Thursday, January 26, 2012

Monsters Among Us

[Iceland]


The record for bicycling around the world is held by Englishman Alan Bate who did it in 2008 in 97 days. The rules require a minimum of 18,000 miles on the bike. Rest days, if any, count against total time. Which means that Bate AVERAGED 185.6 miles per day every day for more than 3 months. And even that assumes he did the minimum, which isn't likely.

Just for comparison, I have been bicycling most of my adult life and the furthest I have ever ridden in a day was 114 miles on a dead flat route with a strong tailwind the whole way.

February 28 is the beginning of a race to beat Alan Bate's record. http://worldcycleracing.com/





2 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:00 AM

    Rules? What rules?

    ReplyDelete
  2. If I bicycle to the airport, fly around the world, and bicycle back from the airport, neither Guinness nor WorldCycleRacing will accept it as an around-the-world bike ride. I have to ride a minimum of 18,000 miles. They also require that at least 18,000 miles has to be all in one direction. Otherwise one could ride 18,000 laps on a one-mile indoor track on polished wood with no wind and call it an around the world ride. Any around-the-world ride will require at least two ocean crossings. To equalize these they must be by common carrier, not private charter. I could also greatly shorten my route by riding around the world and staying in high latitudes. In the extreme I could ride in a small circle around the north or south poles and call it an around the world ride. So the rules requires that the rider must pass within 5 degrees of two points antipodal to one another. In practice this means one must ride across Australia or New Zealand.

    ReplyDelete