Originally Posted by
Flounce
I'm into randonneuring, and am a relative newb: have been riding a proper road bike for a little over a year, done a few centuries, a 200km brevet, and my weekend long rides have reached 140 miles (PR), ever rising. I aspire to 2019 PBP.
Welcome to the sport! Like you, I started thinking ahead to the next PBP after one had recently happened -- it gave me a nice few years to work up to the longer distances and plan my (our) trip.
I'm looking to get a bike that will better suit me for longer brevets, and won't crack like my carbon frame did when I crashed it once in a group ride. I want to keep my carbon frame bike configured for shorter, faster rides, rather than transforming into what I want in a rando bike. (yes, I know, there is no such thing as a rando bike, any bike can be a rando bike.)
While it's true that "any bike can be a rando bike" it's nice to have separate machines dialed in for different jobs. My "rando bike" uses a bigger frame, a little more upright position, wider tires with fenders, and lower gearing than my other bikes. This allows my "go-fast" bike to stay optimized for shorter rides where the aggressive position, skinnier tires, and foolhardy 42/21 low gear don't really cause problems.
Your list sounds good to me. If I had PBP 2015 to do over again, I would have gotten the dyno headlight from the get-go. Juggling batteries and leaving the brightness on "low" in order to get them to the end sucked.
Oh, and regarding gearing: this is very personal/subjective, but the nice thing about PBP is that it is mostly rolling terrain. I had a 35" low gear that was plenty, and there are more than a few people who do it on single-speed/fixed-gear bikes. Rather than a triple, you might consider a compact or super-compact double with a modest-sized big ring, say 46T or 48T. As long as your cassette isn't too "tight", that lets you hang out in the big ring the vast majority of the time, and only shift to the inner ring for the really steep or long-duration climbs. That said, there is (or ought to be) no shame in installing a triple. Get what you need.