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Yes. I should have used a better word than exist. I wish it was still possible to race competitively to beat some of the big place to place records.
Whether anyone cares, I am indifferent. I'd only do it for myself. There is hardly much glory in the fanfare of cycling weekly. I just like a challenge.
In honesty, with what I heard it takes to do a LEJOG record in red tape of the RRA. I'd just do it 'off the books' so to speak. I like to ride my bike, not hassle.I mean, london brigton london, set in 1977 at 4h15m8s by P Griffiths, that's crazy.
skinny-
Reading tales of the old records, they used to get lots of support and sometimes police would even block junctions for riders to go through without stopping. Different times.
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Post 15319
"I'd only do it for myself"A very noble attitude, but this was not the way people thought back in the golden days of record breaking. I think we need to consider some history here.
Let's go back to one of my favourite characters - Marcel Planes. He won the 1911 'Century Competition' with 33,200 miles in the year, which was the record (see photo below). This competition was run by Cycling (as the magazine was then known) which naturally gave it a lot of publicity. Journalism and bike racing are inextricably linked - look who started the Tour de France.
Marcel was unsponsored, as he had to be since the competition was specifically amateur. It's amazing that he managed to do the rides that he did since he was, for much of the time, literally penniless. Towards the end of the year he gave a testimonial to Hutchinson Tyres for which he doubtless received some (hard earned) payment.
This led to a terrible row in 1912 which saw him drummed out of his club for professionalism and, shamefully in my opinion, excluded from cycling club life until he joined the Veteran-Cycle Club in 1955, which didn't care about this sort of thing.The relevance of this is that between the wars record breaking was the only outlet for professionals in Britain as all racing was strictly amateur. But we still had an industry, which not only made bikes, but profits! Furthermore it was convinced, on no good evidence, that it was the best in the world.
The industry could afford, and saw fit, to pay a few elite riders to go for records on the grounds that it made good copy for adverts, and where would these ads appear? Well, obviously in 'Cycling'. So the magazine had an interest, an obligation really, to give plenty of publicity to record attempts. Examples are Frank Southall (Hercules), Sid Ferris (Raleigh)
Marguerite Wilson (Claud Butler). It's interesting that there was then no way back into amateur racing, no possibility of redemption (although this came in the 1960's) so it was a huge, career ending commitment. In fact I believe that the people behind this rigid pro/am distinction actually brought amateurism into disrepute which has contributed to the unsatisfactory situation existing today.Just suppose we had a significant cycle industry today - I'm confident the police would be more than happy to marshal record aspirants through town centres.
So I see the problem now as being lack of financial interest rather than the impossibility of
breaking records. How could this be overcome? Find powerful sponsors (may be possible, but I certainly don't know how) or look for obscure regional records that could still be broken. (Barnet to Bedford?)A final note: skinny recognises that Phil Griffiths' 1977 record looks unbeatable and it may well be: Phil was a very talented rider. However, speeds generally have gone up significantly since that time, so let's not give up hope.
hippy
clubman
'I wish place to place records still existed'
Tester is right, the records certainly exist, and so does the RRA:
http://www.rra.org.uk/
and even most of the regional associations for example:
http://www.nwhcrra.org.uk
Although their continued existence may be limited by the age of the committee members and general disinterest from the cycling public.
The questions to be answered are: can they still be beaten and, perhaps more importantly, would anyone care if they were.
Can they be beaten?
The Hounslow has two club place to place records: Hounslow-Worthing and Back, and Hounslow-Newbury and back. Until a couple of years ago neither had been attempted since before the war and the Racing Secretary wanted to scrub them off the books, but along came the remarkable Loz Wintergold who duly broke both records, the first by nearly an hour and the second by twenty minutes, in spite of twenty eight sets of lights into and out of Newbury. I did manage to get him some media exposure, but one can't expect too much for a club record. He now has his eyes on at least one of the regional records.
My feeling is that the national level records would mostly be tough, partly because they would involve getting in and out of big cities, and also because they are held with very competitive rides. However, some of the regional records are ancient and held by riders who, redoubtable though they were, would seem a bit slow by current standards. I'm not including T.K. Morley in this category, but lfgss aspirants may like to consider his Barnet to Bedford and back record since it is rather old (1958) and does not involve London roads while it is fairly local to many forum users. Tom is still very much around and I expect he would want to help and advise anyone going for this record.
Here's the history of a record which has been broken relatively recently ( certainly within the 30 years mentioned above):
Winchester- Wantage and Back
1969 Phil Liggett 3hours 48minutes 40 secs.
1987 John Woodburn 3 39 35
1998 Glenn Longland 3 36 59.
Possibly some of these names are familiar to you.
The national and regional records are one thing, but many clubs have their own place to place records, and these are obviously easier to organise since you can make up your own rules as you go along. lfgss could certainly have a set of records.
Would anyone care?
Well, I doubt that Cycling Weekly would give much coverage now to anything other than Lands End - John O'Groats, but there's the whole world of internet magazines which effectively have unlimited space and like to get copy - so long as it's free. It seems to me that anyone considering these rides would need a press officer. If people read about these things I feel sure they would be interested in them.
Finally, before we all get too carried away, let's remember that these rides would have a significant element of danger since the rider would be by himself mostly on busy roads and without the elaborate signage that normal time triallists have for their benefit.