The Year E-Book

Dave Barter

• Herausgeber: Vertebrate Digital
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In 1939 British cyclist Tommy Godwin cycled 75,065 miles in a single year. Think about that for a second: that's an average of over 200 miles each day. And it's a mark that still stands after almost eighty years. In The Year, Dave Barter resurrects the legend of The Year record - a challenge nearly as old as bicycles themselves - and the cyclists who pushed themselves to establish and break it. Barter uncovers the stories behind these riders who would routinely cycle over a hundred miles a day in the race to set new records: Americans such as John H. George who recorded over 200 'centuries', nineteen double 'centuries' and three triple 'centuries' in the late 1800s. The British advertising executive Harry Long, whose annual tallies of over 20,000 miles in the early twentieth century led to the founding of the formal cycling year record, and Cycling magazine's Century Competition. The Englishman of French descent, Marcel Planes, whose 1911 record of 34,366 miles stood for over twenty years. Not forgetting the legends of the job-seeking Arthur Humbles, the one-armed vegetarian communist Walter Greaves, the 'keep-fit girl' Billie Dovey and the staggering mark set by Godwin who left a youthful Bernard Bennett trailing in his wake. Meticulous research through the annuals, archives and news stories of the bicycling world is backed up with insights from the families of these legendary cyclists, as well as Dave's own analysis of the riders' years in numbers. There is no more difficult challenge in cycling. The Year is the definitive story of these phenomenal cyclists.

Leseprobe

The Year

The Year

Reawakening the Legendof Cycling’s HardestEndurance Record

Dave Barter

www.v-publishing.co.uk

– Contents –

Prologue

Chapter 1 The mile-eaters

Chapter 2 The genesis of the cycling year record

Chapter 3 Cycling magazine’s century competition

Chapter 4 Marcel Planes – the English Frenchman

Chapter 5 Arthur Humbles – the ‘ordinary clubman’

Chapter 6 Ossie Nicholson – the professional

Chapter 7 Walter Greaves – the one-armed communist

Chapter 8 1937 – the ‘Cycling Ashes’

Chapter 9 Billie Dovey – the ‘keep fit’ girl

Chapter 10 Tommy Godwin – the unbreakable record?

Chapter 11 Ken Webb – the great pretender?

Chapter 12 The year record reawakened

Appendix Rider statistics

Sources and acknowledgements

Photographs

This book is dedicated to

the memory of Billie Fleming.

13 April 1914 – 12 May 2014

‘You’ve got to want to do it, whatever the weather when you wake up in the morning you’ve got to put your clothes on and get out on your bike and it’s not funny walking out in the pouring rain.’

– Prologue –

4 a.m. An alarm drones incessantly in the background, fading in and out of my dream state and eventually convincing me that it exists in the real world. I wrap warm bedclothes around myself, savouring the comfort they offer before wearily dragging myself to my feet. Every element of my nervous system attempts to convince me to return to bed. My head tells me that it’s not quite ready to process information at this hour and my optic nerves refuse to deal with the light that falls upon them, presenting blurred surroundings instead. Every muscle fibre signals pain and protests against even the slightest movement. My mind is in conflict, thoughts of sleep fighting against a planned double-century cycle ride.

It’s a close-fought battle, with curiosity gaining the victory. I’ve not done a continuous ride this big before and a small part of me forward-projects the feeling of accomplishment that’s packaged with a 200-mile ride. This accomplishment comes with extra benefits: bragging rights that can be expended in forthcoming conversations, incremental changes to my physical form that will make future rides that bit easier, and a brief distraction from the electrical storm of a modern existence and its constant barrage of information.

I trawl through my fuzzy thought process to retrieve a checklist that I lodged there the night before. In the haze I find it and begin to work my way down a list of priorities.

Food. Breakfast is a chore at this hour as my digestive system is still dormant. I force porridge down tubes that feel full already, imploring a protesting stomach to accept this offering in order to stave off the spirits of future fatigue. Coffee follows for two purposes: a caffeine dose to kick-start mental processes, and as a liquid reminder to the digestive system that there are some things I’d like to leave behind.

Clothing. The weather forecaster refused to commit to any particular pattern the night before and scattered the map with question marks. I’m unable to decide on a single clothing strategy and I’m forced into layers and options. I have limited room in jersey pockets that must be efficiently shared between fuel, clothing and contingency. Do I leave an inner tube behind for the sake of some warmer gloves? Will I find a shop along the way, thus negating the need for two more energy bars? Every choice I make is hampered by a streak of disorganisation that’s followed me from youth, and the items I decide upon need to be hunted from one of many potential resting places.

Equipment. This ride will start and finish in the dark. I disentangle a spider’s web of charging cables from my lights and adorn the bike with enough LED power to fry an egg, should the need arise. I retrieve a GPS unit and check the previous night’s route-planning has downloaded. Additional batteries are sought and placed in jersey pockets. I yearn for the age of photosynthesising bicycle accessories. A pre-printed laminated map is also retrieved; I’ve learnt the hard way – alone, 80 miles from home and shouting at a failed GPS while regretting the decision to leave my phone behind – that no single technology can be relied upon.

It’s now close to 5 a.m., an hour since the alarm called reveille, and I still haven’t left the house. There are creams that must be applied, tyre pressures to check and a search for loose change to fund a meal along the way. I know full well that an element of lag is gained from distraction therapy. A small part of me is working hard to delay the inevitable. Ultimately it loses. I wheel my bicycle to the side of the road and introduce posterior to saddle for a very long acquaintance.

My planned distance will take me into new territory, but I know the mantra of long bicycle rides. The first hour always feels sluggish. It takes my system over sixty minutes to acclimatise to the rhythm and rigours of pedalling. The early miles come hard and my mind insists on playing out a number of scenarios for disaster. What have I forgotten? Which parts of the route will be closed? Will I have the right gearing for the steep climb at the end? Have I properly planned my hydration? The thoughts are compounded by familiarity. I know these roads, these hedges and these dimly lit fields. There’s not much in the dark to distract me and my focus locks on to my negativity, rather than anticipating the adventure of this extended ride.

