Paris-Brest

Every four years a sweaty band of elite amateur cyclists attempt to ride from Paris to the Breton city of Brest on the Atlantic coast and then back to Paris, covering 1,200 kilometers (about 750 miles) in ninety hours or less. The best riders do it in under fifty hours and none of them are professionals. Paris-Brest-Paris is the oldest long-distance cycling event there is. It began in 1891, only six years after the invention of the modern bicycle, as the brainchild of a journalist and cycli