Who is my top bicycling hero? Lance Armstrong — warm. Greg LeMond — warmer. Freddie Hoffman — bingo!
Why Hoffman? For starters, he's ridden his bicycle to the moon and back, twice.
Hoffman, 48, was born with an oxygen deficiency. It led to developmental problems that caused him to be ostracized by his classmates and peers. He turned to his bicycle for companionship.
Inspiration
Inspired by watching astronauts travel to the moon, Hoffman got it in his head to turn his bicycle into a virtual spacecraft and pedal the distance to the moon — some 240,000 miles — here on Earth. Bicycling nearly every day, Hoffman has covered 1.3 million miles.
How did he do it? He told ABC News in an interview back in September:
“If you want to do something bad enough, even if it's improbably hard and very long, even if you have to do it one tiny piece at a time, stick with it. Don't worry about how long it takes and eventually you'll get there.”
Daily average
Over the past 41 years, Hoffman has averaged 81.4 miles per day. He has clocked 24,700 days of cycling, with 1,500 days off.
He's accomplished a lot more than just racking up miles, and this is what makes Freddie Hoffman a hero.
About 17 years ago, Hoffman started raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Hoffman's mother and 19 other relatives have died from those diseases, and Hoffman has raised more than $650,000 for the Northern New Jersey chapter. You can visit Hoffman's own webpage at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Cycling career
Bicycling magazine published an article about Hoffman about five years ago that's posted at Miles 4 Melanoma.
At that time he was riding a Schwinn Voyager. During the 1980s — his best decade — he knocked off more than 50,000 miles a year. When interviewed back in 2001, he had backed off to 35,000 to 38,000 miles a year — a century bike ride a day.
Hoffman racks up a lot of miles on his cross-country bike trips. He's made more than 20 self-supported tours and has visited all the 48 continental states.
Racing
He tried bicycle racing and even won some category 4 races. But he couldn't get used to the more rigid bicycles and the team tactics.
Fully outfitted, he's pushing 100 pounds on his bicycle. He could go faster with less weight, he says, but what's the point if he breaks down without tools out in the middle of nowhere.
What's Freddie Hoffman doing today? He's probably out for a bike ride.
ABC News has a cool 15-minute interview with Hoffman that's worth a look.
Via the Recumbent Blog
Another million miler
There's another cyclist out there who is shooting for his first million miles. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette writes about Daniel Chew, a former Race Across America competitor. Chew currently writes for the RAAM website.
At 44, he expects to hit the million-mile mark when he's in his 70s.
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