Yearly Distance Record Attempt (Tommy Godwin - 75,065mi/120,000k)

Deciding to abandon must have been a tough decision.

Huge amounts of respect to the man for everything he's done, and I would be glad to support him if he decided to go for this again.

And a new level of respect to Searvogel for the enormity of the task that he succeeded in.

Bruce's attempt smells to me.

Why not get a tracker? Not hard to do.

That said, its as easy to paln off a tracker to another ride as it it a garmin. Maybe easier as he's got his powermeter linked to his garmin.

It just seems like he's being obtuse. Why wouldn't you comply with the fairly basic requirements of the governing body if you're planning to dedicate a year of your life to a record attempt?

Shame but not surprising.

Great effort though.

The UMCA's requirements were vague. The rules ask for "Live Tracking", he supplied something that he considered satisfied the "Live Tracking" requirement (Find My Friends app) so that anyone from the UMCA could see where he was at any point in time, but the UMCA want the Live Tracking to be public and not private/request-based, which they never originally said.

If the UMCA had been clearer in their original rules "You must have Live Tracking that is public and anyone can use to go and observe you, e.g. a SPOT tracker" then he would have been able to make a decision earlier.

"The devices used will be subject to the approval of the Records Chairman."

"Tracking/recording devices shall be tested at least two weeks prior to the start of the attempt to ensure that the Records Chairman will be able to access the data."

So, if they did have an issue with his choice of tracker, it seems that it should have been known in advance of the attempt and it was the rider choosing to ignore their requirements unless, of course they didn't realise it wasn't a public tracker?

Steve speaks

https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=95468.0

From the correspondance released it looks like they told him his tracking solution wasn't good enough on the 30th December. No idea whether there was earlier correspondance on this. At least they were willing to let him start whilst he got a SPOT tracker sorted, but he refused to.

In more recent FB posts Bruce has said he doesn't like the idea of everyone being able to tell where he is all the time (he didn't have a problem with UMCA people knowing where he is at any time). If he doesn't get over this then he'll never get UMCA on his side as that seems to be a key requirement for them so that the public can go out and try and find him on the road.

UMCA should clarify the rules and maybe even up the fee to $600 and provide the SPOT tracker as part of the fee (dropping back to $300 if the rider already has their own SPOT). The fee could include membership for the duration of the attempt too.

Aaah bless.

In honour of our friends on YACF some smileys for you all....

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UMCA should clarify the rules and maybe even up the fee to $600 and provide the SPOT tracker as part of the fee (dropping back to $300 if the rider already has their own SPOT). The fee could include membership for the duration of the attempt too.

I think $300 is amazingly good value given that it covers the entire year. Surely a UMCA official will spend much more time in total invigilating each attempt than $300 of minimum wage would buy.

Shame Steve couldn't do it this time, but it's undoubtedly the right decision now. Who knows what he'd be able to do if he increased his average speed. He'd still be my favourite to get the record.

Big up to @rive_gauche

don't be silly, all I did was spend a minute noting the strava data, big up to Steve Abraham

Did Steven exceed the 100,000 miles already?

no, although over the course of the year he exceeded 100,000 km

Steve Abraham, what a man ! Can cycle further in one year than I can in a lifetime, amazing ! Humbled by his achievements. Good luck to you Steve and best wishes for the future, Super Human Person You Are !

Guinness official...

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/greatest-distance-cycled-in-a-year

I thought kurt cobain blew his brains out when he was 27, but no, he's resurrected and cycles a 120km - amaze..

Out of curiosity what was Steve's total elevation gain vs Kurt's?

With no pleasure, I think Bruce's attempt will be done within 2 weeks. Complaining of knee issues. Knee issues don't just go away. He quit his Lejogle attempt with knee issues.

That, and the fact that its unlikely that any record authority would recognise it as a record anyhow (Guinness will recognise an attempt within HAMR rules, but their own seem to say no drafting)

Knee issues is therefore a good reason to duck out, whilst ahead, and allowing him to say 'look, I would have done it if it weren't for those pesky kids knees'

It's quite hard watching steve 's video of him stopping. Clearly heart broken and up set. I followed him all the way. Kurt doing the attempt in flat tropical florida for the most part means it's not a level playing field. Even steves bicycle was a steel frame in the spirit of tommy Godwin.
Have a well deserved break and reflect if you ever decide to have another go I'll be sporting you.

So, for the first time, Bruce drops below the required average distance, and is now 51.9 miles below Kurt's average daily distance.

From 127.5 miles up, to over 50 miles down in less than a week has to be tough.

So, Bruce has reappeared on Strava, but still isn't managing to hit the daily required distances. He's not ridden further than the average distance in the last 8 days of riding, and is now over 548 miles below pace, meaning that he needs to be back at his previous daily mileage without a break for the rest of the year.

If he's still looking to fly back and forth, taking out a day each way (at a guess) then he needs to make up an extra 418 miles at least above that line.

If he manages his interquartile mean distance of 211.3 miles per day, he's still only looking at beating Kurt by 450 odd miles, which is easily within the range of GPS variations

As an aside, although the UMCA have hailed Kurt's final distance, they've not bothered to update his final daily miles, and haven't updated Steve's miles either. The last confirmed data from them is dated 04/01/2016. I do think that it's a little bit off of them to have not bothered to update things.

Goes to show that a week or a month is one thing, but smashing it out for a year is a whole different kettle of badgers. You really have to be lucky not to have something fuck up along the way.

Who knows whether the flights either way will help, not sure about the Adelaide winters. He'll certainly get a rest on the flights, but won't be as good as rest in a proper bed somewhere. Losing 48 hours of the year to flying isn't great either (since he plans on flying back to NZ near the end of the year he won't benefit from timezones or the international date line) plus he'll get collecting a bonkers amount of jetlag from the flights.

I do hope his knee problems clear up and he can continue though, everyone deserves a clean shot at something like this.