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Steve Abraham passes 5,000-mile mark on way to Year Record

Over 800 miles ahead of Tommy Godwin's 1939 schedule...

Steve Abraham, the 40-year-old from Milton Keynes who is attempting to break the 75-year-old record for the greatest distance ridden in a year, has passed the 5,000-mile mark.

In fact, as of yesterday evening, Abraham has clocked up a staggering 5,213 miles since setting out on January 1 for a daily average of 186 miles.

By this date in 1939, record-holder Tommy Godwin had ridden 4,338 miles (155 miles/day), putting Abraham well on schedule to break the record. Godwin passed the 5,000-mile mark on February 2, 1939.

Meanwhile, Abraham's American rival Kurt Searvogel, who started on January 10, has accumulated 3,829.7 miles, or 201 miles/day.

For those who love a good spreadsheet (and who doesn't, really?) Abraham's crew chief Chris Hopkinson Abraham's and Searvogel's progress against Godwin's record. (Hat-tip to ge04254 for pointing that out.)

It's very early days yet, but if they continue to exceed Godwin's pace by the same ratio, Abraham is on track for over 90,000 miles by the end of the year and Searvogel would exceed 93,000 miles by the time his year is up.

It's not clear how much the weather affected Godwin, but Met Office records say that in England and Wales 1939 had the wettest January since 1764. Abraham has enjoyed the relatively mild weather of the last few weeks and Searvogel is fortunate enough to be in sunny Florida so the extrapolation above is unlikely to have any significant predictive power.


Steve Abraham with the master route-planning tool

Speaking to The Telegraph's Jonny Cooper recently, Abraham said he has been "captivated" by the record since he first year about it when he was 15.

He said: "I didn't know who Tommy Godwin was, or who had done this incredible world record ride at the time, but I became fascinated by it and started to wonder if I could do it myself one day."

While he's tracking ahead of Godwin's distance now, he'll have to pile on the miles in the summer, just as the record-holder did in 1939.

"I plan to lengthen my rides as the daylight hours lengthen, which will give my body time to adapt to the mileage," Abraham said. "I will be aiming for about 170 miles per day in winter and taking it up as high as 300 miles per day in mid summer. I will then hope to taper the distances downwards again going into the next winter."

Godwin's longest day in the saddle came on June 21, when he took advantage of the summer solstice to log 361 miles. The following month he rode over 300 miles on 14 separate days.

Abraham said he is usually on the road by 5am, after getting up at 4am to eat and prepare his route. After the day's milage he eats, prepares his bike for the next day and charges the multiple GPS units he's using to make sure he records every inch of the ride for the adjudicators at the Ultramarathon Cycling Association (UMCA).

Missing a day's recording seems to be his biggest fear.

He said: "I must submit each day's ride to the adjudicators at the UMCA, or the day of riding will not count. If I miss a day I will fall 200 miles behind the planned schedule and I will have to continue putting in average days of 200 miles riding distance, whilst also catching up on the day lost!"

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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18 comments

Avatar
bikeandy61 | 9 years ago
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If you're interested in Tommy and his record look for a copy of "Unsurpassed" by Geoffrey Barlow (who I think is Tom's nephew). A good read about cycling in very different times.

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Redvee | 9 years ago
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And there was me feeling proud of doing 500 miles so far this year.

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SteveSlow | 9 years ago
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This is part bonkers and part fantastic!!

Just looked at Tommy Godwin's milage for 12,13,14 July
Three consecutive days 306,301 and 331 miles!!

Some of think 100 is seriously long way!
(Must be easier in the sun)

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bike_food | 9 years ago
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So if this is a rolling year record presumably Steve could get to December 31st and say sod it I'll keep going and if he does more mileage on 1st, 2nd,3rd... Jan than the previous year his total will increase till the day he stops?
Or is the day he starts/finishes carved in stone now?

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marcusjb replied to bike_food | 9 years ago
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bike_food wrote:

So if this is a rolling year record presumably Steve could get to December 31st and say sod it I'll keep going and if he does more mileage on 1st, 2nd,3rd... Jan than the previous year his total will increase till the day he stops?
Or is the day he starts/finishes carved in stone now?

AFAIK When he submitted his entry to UMCA, he had to state his starting date, and that's it - can't be moved. Same for the others going for the record.

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YorkshireMike | 9 years ago
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Huge support for Steve. Bloody yank.

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trekker12 | 9 years ago
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Godwin carried a sealed speedometer (from a car I think) which was checked every so often to ensure he hadn't opened it and tampered with it's contents.

He did have a team of helpers with whom he had some drafting but that wasn't for the whole time he was on the road.

There are no restrictions on drafting for the 2015 attempts either.

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Gkam84 | 9 years ago
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There are a few things different, At least Steve is keeping to the "spirit" of the record.

Kurt is using an array of different bikes, including a recumbent.

I'm not sure if Godwin was out drafting in groups of riders as they have both seemingly doing.

I guess William "Ironox" Pruett is not only well behind, but also had to start again from 20th January, because he didn't log any mileage on the 19th?

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wrevilo | 9 years ago
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So how did Godwin track his mileage?

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backflipbedlem replied to wrevilo | 9 years ago
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wrevilo wrote:

So how did Godwin track his mileage?

Strava Obviously!  39

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bike_food replied to wrevilo | 9 years ago
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wrevilo wrote:

So how did Godwin track his mileage?

He counted the number of pedal turns each day, then at night divided this by n and recorded the results on an abacus.

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therealsmallboy | 9 years ago
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This is awesome, but I can't help but wonder what they do for work, do they have family etc....? It's one thing being a pro athlete and training / competing for a job, but these guys are amateurs aren't they? How are they managing to actually do it and still live?

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ColT replied to therealsmallboy | 9 years ago
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therealsmallboy wrote:

This is awesome, but I can't help but wonder what they do for work, do they have family etc....? It's one thing being a pro athlete and training / competing for a job, but these guys are amateurs aren't they? How are they managing to actually do it and still live?

From a CNN report via http://oneyeartimetrial.org.uk/:

"Abraham has had to give up his job as a warehouse worker to free up the necessary time for such an all-consuming record attempt. He is also single.

"This is not the sort of record that a married man would attempt," said Abraham's media spokesperson Idai Makaya."

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ge04254 | 9 years ago
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just a correction, the spreadsheet is from Steve's head of crew Chris 'Hoppo' Hopkinson

https://www.facebook.com/chris.hoppo.hopkinson

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dassie | 9 years ago
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Stunning effort Steve - well done.

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djpalmer32 | 9 years ago
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Not to take anything away what these guys are doing, the other advantage that Kurt Searvogel has, as well as the fine weather, is that Florida is relatively pan flat. Steve will probably have the total highest amount of climbing by the end of the year. Kurt might start to suffer as the Florida weather hots up and hurricane season starts.

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minnellium replied to djpalmer32 | 9 years ago
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 41

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minnellium replied to djpalmer32 | 9 years ago
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djpalmer32 wrote:

Not to take anything away what these guys are doing, the other advantage that Kurt Searvogel has, as well as the fine weather, is that Florida is relatively pan flat. Steve will probably have the total highest amount of climbing by the end of the year. Kurt might start to suffer as the Florida weather hots up and hurricane season starts.

True, but it's a distance record, not a 'how hard are you?' record. If it was the latter he'd be attempting it on a singlespeed fat bike with a puncture.

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