I drive to Rethel and see a fellow rider sitting in the café. But first to the station to check the departure times. A train is leaving to the belgien border in an hour. Back to the café, Alain and Benoit are there too. Benoit didn't sleep last night, he's also thinking of giving up. I advise him not to do it until he's slept. He'll drive through. A panini and a café will do me good. Water in the face, a toilet, that's good too.

Then back to the station, the train was due to leave at 8:00. Hm, where has the pain suddenly gone?

So on we go. It's going so well that I'll hardly get off my bike from now until the finish. If only because I didn't want to arrive in Liège on Sunday evening. And then it's a simple calculation whether I have time to sleep again or not.

But first I cycle along the river, 60 flat kilometers are good for slowly testing the engine. Then the climb through the forest to Bouillon (km 800) on the beautiful Semois in Belgium. Knees still ok. The 400km long finish parkour starts in Bouillon. This is where the riders gather. I meet Tom on his mountain bike. Untypical choice of bike, he said he had ridden the most beautiful route ever up to Bouillon. But MTB trails are probably not the most efficient routes for this race. At the supermarket, I take a quick walk through the walk-in refrigerated section, the midday heat is in full swing.

Supermarket of lost things

I got hungry in Bertrix (km 823). Somehow I hadn't taken that into account when I went shopping in Bouillon. Well, it was the third day of the race. Also, there's not much more after Bertrix. I'm standing in front of the supermarket with a Calippo in each trouser leg, a packet of salmon in one hand and a baguette in the other, from which I take alternate bites. And without my sunglasses. But I don't realize that until after I've set off. So back I go. At the supermarket, I had clipped it onto my shopping bag, which I never do. I meet another driver and ask him if he's seen it. No, but if I find his smartphone, I should let him know. Oh dear, it could always be worse. I leave the supermarket of lost things and hope that we'll be driving through the forest a lot now and that this will be my last afternoon of racing.

We drive through now hazy memories of idyllic villages, forests, small paths and lakes. And mountains. Always and everywhere, up and down. 50-300 meters deep and high, sometimes steep, sometimes flat, sometimes briefly interrupted by a valley. From now on and for the next almost 400km. Belgium, Luxembourg, then a detour through the Eifel and back to Belgium. At some point it gets dark. At some point, clouds gather. That's right, there should be thunderstorms. A bit of rain at 20°C is ok. But then suddenly I get caught in a downpour.

Tomato soup

Light shines from the “Zur Alten Mühle” hotel. I ask for a towel so that I don't turn the seat cushions into a bog. There's tomato soup. Catherine had already made that clear, because the kitchen is actually already closed. Catherine and her friends had signed up for the 500km variant because they wanted to get into tackling the long distance. However, they didn't know how demanding the route would be when they registered. It leads from Liège directly to Bouillon and then over the devilish Parkour. That makes 500km and 8800m. They weren't prepared for this, but they wanted to give it a go anyway. Her friends had already dropped out during the day, she wanted to drive straight to St. Vith and get picked up. “Don't scratch at night” is not always so easy for beginners to implement when the hotel is fully booked and it's raining cats and dogs.

I'm in a bit of a hurry to get back on the road. I'm totally soaked and as night falls, it's actually cooling down quite a bit. And a strong gust of rain is still lashing down on my face. I park up briefly at a bus stop to get changed. However, I don't have many options. A thicker undershirt, no leg warmers or long trousers. The night is going to be tough. The pain is back in my knees, but this time from the strain and the cold. This is category 1 pain, which you can safely ignore if you have no previous history. You should only give up with category 2 pain, i.e. if something really breaks.

At some point, I start restarting my timer on my garmin on the hour. Then you don't think “Shit, another 4 hours until the sun rises”. Instead, ah, another 20 minutes, then I have to press it again. Kind of banal, but when you're really struggling, any rhythm and routine that helps you chop down the time is more than welcome. Then the rough mileage: When it's no longer 300+, but has a 2 in front of it. That is something that is "just" a long day trip. So it's still long, but even normal people do it sometimes. Or only less than 3000m of elevation, that was also a milestone. There are then somewhat contradictory signals in your brain because you're still sooo far away from your goal. And at the same time you think it's not that far now.