After that first hour the devils of self-doubt dissipate and I begin to celebrate my lonely early-morning ownership of the open road. I find myself ‘bipolarised’, a twin-state machine of task and contemplation, half of me subconsciously moving myself and my machine forward, the other half travelling around my trove of stored thoughts and occasionally selecting one for analysis or decision. I’ve reached the plain of the long-distance rider. A state akin to the stasis entered by fictional space-travellers where time and length are compressed. I only become aware of this when I am surprised by my GPS unit informing me of forty miles travelled. In the same period the sun has risen and I’ve traversed into another county, mindlessly negotiating numerous junctions and roundabouts. It all seems to have happened so quickly, although my average speed of 16 miles per hour tells another story.

On most rides I’d now be nearing the end and looking forward to a shower. Today is different; forty miles is only twenty per cent. I pull out the mental calculation machine and start to punch in some numbers. A further 160 miles at this pace gives me ten hours of riding to go. But I need to factor in a decreasing average speed, food stops and the inevitable puncture. I settle on twelve to be on the safe side. It’s close to 8 a.m. already. I loosely plan to make it home before the watershed.

I don’t make it much further before water arrives, with its message of inconvenience and distress. The irony of rain is never lost upon me. In my bottles I carry water as a necessity for my survival and sustenance, yet when it falls from the sky I hate it with a vengeance. The rain clouds my sight, slowly turning my spectacles from vision aids to hindrances. Its persistence overcomes my waterproofs and water trickles uncomfortably down to my extremities, the discomfort in sharp contrast with the areas that have remained dry. The comfort of riding in dry clothing is long gone. Muck, liberated from the road, plasters my bike and my back. The picture painted by rain across an English country scene is rarely a masterpiece.

It takes an hour for the rain to properly subside and by then the damage is done. I want this to be over as quickly as possible. My electronic display creeps towards three figures. Normally I’d pass this mark, the boundary of a century ride, with a solitary celebration, an air punch or chocolate treat. Today, it’s simply a halfway marker, a reminder that I have to do it all again even though the fatigue is beginning to tell.

The mileage ticks past 130 miles and I move into uncharted territory. This is a distance that I’ve never previously recorded. I now have 70 miles of riding left to cover that I have no evidence of being able to accomplish. I start to monitor myself ever more carefully. Hill efforts become more measured and the big ring is ignored more and more in favour of a higher cadence. I start to obsess about eating and hydration – little and often, little and often.

An hour later and muscular fatigue becomes apparent. A long uphill drag that would normally serve as a simple annoyance becomes a huge hurdle that requires sustained effort to surmount. This person riding my bike seems almost a stranger. I question his pondering cadence and slow ascent … I’m sure he used to be much better than this. Flatter terrain serves only to heighten the pain of ascent; everything feels normal until gravity sticks in its oar and reminds me of the true energy depletion in my legs. There are other issues as well. My hands are aching with the constant pressure of gripping the bars. My feet scream reminders of their imperfections which press hard into unyielding sections of cycling shoes. All points of contact with the machine have suffered damage and are in need of repair. This ride is hurting and the light is beginning to fade.

Darkness gently arrests my speed. There are now only 30 miles left to ride, but I’m physically and mentally fatigued and well aware of the consequences of a single poor line choice – potholes shred tyres and unseat riders. The possibility of abandonment – and the subsequent requirement to start all over again – is unthinkable. I’m close enough to be nearly there but there are still over two hours of effort between me and my final goal. I concentrate on the small section of road visible in the arc of my lights and try to put aside the various bodily messages imploring me to stop and call my wife. At this stage each hill is interminable, every stop at a junction a gurning effort to get started again, and each passing car a reminder that there are easier ways to accomplish this journey. I’d stop and rest, but my wet clothing prevents it – I need a modicum of physical effort to generate warmth. Home is my only salvation, but it still seems so far away.

Familiarity is my salvation. The route has returned to my usual cycling territory and to roads that I ride as part of a weekly ritual. I hand myself back to the portion of my brain able to ride on autopilot and the last miles disappear from memory. They are no quicker than any others during the day, but I’ve lost myself to another consciousness, one that is guiding me home.

Then it arrives. The penultimate mile. No matter what, I’m home. I can carry the bike from here if needs be. The GPS tells me that I’ve cycled for 203 miles. This final mile is uphill and I leave the saddle to execute a triumphant sprint to the house, only to be quickly beckoned back down by a set of leg muscles shouting in unison – ‘STOP!’

It’s a huge effort to open the garage door and lock the bike inside. I want to abandon it on the drive as I did in my youth, leaving it for a responsible parent. It’s an effort to remove shoes and gloves as rivulets of cramp threaten to escalate into huge volcanoes of muscular pain. It’s even an effort to talk to an inquisitive family who are politely enquiring about the ride.

I made mistakes in that final quarter and have returned home dehydrated and not properly fed. This hadn’t been apparent on the bike, due to other discomforts, but now I need to act. Food is greedily hoovered up between noisy slurps of juice and demands for cups of tea. Clothes are abandoned expectantly next to the washing machine as I shower for much longer than is really necessary – the kiss of warm water is hard to leave. I nap for an hour then struggle to rise and take the steps downstairs for a late-night meal. In the garage my bike needs oiling, its poorly indexed gears need attention and the tyres need a bit more air. My lights are still on the bike, needing a charge, and the GPS unit needs its batteries refreshed. The carefully packed food in my jersey pockets is now a mess of sticky, ripped wrappers and my drinking bottles are festooned with mud and detritus sprayed from the road.

Nothing about me or my equipment is ready to ride again tomorrow. I have no urge to rise at 4 a.m. and cycle another 200 miles. I’m too tired to do the planning, too tired to do the preparation and the weather has taken its toll, convincing me that a ride of this distance is not something I want to repeat any time soon. I know that if I tried to drag myself out of bed tomorrow for another attempt I would instead stay enveloped in the comfort of warm bedding, procrastinating until the fatigue had gone away. Then I’d defer again until the time could be found to tune my bicycle, prepare my food and carefully plan a route based upon the prevailing wind. It would probably be months before the pain of those 200 miles morphed into a happier memory of a hard distance accomplished.

