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I've recce'd some of the national ones (attempted lejog unofficially failing to prepare well for an official one) as well as Willesden club's one and they're neither fun, safe, nor likely to be beaten by anyone other than a loon and I'm reasonably high on the loon scale.
Even though I'm faster over many of the distances than the records once you factor in the variable parcours, navigation, LOADS of traffic lights, RABs, junctions and getting into and out of towns safely they become very touch and go.The RRA has been talking about introducing new 'circuit' records to help with this issue of Place-to-Place being too hard to race now.
hippy
'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.