See also: Bicyclist needs one more century to achieve US circuit
A reader of this blog emailed me yesterday to ask if there was a club or association for bicycle riders who had ridden organized centuries in all 50 states. As for himself, he had just one state to go — Montana — before completing this amazing feat.
I didn't find anything for the milestone of centuries in all 50 states. But after asking around, I stumbled across a few clubs that keep track of bicycling records that might never find their way into the headlines of the Guinness Book of World Records.
Perimeter Bicycling Association of America based in Tucson, Arizona, stays true to its name and declares World Records “for cyclists who bicycle the perimeter of any geographical boundary of 50 or more miles.”
That includes cities, counties, islands, mountains and other topographical features.
Meanwhile, the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association tracks time records for cross-state, trans-continental, city to city, 12- and 24-hour rides and centuries.
Legendary
Some records are legend — the UCI-sanctioned 1-hour record has been held by Eddy Merckx, Francisco Moser, Chris Boardman and Graeme Obree, among others. The current record holder is Russian cyclist Ondrej Sosenka at 49.7 kilometers (about 30.9 mph).
Another is the Pete Penseyres trans-continental record set during Race Across America in 1986. Although his 8 days, 9 hours and 47 minutes has been beaten on slightly shorter routes, no one has yet matched his average speed of 15.4 mph.
Browsing through the Perimeter and Ultra Cycling websites, I discovered some other amazing bicycling feats.
Most perimeters
Joan Joesting-Mahoney of Florida has record-setting rides around 23 countries. These range from 140 days around Australia to 8 hours around St. Kitts, a Caribbean island. John Hall of Alaska appears to hold the record for perimeter ride around the US — 122 days in 2008. It's a 12,000-mile bike ride.
It took Bill Mueller 122 days to ride the perimeter of Texas (3,502 miles) and William Cotton 10 days to ride the perimeter of Delaware (301 miles).
Speed
Point-to-point records are the purview of Ultra Cycling. The west-to-east solo record for Texas is 32 hours 20-minutes to cover 574 miles by Steve Born of Idaho. The east-west record holder for Delaware is Gerry Eddlemon who knocked out the 38-mile trip in 2 hours and 16 minutes.
The fastest 100-mile road record is Dan McGehee of Mesa, Arizona, who rode 100 miles on the Sun Valley Parkway in Phoenix in 4:06:11 at 23.99 mph. Two years earlier he set the 200-mile record at the same location at only a .10 mph slower average speed.
Ultra Cycling also tracks 12- and 24-hour records, solo and tandem trans-continental, RAAM, north-south US and city to city.
Your record
These clubs are serious about these records. Perimeter actually forwards them to the Guinness Book. You'll need to check the rules for authenticating records before you attempt.
While I flipped through the perimeter rides, I noticed that while Bill Misner tackled the perimeter bike ride around Spokane, Washington, in 3-hours 32-minutes, there's nothing recorded for Seattle.
That may be my attempt to get into the record books, if no one else tries it first.
Recent Comments