That’s me, a rider who can ride the distance given certain conditions. A rider content with occasional achievement, but equally keen to stay abreast of the comforts of an ordinary life. But there were others who were different; men and women who overcame discomfort on a daily basis as they put themselves to the road. Riders who managed the logistics necessary to ensure that, no matter what, they’d be able to ride day after day for a year or more. These were the year riders, the ones who could ride the most miles on a bicycle in a single calendar year. The achievements of these cyclists would have fed an army of statisticians for months as they hammered out miles in a valiant quest for their own place in history. But who were these people? Why did they do it? What hurdles did they overcome and why have their stories been lost to time?

These questions drifted around my mind that night as I began to lose consciousness. I knew now how those riders must have felt every day and I found it hard to contemplate the drive and motivation that pushed them for so long to seek the ultimate endurance record. I’d ridden 200 miles in one day. Tommy Godwin had averaged this distance for 500 days in a row in 1939 and 1940.

I needed to know more.

– Chapter 1 –

The mile-eaters

Every night of the week a ritual is played out in public houses around the United Kingdom. A group will gather under some vague pretext in order to grasp a glass of ale and share a couple of hours’ worth of inane conversation. The pretext will vary wildly; some groups will be societies, perhaps of climbers, divers, bird watchers or stamp collectors. Others will have known each other from school, or met at college, or served in the same regiment. Many will have simply turned up at the same pub for years and, as regulars, melted into the fabric of the establishment.

Our pretext was juggling, or ex-juggling. We were former members of the Swindon Juggling Club and had always met for a beer after throwing some clubs about for an hour. The juggling had faded into the mists of time, but the beer drinking had the stamina to live on and so we met every Thursday for a discussion over a few pints, and that discussion often veered into cycling.

It was during one of these Thursday sessions that I first heard about the year record. In fact ‘heard about’ is a bit weak – the record was used to put me firmly back in my place on the cycling achievement landscape. I’d been casually bragging about the ‘huge’ amount of miles I’d managed to clock up on my bike that year. I think it was somewhere in the region of 9,000 miles and I was tipsily placing myself upon some imaginary podium of long-distance cyclists.

This was a foolish boast in the presence of Bill Potts. Bill is a Moulton-riding fountain of cycling trivia. He has a house and garage stuffed full of memorabilia and a mind loaded with two-wheeled facts, figures and physics. Bill took a quiet sip of his Wadworth IPA and leaned gently forward.

‘Of course, Tommy Godwin wouldn’t be impressed by that mileage Dave.’

I saw the playful glint in Bill’s eye and the cock of his head told me he was about to follow this statement up with a fact that would relegate my achievement to kindergarten status. I placed my glass on the rickety wooden table in front of me and looked at him quizzically. ‘Come on Bill,’ I thought, ‘who the hell is Tommy Godwin? And what has he done that even comes close to my hard-fought 9,000 miles?’

Bill leaned back, folded his arms neatly and calmly delivered the coup de grâce to my lengthy bragging session.

‘Tommy rode 75,000 miles in a single year in 1939. I think you’d have trouble competing with that.’

I was floored. There were three things in that single sentence that were beyond my fuddled comprehension:

75,000 miles.

A single year.

1939.

It would have taken me almost eight and a half years to ride 75,000 miles at my current pace, and I’d been training hard. Compressing such mileage into a single year was surely impossible. It was an average of over 200 miles a day, every day, without a break. The longest ride I’d done in my life was 127 miles and that nearly killed me. This guy would have done that before lunch.

Then I considered the year, 1939. This was the year that war was declared, the year that signposts were removed from the road network, the year that blackouts began and lights were banned from cars and bikes. Furthermore, bikes were basic, cycling apparel was limited to breeches and a mackintosh, and the roads were not the smooth tarmacked surfaces that we know and love today.

The conversation around me had moved on to cricket or football, or maybe to the difficulties of teaching primary school children. I was oblivious to it. Bill had catapulted me back to 1939 and I sat enthralled, picturing a cycling superman grinding his bike around the country as the war raged around him. I wanted to know more and the last thing I did that evening, before falling into a beer-addled slumber, was write the name ‘Tommy Godwin’ on a piece of paper beside my bed.

The next day, in a slightly hungover fit of work avoidance, I typed Godwin’s name into an internet search engine. Details were scant. I found a few internet forum posts that briefly mentioned his record and I found his namesake, also a cyclist, who had won bronze for Great Britain in the 1948 Olympic Games. But I couldn’t find any real details about the man himself, or his record year. I rested my chin in my hands and stared out of the window. Seventy-five thousand miles. Did he really do that? What did he eat? How did he cope with winter? Where did he ride? Did he do it alone or was he paced or helped in any way? Who helped him? How did he prove that he had ridden the mileage? My head filled with questions. The more I considered the mileage the more impossible it seemed. My car hadn’t covered that sort of distance, yet it was definitely showing signs of wear. How on earth had Godwin coped physically? Had the record left him with any lasting damage?

My quest continued. I flicked through my library of cycling books, finding plenty of details of Tour de France riders, but nothing at all concerning Tommy. Then I remembered Dan.

Dan Joyce is the editor of CTC’s Cycle magazine and is very well connected within the cycling world. He had published a few of my articles and even chucked the odd commission my way. Dan would know. I dropped him an email and tentatively asked whether he had heard of Tommy Godwin. As usual, Dan came up trumps. Not only had he heard of Tommy, he had been in touch with his family and was looking for a writer to research and write a small piece on his record – would I be interested?

I wasn’t just interested in writing the article, I was desperate to do it. Luckily, single-word emails make it difficult to convey emotion – if they could, the ‘Yes!’ I sent Dan would have screamed at him from his computer screen. Yes, I was interested; yes, I wanted to meet Tommy’s family; yes, I wanted to know more. The year record had grabbed my attention and I was well and truly hooked.

But researching and writing about Tommy Godwin raised as many questions as it answered. Why would any rider want to take on this record? Why had the bar been set so high? It became clear that Tommy’s year was the end product of something that had a deeper history than I had realised. His was no one-off ride but one of many, the result of an obsession that had gripped riders around the world – a fixation with mileage that still pervades cycling today.

