The year by Dave Barter is the amazing story of cyclists over the years who have ridden as many miles as possible in one year. He begins by describing his own attempt to ride a double century (200 miles) in one day. This is clearly a grueling task, including the grind of riding in the rain (the farthest I’ve ridden in a day is a century or 100 miles). Sounds like something you might want to do, take your list off the rest for a week or so. Now wrap your mind around the fact that Tommy Godwin of Great Britain drove an average of 200 miles a day, every day, for a year in 1939. He then went on to 500 days to set the record for driving 100,000 miles. This is of surprising difficulty, especially considering that it was through the British winter, and during the latter part of the route, after 1 September when war was declared, it was uncomfortable to drive at night due to blackout restrictions.
The story of this goes way back in the late 1800s when the “safety bicycle”, similar in design to modern bicycles, appeared on the scene. First there was a craze to see how many centuries someone could ride in a year, then riders began to complete double or even triple centuries. Then in the early 20th century the British version Cycling came up with the idea for the year record and offered to track the riders’ mileage if they sent signed verification cards for each day. What followed was a steady progress of the record and the fascinating stories of the men and women who attempted them, culminating in a stunning performance by Tommy Godwin. The story of this record is fascinating because it involves a rivalry between Tommy and another British rider, Bernard Bennett. Although they rode in different areas, they were aware of each other’s progress, and this clearly led them to further distances, with Tommy eventually pulling away towards the end of the year (Bernard also broke the previous record although his effort was overshadowed by Tommy’s ride). This 1939 record stood until 2015 when it was broken by an American, Kurt Seavogel. It was then broken in 2017 by an American woman, Amanda Cokerwho drove 237 miles per day on average for a total of 86,573 miles for the year.
All of this is quite inspiring to me. I have no idea what the year record is for a 70 plus rider, but I’d be interested to see how many I could do in a year without going too crazy. I can cruise at about 14 mph so something like 15000 miles might be doable with the hours I do per week. I decided to try for a personal record of mileage for one day, one week and one month. I think a double metric century (just over 120 miles) would be doable in one day. 400 miles can be achieved in a week and about 1500 in a month of 30 days. I’ll give it a shot starting April 1st. This will give me several weeks to increase the length of my rides a bit. After that I’ll see if I want to continue at high intensity or go back to something more reasonable, but either way I’ll be tracking my miles until April 1st 2025. I’m sure if I tell my wife I’m going to start something like this on April Fool’s Day she’ll agree that it is suitable! The trick is to do this without interfering with other activities in our lives, which simply means getting up earlier and finishing most walks before lunch. I’m going to start posting my rides every day on Strava as a rich king (Morgan Hill, Ca) and post them here as well.
Yesterday’s ride: 37 miles on my recumbent Bacchetta Corsa, in 2 hours 42 minutes, average speed 13.7 mph (22 km/h) and average heart rate 127. Felt like a nice cruising speed. Here is the link to Strava.
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I am a Mechanical Engineer born in 1953, Ph. D, Stanford, 1980. I have been in the CAE engineering field for decades. I also have a lifelong interest in outdoor activities and fitness. I have had both hips replaced and a heart valve replaced due to a genetic condition. This blog chronicles my adventures in staying active despite these bumps in the road. View all posts by BionicOldGuy
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