The gruelling Paris-Brest-Paris must be completed within 90 hours and requires some to ‘suspend reality’, but cyclists come back year after year
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A floppy neck ended Tasmanian Gavin Hinds’ attempt to ride 1,200 kilometres from Paris to Brest on France’s Atlantic coast and back to Paris. In 2011, as he reached the 750-kilometre point, having managed only a few hours of sleep, exhaustion took hold. “All of a sudden, I noticed that I just couldn’t keep my head up,” he says.
Gavin was suffering from Shermer’s neck, a debilitating condition experienced by endurance cyclists when their neck muscles become so fatigued, they fail. No amount of rehydration or paracetamol helped. A last-ditch attempt to prop up his head, by tying an inner tube between the back of his helmet and the top of the hydration pack he was wearing, didn’t work. Unable to continue riding, Gavin withdrew from the event and returned to Paris by train.
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