Further research led me all the way back to 1911 and a year-long competition run by the British magazine Cycling; a competition that appeared to have formalised a set of rules for recording mileage over a year. But where had this competition and these rules come from? How had it come about? Who had entered? Was this the pivotal moment when cycling decided that a year record was something it needed in its history books, the start of a chain of rides that led to Tommy’s phenomenal record? It was tempting to think that it was, but the cycling world is never as simple as it first seems. While Cycling and the self-appointed British ‘inventors’ of the year record trumpeted their own successes, more research revealed that they had conveniently forgotten to mention a prior generation of riders in the USA, who had been quietly riding year-round before the British even had the idea.

I was convinced that the stories behind these year-rides would be full of incident and achievement, but my internet searches began to draw a blank. What little information existed appeared to be either hearsay or short articles with little detail. If I wanted more I’d need to leave the online world and dig into the varied archives of the cycling community. This still proved difficult, as the lives and details of these year-riders had been documented across a hugely fragmented set of media. Digging through early cycling magazines unearthed some real gems of information, but was time consuming, as their contents are not indexed and each magazine had to be read cover to cover for fear of missing the smallest titbit of information. Just tracking the magazines down was difficult enough; some collections were incomplete, while others were hard for the casual searcher to find. And once found, accessing them required travel, form-filling and adherence to rigid opening hours. The task was so time-consuming that my wife Helen slaved for nearly four months, diligently visiting archives and cataloguing information. Between us we probably read over a thousand magazines and could compete at an international level in skim reading.

However, the research began to reap dividends and within a few years I had put together a picture of all the major players in the history of the year record and begun to gain a personal knowledge of the riders themselves. Dan Joyce introduced me to Tommy Godwin’s daughter, Barbara Ford. She gave me a deep insight into her father and his character, and described his later life, which clearly showed echoes of the rider who’d set the bar so high in 1939. Barbara gave me a thirst to hear from the families of other year-riders and, by chance, I read a newspaper clipping where former pro-cyclist Doug Petty talked of his experiences riding and laughing with Walter Greaves, who’d held the record in 1936. One meeting later and I was introduced to Walter’s son Joe, who had taken great pains to keep his father’s memory alive through fastidious collecting of memorabilia concerning his father’s ride and through school projects completed by his own son.

Going back to the generation before Walter proved more difficult, until Barbara Ford introduced me to a genealogy site that she’d used to trace and complete her own family tree. My wife tentatively searched for the family of Marcel Planes, winner of Cycling magazine’s 1911 competition, and eventually came up trumps, discovering living relatives and an email address. In 2014 we met the descendants of this pioneering rider and were not only fascinated by their memories of this unconventional man, but overwhelmed by the information the family had retained in his memory. Martin Planes showed us every single one of Marcel’s mileage checking cards for his record year, perfectly preserved and ordered. These cards detailed Planes’ rides and had been signed every day by witnesses Marcel met on the road. The family then glowed with pride as Martin pulled out the medal that Cycling had awarded to Marcel.

As I dug further still, I realised that the year record stood out from other cycling accolades. Until 2015, it had never been officially recognised by any cycling body. The record had been born in endurance cycling clubs and was later adopted by a cycling magazine and the rules and verification procedures had changed little as its validation has changed hands, mostly relying upon the honesty and integrity of the cyclists undertaking the ride.

I approached the British Road Records Association (RRA) and asked why it had never officially recognised the year record and whether it would consider retrospectively listing Tommy Godwin as holding it. The RRA was clear in its response: its charter requires unequivocal evidence that the route and distance has been ridden in a time independently verified by third-party witnesses. It does not believe that this is possible for the duration of a whole year record attempt, even with the advent of modern GPS-tracking technology. In order for the RRA to sanction an attempt, roadside observers would be required every day of the year and riders would need to give advanced notice of their routes and schedules to support this. The manpower and logistics required would clearly over-whelm the RRA and its volunteers in overseeing such an attempt.

The year record also stands apart in the mechanics of undertaking it. Beating the hour record requires an extraordinary degree of fitness, primarily the ability to hold a high level of power (over 400 watts) for an hour. Taking the Land’s End to John o’Groats record requires fitness and also mental and physical stamina, but only a day’s worth of luck to ensure that the weather and traffic conditions are conducive to the attempt. The year record requires not only fitness and stamina, but also 365 (or 366) days of good fortune. Riders are continually battling the weather, the logistics of keeping fed and watered, the need to keep their machines in the best possible condition (and thus limit delays due to mechanical failure or punctures), and must also try to keep themselves injury and malady free. It is not only a test of physical prowess; it stretches every facet of the human make-up for a period that is almost always greater than one per cent of the rider’s total time on this earth.

It’s also a lonely record that is followed only at a distance by the general public. Riders have a brief flirtation with fame and kudos at the starts and finishes of their attempts. In between they are mostly alone on the road and required to self-motivate. Their mileages and tribulations might be closely followed by those with a particular interest (or as closely as is possible through the limited press reporting), but the riders are usually unaware of this support, having no time to read and digest what is written about them. Of course, the internet and social networks are changing this, and one could argue that riders of today seeking to resurrect the record hold a significant advantage over previous generations as they receive virtual roadside cheers from the international online communities of Strava, Twitter or Facebook, where users proffer their support in real time.

History also shows us that the year record is not a route to fame and fortune. Many of the riders attempting it do so to raise their profile within cycling, but none has ever gone on to achieve the status of a Tour de France winner. In fact the record year has usually proved to be the zenith of the cycling careers of those who have undertaken it, most of whom subsequently fade from the riding limelight. Ossie Nicholson’s racing career fell into disarray after his 1937 record ride, René Menzies curtailed his racing after failing to take the record the same year, and Arthur Humbles retreated back to the world of cycle touring following his brief flirtation with celebrity. The two who rode the furthest, Tommy Godwin and Bernard Bennett, were unlucky enough to put up their huge mileages just as World War II broke out – we will never know whether Godwin would have been elevated to cycling celebrity after his seemingly unassailable mileage was clocked up as war then intervened and he was whisked off into the Royal Air Force.

