Deb Banks has an excellent article in the Summer 2019 edition of “American Randonneur” titled “Women Who Go Long” about the participation of women in randonneuring events.
I was surprised to learn that women make up fewer than 6% of the finishers of Paris-Brest-Paris and that Stacy is one of only 136 women who have completed a 1200k brevet in the United States.
The first PBP in 1891 had seven women register, but they were barred from riding. The first woman rider, Juliette Desvages, did not complete PBP until 1921 and the first American women, Annette Shaffer Hillian and Harriet Fell did not complete PBP until 1975.
Harriet Fell’s account of her 1975 PBP ride, which I found on Sheldon Brown’s website, along with Emily O’Brien’s account of her 2007 PBP ride on a fixed-gear were both inspirations for Stacy & myself to challenge ourselves with ultra-distance riding. We decided to try randonneuring even before we had ridden our first century, and to attempt to ride PBP after our first 200K.
There’s a great YouTube video of Harriet Fell telling the story of her first PBP ride:
And there’s a video of Emily O’Brien and Jake Kassen explaining the basics of randonneuring as well:
BTW, Emily runs DillPickleGear.com and she made the fantastic handlebar bags we use on our Fusos.
Greg and Stacy ride 