The race for 10th place

I watch the tracker from time to time: places 1-9 are either already at the finish line or relatively certain. But 10 is still not so clear. Past the Urftsee lake and up past the old NSDAP training center Vogelsang. One of the tough climbs. But it's worth it, because here I move up to 10th place - 150km before the finish. Bart and Mathilde are both sleeping nearby and set off shortly after I passed by. It's now clear that if I'm caught up, it's over. Because with 24 hours non-stop in my bones, I'm not going to make another comeback. So I'm stepping on the gas. Maybe it's enough if I keep up the pace for a few hours to keep the morale of my pursuers down. Mathilde has problems with here derailleur, but Bart is hot on my heels. And the gap of around 30 minutes at the start was steadily shrinking.

As we head back towards Belgium, it's slowly getting light. But this ice-cold westerly wind! It will be hours before it gets noticeably warmer. Hours on wide roads through the forest, which are all tarred somehow, but still broken enough to rumble unpleasantly. After Eupen, another reservoir. They all look the same, I can no longer tell them apart. At least it's slowly getting warmer.

Quickly grab a Coke from the vending machine, take off your rain jacket and apply some ointment to your sit bones. Everything has to go smoothly now. The last 50 km are absolute madness. We ride through one folk festival after another, through caravans of vintage cars where the air is black with soot, past tractor competitions and then the legendary climbs of La Redoute and Falkenstein. At the Redoute, two mountain bikers join me for a short ride. One of them is aware of the historic moment and rides ahead and takes a photo of me just before the steep part begins. I sprint away from him and will probably never get to see the photo.

The media team is at Falkenstein. It's about time! The last climb, everything should be clear now, right? Rolling into Liège is just a formality. 10th place in the bag?! Suddenly the route leads onto something like a city highway. I am irritated. Apparently it's not closed to bikes, because nobody honks at me. Nevertheless, I look at the tracker, where the parkour is marked. It's not the highway. Shit. Wrong track on the GPS, cell phone battery almost empty. Riding back, somehow squeeze the last few watts out of the power bank with the charging cable and hope that I had some buffer to Bart. When I'm on the right track and look at the tracker, I can't believe my eyes: Bart has overtaken me! And he's out of sight. That's it (with 10th place).

At least I can now roll into the finish relaxed. How chilled would the last 150km have been if we had just ridden together? Bart didn't even know he'd overtaken me. But we didn't see each other once. So we couldn't have agreed anything. At the finish line, we hugged each other and agreed that we would cross the finish line together at the next race.

Epilogue

I reach the finish line after 78 hours and 46 minutes and have covered a total of 1205 km and (according to strava) a good 12,000 meters of altitude. I had a few detours in the route, not least because I was already at the train station. I missed my actual goal of staying under three days again, as I did with the NorthRaceWestphalia. However, I also slept almost twice as long and had to conjure away a pulled muscle. I'm happy to take the extra sleep, but theoretically I could have been four to six hours faster if everything had gone smoothly. Then I would have finished just over 72 hours. But I'm really happy with the result that I was able to spend some time in Liège.

The team did a mega job. We joked at the end that they had also completed a marathon that wasn't much less challenging than the one we did. The route was perfectly scouted, everyone was super nice and made an incredible effort to ensure that everyone was doing well. There was a meal at the finish, a T-shirt, a cap and a few very useful “freebies”. The headquarters was in the youth hostel, where there was a shower, kitchen and sofas. There was even a courtyard on the parkour where we could sleep in the hay and eat for a donation. Unfortunately, that didn't fit into my itinerary, but it's always cool to know that there's an open door somewhere. And Liège is a really cool city too! See you next year!

Other reports

Official race report: https://dotwatcher.cc/race/liege-paris-liege-2023
LPL Challenge 2024 (fr), by Jeremy Joncheray, 4th place
Liège-Paris-Liège 2024 DNF [english] by Salomé