As I write these words, three men spread across three continents are making their own attempts upon the record. These riders have taken the brave decision to resurrect a challenge that has remained unconquered for over seventy-five years. All three are amateurs and all three have worked hard to put in place the support, funding and logistics required to enable their attempts. To date there has been no indication that a professional team will step up to the challenge, probably due to the complete lack of interest from professional riders who know full well that success in a higher-profile event will prove far more lucrative in a far shorter space of time. This underlines a further aspect of the challenge that differs wildly from other areas of cycling: not only must a rider have the endurance and will to see the year’s ride through, they also need the tenacity to get the ride off the ground in the first place. This has become increasingly hard since the halcyon days of the 1930s when companies fully understood the commercial benefits of having a year-rider take the record while using the company’s bicycle or apparel. The approach and support mechanisms of the three current riders provides the evidence: a British man relying upon a network of cyclists to host and feed him as he strays away from home, an American living semi-permanently in a camper van to reduce living costs while out on the road, and an Australian attempting to ride huge miles in between shifts at work.

Only one rider, Ossie Nicholson, ever received the permanent attention and support of a professional team. Every other rider before and after him relied upon the generosity and good nature of others to aid them through the year. As such the record belongs not only to those riders but to those who helped them on their way. It is another element that makes the year record unique: it is one of the few cycling disciplines where outside assistance is not only allowed, but is essential if the rider is to push the record on to a new level.

Following the daily updates of the three current year-riders allows me to live their attempts vicariously and reflect upon the journey I’ve taken since making my idle boast in the pub many years ago. The flippant comment I made back then led me to uncover a set of achievements that remain unparalleled within the cycling world we know today. The riders behind those achievements made personal and physical sacrifices in order to achieve a goal that came with little guarantee of financial reward. They knew full well that these rewards were secondary. It is clear that the year record is as much a personal journey for the rider as a route to better things. The characters of the men and women who attempted it show traits similar to the explorers of previous years. These were cyclists who primarily wanted to challenge themselves to see just how far they could go. But where did this will to ‘explore’ come from? What was it that ignited the race to ride the furthest possible distance in a single year and why did these riders give up so much when the rewards were seemingly so small? Where did the cycling year record begin?

The only way to find this out is to trace the evolution of competitive distance riding back to its roots.

– Chapter 2 –

The genesis of the cycling year record

In 1879, rear-wheel chain drive was introduced, along with pneumatic tyres, and the modern bicycle that we now know and love was born. This birth and, more importantly, the mass production of the bicycle in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, liberated working-class people from their home towns and allowed them to venture further afield in search of work and leisure. A bicycle was significantly cheaper than a horse, cost less to run and could be stored easily without the need for pasture or food.

Mass-produced cars did not become a common sight upon the roads until the early 1900s, giving our cycling pioneers relatively quiet and uninterrupted riding, compared to their modern-day peers. Quiet roads, relatively cheap transport and a lack of disposable income led a generation of cyclists to seek affordable pleasure upon the open road.

Road-mapping in the late nineteenth century was not well developed, and cartographers had yet to properly turn their attention to leisure cylists, who had to rely instead upon signage and the knowledge of others to find the best routes. This spawned organisations such as the Bicycle Touring Club – later renamed the Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC) – whose original role was to identify overnight stops and hostelries for cyclists, which it documented in a series of guidebooks. The growth in leisure cycling also gave rise to a number of supporting publications and, on 24 January 1891, the first issue of Cycling magazine was published.

The period between 1870 and 1910 also saw huge momentum in bicycle engineering innovation. Cyclists went from having to throw their legs over cumbersome penny farthings to riding ‘safety bicycles’, which truly opened cycling to the masses. The safety bicycle was designed by Harry John Lawson and had its pedals much lower down than a penny farthing, allowing the rider to stop easily and safely by placing their feet upon the ground.

With this convergence of engineering, organisation and information cyclists were able to spread their wings, with the whole of the road network open to their touring plans. Many used this new-found freedom to explore and visit places that were previously beyond their holiday budgets. A number of these riders began to document their exploits in diaries or travelogues that made their way back to the mainstream cycling press, which then fed its readers with these tales.

It’s tempting to think that it was this period of development that led to the first high-mileage riders, but think again. As soon as the first bicycle was invented, riders had set out to push the limits. In 1881 a ‘100 miles’ list was published by The Cyclist journal, which sought to document all rides carried out over 100 miles or more. These rides were completed using direct-pedal ‘high’ bicycles similar to the penny farthing, with 4½-inch cranks, solid tyres, 48- or 50-inch wheels and desperately uncomfortable hard saddles. The bikes themselves weighed in the region of 50 to 60 pounds, nearly three times the weight of a modern bicycle, which would have caused a mild degree of consternation going downhill as the bikes were originally made without brakes. In 1910 the cycling journalist Henry Sturmey made the following observation as he fondly recalled the compiling of that list:

Even today (1910) with light machines with high gears and pneumatic tyres 100 miles in the day is more than an average accomplishment for the average rider, although of course, it is nothing beyond the capabilities of the average enthusiast, who keeps reasonably fit. But in the days of the high bicycle it was an accomplishment worthy to be proud of. Today if a cyclist covers the century within 24 hours, no particular notice is taken of it, and it does not even get into the local paper. But in those early days of the pastime such a ride would be given quite a lot of publicity in many papers. It was indeed looked upon as quite a hallmark of cycling quality, for there were few who had accomplished it.

The list straddled a period of seven years, from 1874 to 1881, and documented over 250 centuries – no mean feat considering the road conditions of the time and the nature of the bicycles. The first entry was Thomas Sparrow of the Surrey Bicycle Club, who rode from Bath to London in ten and a half hours on a 65-pound bike. Sparrow was a bike maker by trade and clearly undertook the ride as a marketing exercise to showcase his innovative leather tyres, which were designed to eliminate side slip.

