Notes Along the Way- Week 11
The weather shifted this week — a few days pushing 70 degrees. I continue to feel a spring awakening. After the 18-mile Delaware River Loop run, I was honestly unsure what my legs would say. They said: keep going. So I did. An early week 45-mile ride out along the D&R Canal, back-to-back TrainerRoad workouts in the days that followed, and then a 5-mile run to close out the week. Feels like progress — an accumulation of efforts chipping away toward larger goals.
Saturday was the PA Randonneurs International Women's Day 107km ride, a route I rode last year and was glad to return to. It starts at the Joan of Arc Statue and winds past women's history landmarks along the way. Next year, I think I'd like to make a small project of it — stopping to photograph each one properly, really sitting with what they mean.
I've been thinking about Susan B. Anthony's famous quote on bicycling:
I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of freedom, untrammeled womanhood.
She said that in 1896 — the bicycle was still a novelty, and in many ways, so was the idea of women's equality. I love how she connects the two.
After a full year of Randonneuring, I'm starting to feel like I belong here. Not in an anxious, proving-myself way — just genuinely settled. I look forward to the familiar faces. I like the rhythm of it: conversation threading through miles, then falling quiet, just me and my bike moving through open countryside. I'm a stronger cyclist each time I show up, and while I still have so much to learn, there's something happening that I can only describe as growing into myself. Finding my shape in this world.
I love bicycles. I love the people who love bicycles.
Which brings me to PBP.
Paris-Brest-Paris has been run since 1891 — 1,200km of Randonneuring tradition so long and so alive that all you want is to earn your place and be counted among those who did it. This is the year when completing a Super Randonneur series qualifies you to register for the August 2027 event, and riders are already starting to ask each other: Are you thinking about PBP?
I am thinking about PBP.
The idea feels enormous. Getting to France, the logistics, the training, the commitment. But when I let myself imagine it — riding into the night with thousands of cyclists on a route that's been ridden for over a century — I don't feel doubt. I feel want. And that, I think, is my answer.
