I finally got around to watching my recording of this year’s Paris-Roubaix. PR is always an incredibly exciting race, with its storied history and agonizingly difficult terrain, and this year was no exception. Sure, the much-predicted rain didn’t come through, Tom Boonen shocked almost no one by winning again, and George Hincapie’s equipment failed less spectacularly than usual, but it was still great.
And of course I was struck again by how much more this race has in common with a cyclocross race than a typical Pro Tour road race. There aren’t any hills to speak of, much less run-ups, and the distance is about 10 times greater than most people cover in a one-hour cross race, but the road surfaces on some of Paris-Roubaix’s pave sections make a lot of cross courses look like a velodrome.
I wanted to post a video of this year’s race that captures how demanding this race is, but there’s not a lot out there that does it justice. The video that actually does the best job may be this one, which captures some of the teams doing pre-race reconnaissance on the notorious Trench of Arenberg pave section.
Note: This video starts off with some still images, which I’m not a big fan of on YouTube (it’s a site for videos, people), but it switches to video after a few seconds, so stick with it.