Things gathered pace in 1876, when the first ever double century was recorded by Messrs E. Coston and F. Smyth, who rode from King’s Lynn to Wisbech and back eight times in twenty-four hours. This was a remarkable achievement, even setting aside the fact that the route is entirely flat. Take a moment to consider the magnitude of their accomplishment. Riding a fixed-wheel bicycle such as a penny farthing is never easy. There is no freehub, which means that if the bike is moving forward the rider must pedal. And when not pedalling, trackstanding on a bike with such a high centre of gravity is an achievement in its own right, meaning the only way to pause would be to stop and dismount from the awkward machine. Consider too the roads of the time, which would not have been well surfaced. As bicycles of this era had solid tyres and no form of suspension, the two riders would have felt every bump directly through their undercarriages. The single advantage a penny farthing would have over a modern bicycle would be the rider’s view, as the increased elevation would allow them to see over fences or hedges as they wobbled along. As this double-century ride spanned a twenty-four hour period a portion of it must have been ridden at night. Bicycle lights as we know them today would not have been available and the riders would have to have made do with candle lamps carried by hand which would have shed minimal light upon the road ahead.

The Coston-Smyth double century was the only 200-mile ride upon the list. Other riders came close, but nobody else managed to hit that magic figure. This was more than likely down to the terrain. Pedalling a heavy, high bike up any gradient is exceedingly difficult and these two riders had picked a pan-flat course specifically for this reason. The closest and arguably even harder ride, due to the hillier terrain, was completed by Stanley Thorpe of the Pickwick Club, who had ridden from London to York in 1875 and ended with a grand total of 197 miles on 5 June, despite crashing on his journey.

1876 also saw G.B. Cooper of Stroud ride 106 miles from Cainscross to Kensington. He was known as ‘Inextinguishable Cooper’ after his invention of a lamp which was carried inside the front wheel and suspended from the axle. This lamp became very popular and Mr Cooper subsequently joined Messrs Hillman and Herbert in the firm of Hillman, Herbert and Cooper, which afterwards became the Premier Cycle Co.

In 1878 the single-ride mileage record was pushed to 221 miles by W.S. Britten, who rode from Hyde Park Corner to Bath and back on 12 September in twenty and a half hours (23 hours 54 minutes total time) riding a 52-inch Stassen – one of the heaviest and most substantial bicycles ever built.

An additional thirty-seven centuries were added to the tally during the year, many by the owners of bicycle manufacturing companies. These men were often hardened road riders, determined to show off their machines in action. They also used the experiences they gained out on the road to influence their product engineering. Gaining publicity via a long-distance cycle ride was an ideal marketing mechanism and message to potential customers. What better way to show the mettle of a bicycle than having its rider drive it forwards over a seemingly impossible distance? What better way to inspire potential customers to take on their own challenges? This was to be a recurring theme throughout the history of the cycling year record. Manufacturers of bicycles, cycling components and accessories were exceedingly keen to have their equipment associated with record attempts.

This first list of centuries certainly provided the kindling for the fire that led to the formation of the year record, but the true origin of the record appears to come from the United States of America. In the late 1890s the USA was also going through a bicycle boom and the Americans had formed the Century Road Club of America, at least twenty years before the British incarnation.

The emergence of the Century Road Club of America was very much down to the efforts of Mr F.E. Spooner. In 1891 Spooner proposed that a club be formed for those – and only those – who had ridden 100 miles over a known cycling route between Chicago, Elgin and Aurora. This gave rise to the Century Club of Chicago, to which fourteen charter members were recruited. Sadly Spooner became seriously ill and the club’s management was passed on to a Mr William Herrick, whose tenacity and full-time dedication saw club numbers rise to 650 by January 1898. During this period the scope of the club was widened beyond the Chicago area and so the Century Road Club of America was born. Herrick was subsequently given the fantastic title of ‘chief centurian’ within that club, whose constitution also saw the creation of roles such as ‘state centurian’ and the enigmatic ‘traveling centurian’. The club created a detailed handbook which included a set of century ‘bars’ that dictated the time limits within which defined distances must be ridden:

Single century – 14 hours

Double century – 24 hours

Triple century – 36 hours

Quadruple century – 48 hours

Riders were able to gain century bars by completing each of these challenges. These bars were engraved and displayed below a member’s century road club badge in a similar fashion to military insignia. But the rules for completing an accredited qualifying ride were strict and a formal application process was put in place to adjudicate:

The previously mentioned time limits must be adhered to.

The course upon which a century is ridden must be greater than 20 miles in length.

The entire distance must be covered either ‘awheel’ or ‘afoot’.

Centuries ridden on tandems earn a bar for each member of the crew.

Riders should either be accompanied by a witness for their ride or the application must be attested by a notary public.

Members were also able to apply for a ‘meritorious’ ride medal for rides that demanded ‘an unusual demonstration of the possibilities of cycling to attract general public attention’. Two notable awards were made in 1897, the first to L.H. Bannister for winning the Buffalo–Pittsburg road race of 242 miles in just under twenty-four hours (and it really was just under – 23 hours, 58 minutes and 30 seconds) on 29 September 1893, the longest race distance ever run. The second was to A.A. Hansen, who rode 21,053 miles in 1894 – the first benchmark for a cycling year record that I am able to find. At the time the club were awarding an annual prize for the highest mileage ridden each year, and that had already been awarded that year, to M.N. Keim of Philadelphia with a highly creditable 18,528 miles. Hansen applied for the record after Keim had already been awarded the honour and, as a result, a technicality was found to allow Keim to keep his medal while presenting Hansen with a special award recognising his extraordinary year.

As the 1890s progressed, high-mileage competitions became common-place across many American states with regional clubs and Century Road Club chapters running their own localised competitions. A report in American paper The Sun in 1896 highlighted that mileage records had gained widespread interest across the country with riders thinking nothing of covering distances in excess of 16,000 miles in twelve months. The report went on to document a number of rides in the New York area that exceeded an annual figure of 14,000 miles, including that of Fredrick Allart, who took the Brooklyn Bicycle Club record with a final figure of 16,172 miles, ridden April to April. Fredrick, a sprightly twenty-four years of age at the start of his ride and described as ‘short of stature yet stockily built’, had apparently ridden through the night on a number of occasions to up his mileage and finished his year with a spin round Central Park.

