The Yr by Dave Barter is the superb story of cyclists by the years who’ve ridden as many miles as attainable in a yr. To begin out he describes his personal try and trip a double century (200 miles) in a day. That is clearly a grueling job, together with grinding it out driving within the rain (the furthest I’ve ridden in a day is a century, or 100 miles). It feels like one thing you would possibly wish to do, scratch off your bucket checklist, the remaining for every week or so. Now put your head round the truth that Tommy Godwin of Nice Britain rode a median of 200 miles a day, day by day, for a yr, in 1939. He then continued on to 500 days to set the file for driving 100,000 miles. That is of mind-boggling problem, particularly contemplating he rode by the British winter, And over the last a part of the trip, after September 1 when conflict was declared, it was awkward to trip at evening due to blackout restrictions.
The historical past of this goes approach again to the late 1800s when the “security bicycle”, related in design to trendy bicycles, got here on the scene. First there was a craze to see what number of centuries somebody may trip in a yr, then riders began finishing double and even triple centuries. Then within the early a part of the twentieth Century the British publication Biking got here up with the thought for the yr file, and provided to maintain monitor of riders’ mileage in the event that they despatched in signed verification playing cards for every day. There adopted a gradual onward progress of the file, and the fascinating tales of the women and men who tried them, culminating in Tommy Godwin’s superb efficiency. The story of that file is thrilling as a result of it entails a contest between Tommy and one other British rider, Bernard Bennett. Although they rode in several areas, they had been conscious of one another’s progress, and this clearly egged them on to additional distances, with Tommy lastly pulling away in direction of the tip of the yr (Bernard additionally broke the earlier file although his effort was eclipsed by Tommy’s trip). This 1939 file stood till 2015 when it was damaged by an American, Kurt Seavogel. Then it was smashed in 2017 by an American girl, Amanda Coker, who rode an astonishing 237 miles a day on common for a complete of 86,573 miles for the yr.
All of that is fairly inspirational for me. I don’t know what the yr file for a 70 yr previous plus rider, however I’d have an interest to see how a lot I may do in a yr with out getting too loopy. I can cruise at about 14 miles per hour, so one thing like 15000 miles may be possible with the type of hours I do per week. I made a decision to attempt for a mileage private file for sooner or later, one week, and one month. I feel a double-metric century (simply over 120 miles) could be doable in a day. 400 miles may be achievable in every week, and about 1500 in a 30-day month. I’m going to present it a shot beginning April 1. That may give me a number of weeks to ramp the size of my rides up a bit. After that I’ll see if I wish to proceed at a excessive quantity or drop again to one thing extra affordable, however in any case I’ll monitor my miles till April 1, 2025. I’m positive if I inform my spouse I’m going to begin one thing like this on April Idiot’s day she’ll agree that’s acceptable! The trick is to do that with out interfering with different actions in our lives, which suggests simply rise up earlier and end most rides earlier than lunch. I’ll begin posting my rides day by day on Strava as wealthy king (Morgan Hill, Ca) and also will submit them right here.
Yesterday’s trip: 37 miles on my Bacchetta Corsa recumbent, in 2 hours 42 min, common velocity 13.7 mph (22 kph) and avg coronary heart charge 127. This felt like a pleasant cruising velocity. Right here’s the hyperlink to Strava.
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