tl;dr: if you are starting a 400k 6 time zones to the east of where you live, it doesn't hurt to start during the night. If you start the ride in your own time zone, it's going to cause sleep disruption. Which may or may not be a problem. I have never really had bad sleep problems on a 400k. 600k, yes, but rarely.
In '19, I realized why they used to start PBP a little later, at dusk. The wind really dies down at dusk, and in normal times you will have a headwind going west. I started in the first 90 hour group and we had a stiff headwind and everyone thought they were in a local 20 mile race. Long line of riders instead of a pack, it was not what I was expecting. It seems like in 2015 those groups might have been fast, but at least they were in packs. Then I was blown up and there was nobody to ride with when dusk hit and the wind died down. I think if I go back next year I'm starting later. Hopefully a more relaxed cohort and less wind. I didn't mind riding all night this time, I got plenty of sleep in preparation and it's more aligned with an east coast U.S. time. My thought process was that I wanted to start in daylight, but now I realize that's not worth what you lose. I was definitely starting to fade when I got to Loudeac, but I wasn't too sleepy before that.
We had a pretty stiff headwind at the start in 2011 too, but I was always in packs that usually felt too slow. In 2019 it was a long single line of riders that can't really handle their bike and are constantly opening up gaps. Not the way you want to start a 1200k.
I dropped out with 250km to go, my knee was the size of a grapefruit even with the massages. If the wind hadn't been so strong I might have finished, I don't know. I made various mistakes, you always learn the most on DNF's, but there is a point at which you have too much knowledge. But it was a lot of fun anyway.
Last edited by unterhausen; 05-23-22 at 07:31 AM.