The article went on to proclaim that none of these record attempts appeared to have had a detrimental effect upon the riders or their love of cycling. This was in contrast to the Manhattan Bicycle Club who had abandoned their contest that year due to the alleged ill effects that a few of their competitors had experienced in their struggles to gain the record. The Sun stated that these views were not shared by the majority of aspirants and went on to comment that some of the highest-mileage performances reported by the Century Road Club were being ridden by women, ‘without other than healthful results’.

However, all of these rides were soon to be eclipsed by the incredible performance of Chicago-based rider E.N. Roth, with his highly controversial ride of 1896. His record was reported in The Sun with a compelling opening paragraph:

Anti-bicyclists who regard the wheel as the father of ills moral, mental and physical, should consider the record of a Chicago wheelman from last year.

Roth had claimed a massive annual mileage of 34,380 miles over 340 days, averaging over a century every day – apparently the first person ever to achieve this feat. His ride had commenced on 25 January 1896 and ended on New Year’s Eve, and he had ridden nearly 12,000 miles in excess of any other rider that year (A.A. Gracey came closest to him with 22,848). Roth’s biggest month, October, totalled in excess of 4,000 miles and he claimed 146 distinct centuries, thirty-two double centuries and one triple during the year. His 300-mile ride had been accomplished in twenty-two hours at an average speed of over 13 miles per hour.

The details of Roth’s record set the scene for all of the future attempts. Although his ride ended in terrible weather in a driving rainstorm on New Year’s Eve, he had made a valiant attempt to keep conditions on his side by following good weather across twelve states, focusing his ride on the area around Texas, Illinois and Colorado. Roth rode an ‘ordinary’ single-wheeled bike (or penny farthing, as they are often nicknamed in the UK) with the wheel alone weighing 25 pounds and its tyre tipping the scales at an additional 5 pounds. During the year he wore out a tyre due to extended riding along railway tracks, presumably as they offered a better-maintained pathway than some of the early roads. This cannot have been a smooth ride and his record seems even more extraordinary given that he claimed only a single puncture throughout the year.

Roth claimed to have detailed evidence for his record and subsequently filed an application with the Century Road Club to be given the annual record, along with the 200-mile record (fourteen hours), the 300-mile record, and the Illinois State number-of-centuries record. The Sun was convinced of Roth’s authenticity:

In the light of this achievement, what have the non-cycling pessimistic scare-alls to say? Judging from the experience of Roth, some cyclists may keep on pedalling, undismayed, with the prospect of becoming fat and hearty, and perhaps of reaching the magnetic goal of a world’s record smashed.

But the Century Road Club of America was having none of it. Roth’s application was rejected and the 1896 record handed to Gracey. The exact reasons for rejection are lost to time; maybe Roth had not properly verified the distances travelled with witnesses or records. Maybe he had earned the club’s displeasure by seeking out good weather. The CRCA advised that Roth had not provided satisfactory proof. Roth subsequently issued a suit against the CRCA, but it appears that he did not win his case. If Roth’s application had been accepted it would have set an exceptional early benchmark for the cycling mileage record and in addition set a figure for the single-wheeled bicycle that would still stand today.

These attempts clearly underlined an American interest in the cycling year record that led to the CRCA running its first ever structured mileage competition in 1897. This appears to be the first competition of its kind to have a formal set of rules and an overseeing body to adjudicate the mileages. Riders were required to carry a checking book for the recording and verification of their mileages, and to submit this book to the club monthly, along with a detailed report. In addition, the riders were required to seek signatures of ‘reliable parties’ who had seen the rider pass through their towns. These submissions were scrutinised and verified, and rider rankings published monthly. Interestingly, the cumulative mileages of riders were not shared, meaning that each had to rely upon self-motivation in order to push for the highest distance, rather than being driven on by the statistics of their competitors.

The rewards for the competition were simple. Each rider was presented with a certificate of meritorious riding and category winners received a medal. Such meagre pickings did nothing to deter Century Road Club members, with the top ten riders recording astonishing mileages for the age. The following table shows the top ten results from the competition:

The performance of the year was that of the winner of the competition, John H. George. His 32,479 miles showed an average of almost 89 miles every single day of the year and included 226 centuries, nineteen double centuries and three triples. By getting within 2,000 miles of Roth’s 1896 claim, George’s ride went some way towards proving that the claims made by Roth were achievable.

Equally notable was the 21,026-mile ride by Mrs A.M.C. Allen, a ride that seems to have been conveniently forgotten by the British press when Billie Dovey exceeded that distance in 1938. Mrs Allen’s ride was all the more remarkable as it came at a time when women were actively portrayed as the weaker sex in the cycling press. Her performance won her the Johnson Century medal and the Massachusetts State medal, and a photograph within the club handbook of 1898 shows a statuesque and determined lady resplendent in plus fours astride her drop-handlebarred and ladies-specific bicycle.

Slightly above Mrs Allen on the list was Irving Harrison. Irving lived and worked in Hackensack, New York, and used his bicycle to ferry himself around the city, where he worked as a street-light inspector. His standard inspection route was 45 miles and he was often required to cover it twice a day. Irving had originally used a horse and cart for his inspection round, but a bicycle allowed him to cover ground faster and did not need feeding. His work saw him cover 26,252 miles in the year, with only eight days off due to illness or bad weather – an average of just over 73 miles per day. At first glance Irving’s daily average may seem modest, but think again. He would have often had to carry a ladder with him in order to ascend and check each of the lamps, and his ride must have differed significantly from that of all of the other year-record aspirants due to the staccato rhythm of his cycling. He would have been continuously stopping to alight from his bike and perform his duties and must subsequently have found it hard to build up the kind of pace or monotony usually associated with long-distance rides. The Century Road Club saw fit to investigate Irving’s claims and subsequently advised that ‘as far as posthumous evidence could be accepted’ they seemed to be in order.

There were other impressive rides outside the top ten too. The oldest rider to complete a year was Mr W. Davis of Preoria, who recorded a creditable 10,518 miles in his seventieth year, while the youngest was Will Wittig of Terre Haute, who knocked off a credible 5,403 at the tender age of fourteen.

