Mid-Life Cyclist

Paul Schaye is already breaking a sweat. It's five minutes before noon on a warm spring day, and the New York investment banker, sporting a navy-blue suit and a blue-and-red-checked silk tie, is racing out of his Park Avenue office. "Failure is not an option," says Schaye, founder of Chestnut Hill Partners, a mergers-and-acquisitions advisory firm, referring to the most critical item on his agenda for the year.

Rushing through Grand Central Station, he ducks into Oliviers & Co., a shop that sells vintage olive oil. As if on cue, the woman at the cash register pulls out a crinkled white paper bag and counts out four chocolate-covered almonds one by one into Schaye's hand. "If I kept them at the office," he laughs, "I'd eat them all up in no time." The candy, he explains as he turns to leave, is the perfect energy boost -- some sugar, protein, and fat -- just the thing for his next appointment. Minutes later, Schaye arrives at his destination, nearly a half hour early for a spinning class at the Equinox Fitness Club. Over the past five months, he has spent more than 50 hours cycling on a stationary bike in this room. Schaye, now in a T-shirt and biking shorts, takes his usual seat in the front. A woman slides onto a bike near Schaye, noticeably peeved that "her" bike, next to him, is already taken. "I ride better when I ride next to Paul," she says. "I can feel his energy."

The class begins. Schaye lowers his head and starts to ride. He hardly looks up at all for the 45-minute workout, legs pumping at 90 revolutions a minute, in a dizzying blur, while his loud, controlled breathing vies with the beat of the music. By the end of class, the puddle of sweat under his bike is bigger than anyone else's.

For Schaye, every ride and every rest is part of a journey that is far greater. In the process of training for one of the most grueling challenges in amateur sports, he is learning how to pace himself -- for a 750-mile bicycle ride that is taking place in France this month, and for the rest of his life.

"When I'm flying down the hill at 50 miles per hour, I can't be thinking about what I'm going to write in an email."

This is a story about the hard work and discipline of making a passion outside of the office a way of life. It is also a story of how two passions -- one professional, the other personal -- inform and transform each other.

Schaye is a man-on-a-bike with a mission: to ride one Herculean stretch of French countryside and to cover that ground within 90 hours. This is not a wine-and-cheese tour. There will be no baguettes, no straw basket on the back of a postcard-perfect beaten-up vé lo. This ride, the Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP), is legendary in the cycling world, and with its completion come substantial bragging rights.

First run in 1891, the punishing trek from Paris to the Atlantic port city of Brest and back is the oldest amateur long-distance cycling event on earth. Over the years, it has evolved into a timed endurance ride, or randonné e. Held every four years, it draws more than 3,000 riders from all over the world. "I love a challenge," says Schaye, who turned 50 last year. "The other part of this ride is an affirmation that I'm still alive and kicking."

The Ride Before the Ride

Schaye started his training last January, but the fire to fuel his ride ignited years ago. He remembers his first bike as if it were yesterday. Brown and light blue. Training wheels. A coaster brake. He was five, and his big sister taught him how to ride. A year later, he upgraded to a red bike that had better tires. Like most kids, Schaye thought of his bike as his ticket to freedom and exploration. And his neighborhood in the hilly, tree-lined streets of Chestnut Hill, near Boston, was the perfect place to ride it. As a teenager, Schaye went on a few bicycle trips, but nothing epic. It wasn't until 1996 that Schaye really got into the sport. He and his wife, Gay, were at the New York City Marathon cheering on the runners, and he decided, on the spot, that he would run the marathon the following year. Gay, thinking of her husband's bad knees and the fact that he was cycling more than he was running, casually suggested the Boston - New York AIDS Ride instead.

It was all downhill from there. Ten months later, Schaye rode 304 miles in four days, from Boston to New York. Between sporting cool riding gear and participating in several more AIDS rides, Schaye began calling himself a cyclist. And every year for the past six years, he has biked the 200-mile Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, the country's largest athletic fund-raising event.

Despite his growing momentum in the sport, Schaye initially scoffed at his friend Geoffrey Kauffman's email last December suggesting that they take on the Paris ride. But when his wife pressed him to explain why he thought that he wasn't up to the task, he couldn't come up with an answer. Neither could his friend. "Paul isn't the fastest rider in the world," says Kauffman, "but there is nothing that he won't finish. You know that if Paul Schaye reaches the starting line, he is going to reach the finish line."