The Cobbles Don't Care
The briefing the night before mentioned something about tyre pressure. She can't remember the exact number. What she remembers is the first cobbled sector — Troisvilles to Inchy, relatively early in the route, relatively forgiving by Roubaix standards — and the sensation that her handlebars were trying to leave without her.
She had ridden cobbles before. Belgian fan-rides, a couple of sportives through northern France, enough to know the theory: weight back, loose grip, pick the smoothest line. The theory works on short stretches. Paris–Roubaix is not short stretches. It is sector after sector, with sealed roads between them that feel like recovery until the next set begins and the body remembers that recovery is an illusion.
The Arenberg Forest arrived at a point where she had stopped counting sectors. The cobbles there are famous for a reason — they're rougher, more uneven, and set between narrow ditches that punish anyone who drifts wide. The group she was riding with entered together and exited in a long, strung-out line. Nobody spoke for the next two kilometres.
Lunch was at a farmhouse. Someone had arranged tables and food in a way that suggested this happened every year. Bread, cheese, coffee, something with ham. The bread was the best thing she'd ever eaten, though she suspected that had more to do with the previous sixty kilometres than the baker.
The afternoon sectors were harder. Not because the cobbles worsened — some were actually smoother — but because fatigue changed how the body absorbed impact. What had been manageable vibration in the morning became a shaking that settled into her shoulders and didn't leave.
She finished at the Roubaix velodrome. The entrance is narrow and the transition from road to track surface is abrupt — concrete to wood in a single pedal stroke. She rolled around the banking once, slowly, in the same oval where the professionals would finish the next day.
The cobbles don't care about your preparation or your tyre pressure or your grip technique. They're just cobbles. You ride them or you don't.