It is clear that the pioneering American distance-riders blazed the trail for the formal cycling year record under the scrutiny of the Century Road Club of America. The club’s 1897 manual provides very interesting reading, highlighting the organisation’s aim of forwarding the cause of cycling advocacy and in particular the promotion of the cycling mileage record. A subsection of club information reads:

A larger list of contestants in the 1898 mileage competition is desired. This competition is one of the many features of a membership in the Club and serves to create enthusiasm in every section. State centurions should induce as many members as possible to enter the competition.

The CRCA clearly saw that high mileages gained press column inches. These rides were inspiring to cyclists and non-cyclists alike and cemented the credibility of the CRCA as a national organisation for cycling advocacy and as the repository for distance and endurance records. The CRCA wanted to promote the year mileage record for the greater good of cycling itself and its constitution contains many other items to this effect.

Sadly, we have to remember that this was America in the late nineteenth century and the document also included a caveat: ‘Any white cyclist may become a member of the Century Road club.’ Racism was a common theme in early American cycling history, with many clubs featuring constitutions that excluded non-white cyclists. An article in the 1893 edition of the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer even stated that a number of members of the local cycling club were planning to form a new organisation as their local racing league ‘admits the negro and the national assembly would not draw the colour line’.

The 1897 competition had caught the imagination of riders and a year later a new challenger arose. Edward S. Edwards, a New Yorker and British ex-pat, managed to convince Pope Manufacturing Co. (maker of the Columbia bicycle) to sponsor his attempt to ride a century every day of the year. This was more than a simple marketing exercise, it was a key battle in the fight between chain- and shaft-driven bicycles. Pope manufactured a bevel-gear-driven bike and was keen to prove its worth against the chain drive.

Edwards set out on 1 January 1898 under a great deal of scrutiny, having to get an hourly signature from a member of the public to verify his location. Edwards rode 258 centuries without a day off – a record for continuous hundred-mile rides that would stand for a long time – and completed a total of just over 25,800 miles before he succumbed to typhoid, with his year ending on 15 September 1898. His illness made waves within the cycling community, which believed that his typhoid was actually a form of ‘fatigue fever’ caused by riding for too long without a rest. For that reason the next challenger to step up decided to take Sundays as a rest day throughout his attempt, driven by a mixture of concern and public pressure that this should form a foundation of future attempts for safety reasons.

This flurry of high-mileage activity in 1890s America was starting to cause ripples abroad. Initially, sections of the British cycling press occupied a position of sneering cynicism at the high mileages being ridden on the other side of the pond. The fact that many of these had been ridden by women caused utter disbelief in a country yet to allow the female vote.

The British cycling press compared the American regional club century counts to that of their own and felt that the figures tallied, but then pointed out that the records coming out of the CRCA were ‘extraordinary’. The British journalists complained that these mileages were clearly not ridden in the course of ordinary road riding, and went further, claiming that the verification of such records was suspicious. This claim came from the fact that the road network and associated cycle touring facilities in late nineteenth-century America were undeveloped. The British questioned how these riders could be accumulating such miles in the absence of these facilities. Even the idea of riding small circuits where the roads were good was discounted by a journalist from Cycling:

We believe the monotony of such a course would, in one month, drag the heart of any man or woman.

However, the envy caused by the American performances was impossible to hide and as the writer was unable to overturn the credibility of these rides he began to attack from another angle:

It is evident that what was a pleasant and interesting recreation for the average road-riding wheelman has now become the sport of the professional record maker. The latter by his apocryphal performances behind pacemaking wind shields, has made a farce of racing and racing records and road riding records are entirely at the mercy of these who can draw the longest bows.

The discredited record of E.N. Roth was used as a further weapon against American credibility, citing the ‘ingenuity of this terrible traveller’ in making his false claims. The British press was clearly rattled; the Americans were way ahead of the rest of the world in pioneering cycling mileage records and post-imperial Britain did not like this one bit. A final stab was made at discrediting the Americans:

We cannot say that it is impossible for a man to ride an average of 58 miles a day, ill or well, winter and summer, for an entire year, but we can say that it puts a breaking strain on our powers of belief.

So, as the new century approached, it was time for the British to take action. Scorn could only be poured upon the Americans for so long and a rider was needed to prove that high mileages could be ridden on the east side of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was now that Teddy Hale stepped forward and set a benchmark on the British side of the pond. Edward ‘Teddy’ Hale had a huge cycling pedigree and the interesting distinction of being claimed as both an Irish and English rider. The Irish claimed that Hale was born in Templepatrick, Belfast in 1864, but the truth appears to be that he actually came into the world somewhere near London. Hale first threw a leg over a bicycle at the age of sixteen and rode a boneshaker around the streets of London for six months before trading it in for a Pioneer model and taking up cycle racing.

He rose quickly up the cycling ranks and two years later became the captain of Gainsborough Cycling Club after competing in numerous time trials and track races. His first real impact on the cycling world came when he took a 50-mile record on the Brighton road with a time of 3 hours 35 minutes, which, at the time (in 1885), was unprecedented. The next year, Hale started to set his sights on longer rides and took the 100-mile record with a time of 6 hours 39, returning eight years later to smash it further down to 5 hours, 12 minutes and 2 seconds. His greatest achievement, however, was undoubtedly winning the Madison Square Garden six-day race in New York in December 1896.

Six-day racing is another forgotten classic of the early cycling calendar. Possibly originating in Birmingham in 1875, the events were hugely popular in the formative years of cycling. The races would start on a Monday and culminate at the weekend, with riders racing for fourteen to eighteen hours a day until the finish. Six-dayers fizzled out at the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century but enjoyed a brief revival in the 1960s and 1970s, sponsored by Skol lager and named the ‘Skol Six’. The races were usually held on indoor tracks, keeping the riders out of the weather, with the winner being he who could ride the longest distance. The 1878 race, at the Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington, saw the winner, Bill Cann, cover a staggering 1,060 miles on a single-wheeled ordinary. The crowds were kept engaged with regular updates concerning the riders’ distances and apparently rose to their feet to cheer riders as they notched up successive centuries.