Bike assembled for bike check.
Team Canada, at Paris suburb Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines, starting point for PBP. Of 5,321 participants from 44 countries registered in 2007, 116 hailed from Canada.
Bike check the day before PBP.
Registration confirmation at Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines.
The route.
The controls.
Elevation profile - 31,000 feet vertical elevation.
Assembling for the 84-hour group's 5 a.m. start.
Waiting for the starting gun.
First encounter with French countryside.
First control, Villaines-la-Juhel, 223 kilometres into ride.
Villaines-la-Juhel.
A rain-less moment at kilometre 237.
Sea of bikes, Loudeac control, 452 kilometres into the ride, just after midnight.
Dawn, second day on the road.
Roc Trevezel, at 349 metres (1,145 feet) the highest point on PBP.
Entering Brest, the halfway point.
Brest harbour, Atlantic coast.
Returning to Paris.
PBP motorcycle patrol passing in the night.
Back at Villaines-la-Juhel control, 1002 kilometres into ride.
Recumbent cyclist enjoying one of the few flat sections of PBP, nearing Paris.
Greeting at the finish, after 78 hours, 21 minutes on the road.
Refueling at the finish.
Back to Paris.
It is, in the words of the PBP tradition, le bâton de marechal du cyclo, le défi ultime (the crowning of a cyclist's career, the ultimate challenge).
