20,000 miles a year, for real
 

If there's ever a biker hall of fame, Lael Wilcox will be in it. For the past three years, she’s pedaled 20,000 miles every 12 months.

Rides a Specialized Ruby. Averages 235 miles per day, Average speed 12mph

How Lael Wilcox Rides 20,000 Miles Per Year - BIKEPACKING.com

http://www.bikepacking.com/plog/lael-wilcox-trans-am/

Wow. That's much farther than I ride. :eek:

Great article about a great racer. Very impressive.

Not downplaying the impressive feat that is 20k miles a year but that only averages out to 54.79 miles a day. If you were to average 235 miles a day you would put on 85,775 miles a year. If her average ride is 235 miles and shes totalling 20k a year then she is only riding 85 days a year. Still crazy impressive and way more miles in that saddle than I have the endurance or time to manage.

Edit: Had only read the first article. The stats are referring to the results of the race in the second article not her normal daily rides. My bad.

There's no way you could consistently average 235 miles per day. Even at an average of 20 mph, that's still almost 12 hours of cycling. Still an impressive feat over the course of a 4000-mile race.

Twice I have seen numerous riders participating in the GDMBR while riding the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway and in Wise River, MT, which is at its northern end. Don't know how they do it. There is a bar/restaurant there called the Wise River Club. Last time I was there (2016) a couple of them came in and ordered piles of food. A storm had passed through recently and they were wet and cold. (I got snowed, sleeted and rained on coming down from the top.) What I kept thinking was that, from there, they faced a 26 mile climb to the nearly 8,000' summit of the byway. (At least it's paved.) Always wonder if they all made it the same day or if some stopped to camp for the night along the way. There are a few developed campgrounds along the way. Also, much of the surrounding land is U.S.F.S. land, so you can just plop down pretty much anywhere.

thanks, I should have made that clear in op

Amanda Coker already did that. She averaged 237.19 miles per day for 365 consecutive days.

Colour me impressed. Done around a circuit, and in Flatland, but nonetheless, impressive.

Someone's going to attempt 100,000, no doubt.:rolleyes:

She's also the fastest to 100,000 miles, in 423 days. 236.41 miles per day @ 20.31mph.

I've seen her on Strava. She is always at the top of the monthly distance challenges lol. She seems to be doing laps on the same flat ground course. That alone is astonishing, I would probably go mad from boredom.

In the late 90's a road bike magazine had an article on a guy who rode 100 miles every single day and had been doing so since the 80's, no matter the weather. I guess he was kind of a recluse and didn't have a job. I remember the bike that he had wasn't even really that high end. That would be 36,500 miles a year.

That sounds like OCD to me.

Million Mile Freddie..... https://miles4melanoma.com/freddiehoffman/

Check out Danny Chew, until he had his fainting episode a couple of years ago he was mostly averaging just under 20K miles a year since the late 70s/early 80s. He was hoping to hit 1 million miles in a lifetime.

Myself personally, I've ridden over 102,000 miles since th start of 2012. I've had 3 years over 20K during that stretch. Doing 20K miles in a year is quite easy. You just have to want to do it. I know of a guy who use to ride that kind of mileage daily going back and forth to work by bicycle each day...like 61, 62, 63 miles round trip each day. It's not that hard. The hardest part about doing something like it is...giving yourself the chance to do it. Once you forget about any potential reason why you couldn't do then you will find it quite easy to do.

Don't say "no way."
https://gearjunkie.com/amanda-coker-...mileage-record

Nah! I ride Flatwoods 40-60 miles a ride, 6 days a week. I've been doing it for almost 6 years. Never got to the point of insanity and it's really not that much different from taking the same route to work and back 5 days a week. You learn to enjoy the ride and zone out most of the scenery.

Dan Tonelli of Oakland used to ride that sort of mileage. But that was before traffic got so scary. He was not a particularly fast rider but extremely competent. Finally it got to the point where there were no country roads where he felt even vaguely safe and he switched to jogging and has run many marathons.

Oh

I'm...not so sure about that.

What's most impressive about both Wilcox and Coker is that they're not just riding along and ending up with whatever time and distance. They're doing it a race pace or tightly proscribed speed. That makes it so much harder and a much larger psychological burden that a lot of people aren't really aware of. More than one TransAm racer has likened the racing as being an escaped prisoner on the run, always under pressure to keep moving and always watching your back for other racers. Lael Wilcox did an interview somewhere on youtube where she recounts how hard the first Tour Divide was and how much it hurts to race for so long, it was really eye opening.

Well, maybe just a bit of babbling every once in a while. :innocent:

Must be nice to not have a job that allows you all that time :thumb:

Who would want to do that all the time even if you had no job? It borders on mental disorder. Especially for the woman that rode 235 miles a day.

Yeah, same thoughts... That looks like an obsession because he don't event consider the weather condition. However, It's impressive tho. 36,000 miles is just so wow.