ThermionicScott 

I've seen a few mentions of people riding (at least starting) PBP 2019 on fat bikes, which kinda blew my mind. I saw some interesting contraptions in 2015, but a fat bike is just beastly.

Does anyone have statistics or stories about people finishing on one?

clasher

I saw one dude on a fat bike with a full-size floor pump strapped to the rear rack... I'll have to see if I snagged a pic or not. This was in the first 100km or so.

edit: found the pic!

downtube42

I see various mentions of people seeing a fat-bike rider in 2019, but cannot find anything about results. One person remarked that the slow speed, and anticipated a DNF.

I'd think if someone finished, google would turn something up.

unterhausen

There was a whole contingent of fatbikers from Thailand. I didn't see many on the roads, but I did see one guy standing at the top of Le Roc admiring the view.
I guess we could look up the frame numbers in this pic. On edit: the two visible numbers in that pic were DNF. Thailand overall had 29 people finish in time.
Yes, they thought it was freezing So did the Indians I met.

Tourist in MSN

I remembered this post by Kingston a couple years ago, found it:

I remembered it because she finished a 200k on her fat bike faster than I did and she had shifter problems on that ride, often rode in too high a gear because of the shifter issues.

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GhostRider62

Purely anecdotal, the fat bikes that I encountered on the return were too far back to finish on time.

I got to Brest around 23:00 Monday and slept til 6:30 am, had a nice breakfast, so, I was in daylight all the way to Tinteneac where I also slept the night. Watching oncoming riders is cheap entertainment. I hit the massive bulge coming up the Roc and then until the next control. I did see one Fat bike at the tail of the bulge. Then, it started to thin out a little into Loudeac but still saw outgoing riders into Tinteneac! It seemed to my eye at the time that the certain bikes and groups were going to have a hard time based upon mental calculations at the time.

I seem to recall reading a blogpost somewhere about a fatbike finishing successfully.

unterhausen

I think a 600k on a fatbike has been done more often than one might expect. I would say it's common enough to be unremarkable, but that's not true because it's a definite handicap. Someone finished the Pennsylvania SR series on a fatbike, which is an accomplishment given the climbing on the 600k. I assume the Thai riders finished their SR series on their fatbikes or how would they get there? But they told me their brevets don't go up into the mountains. I think they held the 2020km grand randonnee in 2020, my guess is someone finished that on a fatbike. One of the guys in my picture was the promoter. That's what they called him too, "the promoter."

My interpretation of the rider I saw a the top of le Roc'h Trevezel was that he was trying to decide if he should bother going to Brest. No way he was going to get there on time. His bike was pretty striking, it was shiny gold.

downtube42

I have a rando friend on the slow end of the spectrum, and he likes to say rando is great because you can make up for lack of athletic ability with lack of sleep.

You can make up for equipment handicaps with athletic ability plus lack of sleep. It's doable.

unterhausen

I'm not sure if the 2019 PBP had more wind than usual, but an upright bike would not have been fun on much of it. It certainly failed to have many tailwinds, as opposed to 2011 which for 90 hour folks had tailwinds both ways. I only remember a bothersome headwind headed into Brest. That's ignoring the rolling resistance of those bikes.