jppe

One of our local 60+ cycling legends set new mileage records for himself this month. Even enduring the Carolinas heat and humidity. He sure hasn’t been bored with his retirement!!

Pretty strong don’t you think???

Biker395 

We have something to aspire to!

caloso

Wow.

deacon mark

That is pretty impressive. I retired a year ago and not quite 60 and this month manage 1094 miles riding thought that was pretty good. I do run also so that cuts into the bike but still a 100 miles a day. The grocery bill will go up I assume with those miles.

jack002

I want to be him!

TimothyH

That's 5.5 hours/day at over 19 MPH average.

delbiker1 

I do not think I want to spend anywhere near that amount of time on a bike. I was at 952 for July and I am good with that number. The really crazy one is the woman in Florida that did 85000 miles in a year, all on the same 7 mile loop. That is about 233 miles a day, not quite 12 hours a day at 20 mph for 33 circuits on the loop. Yikes!

TimothyH

I tend to agree.

Everyone has their magic number but at a certain point it becomes obsession rather than a hobby.

I mean, it is fine for a one time deal just to do it but month after month it can't be good and one has to live a balanced life.

There is something to be said for reading a book once in a while or having other hobbies. I hope the guy takes a nap once in a while at least.


-Tim-

berner

When do these people find time to eat, sleep, and so forth.

downhillmaster

Wacky

JanMM

Dang! My first day of retirement was 1/1/19 and I thought I was doing good to have ridden a total of 3100 miles since then.
Guess not!

TimothyH

You are doing well.

I-Like-To-Bike

Agree, more miles are not always better, or more "good" than less miles, especially if running up mileage becomes an obsession. See https://www.bikeforums.net/fifty-plu...good-ride.html

curbtender

My friend did a MB ride in Colombia and had a wreck, broken collarbone. They transported him out with his bike. He had pretty impressive Strava totals by the time they got him to the doctor.

TakingMyTime

Unimaginable. If I did just a 1/3rd of that mileage in a month I'd think I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It would be in my sig, I'd probably get a t-shirt to announce it to everyone, I'd mention it in each and every post, lol.

Lemond1985

Hey, I like riding my bike as much as anyone, but this can't possibly be any fun, to me this looks kinda sick, and more of an obsession, almost akin to alcoholism or something.

Retired people still need to run errands, cook, eat, rest, wash clothes, maintain personal relationships, do their taxes, etc. The Tour de France takes almost a month, but it's only 2000 miles and probably doesn't have anywhere near that much climbing. And the Tour at least has "rest days".

BlazingPedals

Doing way better than me, that's for sure!

MattTheHat 

Unless you enjoy that sort of thing. I do. But, I’m not retired and 1,000 miles a month takes up a lot of time and energy. I’m not sure I’ve got 3x the energy even if I had 3x the time.

-Matt

Wildwood 

I couldn't afford the annual bill for tires, at that rate.

edit: with 35years continuously cycling as an adult, I probably have only exceeded 6,000 miles a year a few times. Maybe too much summer hiking and winter skiing and life stuff.

TimothyH

I have a feeling that this "local 60+ cycling legend" and our esteemed OP may be one and the same.


-Tim-

DrIsotope

These are all hyperbole numbers. His "average ride" for the month of July is:

101.94 miles with 3,766 feet of climbing, completed in 5 hours and 18 minutes, for an average speed of 19.2mph.

I have active Pro racers and Team California Juniors I check out on Strava, and those guys only occasionally average more than 17mph for an entire month.

Whoever the guy mentioned in the OP indeed is, he is strong for any age, by any reckoning.

I-Like-To-Bike

You are correct of course, no doubt some compulsive types will never be happy unless they constantly feed their obsession; just as for some masochists, pain IS gain.

jppe

My buddy whose Strava numbers I posted is just a regular guy like us. He’s about 62 and was a body builder years ago before he started riding. I think he fully retired about 4 years ago. He’s about 5’ 7” and guessing 140 lbs. He used to Mountain bike quite a lot and has more titanium and other metal parts in his body than you’d believe. He always seems to be able to bounce back from nasty spills.

He probably got early starts and rode his century in the morning, then spent the afternoons with his grand daughters, mowed his grass and also his neighbors. He will usually do a huge number of miles one month a year. A couple years ago I think he rode 25,000 miles for the year. The amount of climbing feet per 100 miles is very typical for riding around our area. I’m kind of surprised it wasn’t more than 4000’.

To me the most impressive stat is his average speed of 19+ mph. While some of his rides are with 2-3 others most of them are solo. I could probably do the mileage but my average speed would only be 16-17 mph.

I suspect he’ll drop back to his normal 1-2 centuries per week for a while. I think he’s been riding Trek’s for quite a while.

Carbonated

Wow - that is impressive! Doubtful he would spend that much time in the saddle if he didn't enjoy it.
If it's an obsession, it's a good one to have.

John_V 

The girl in Florida is Amanda Coker. That's her standing next to me in my avatar. Her goal was not to just ride her bike but to break the woman's world record of the "Highest Annual Miles" set by Billie Fleming (29,603 miles) in 1939. She did that in just four months. With eight months left to ride, she decided to go for the "Overall Highest Annual Miles" set by Kurt Searvogel (76,076 miles) the year before she started the record attempt. She finished the year with 86,573 miles. With less than 14,000 miles less than Tommy Godwin's 500 day, 100,000 record, which stood for 77 years, she decided to go for that as well. She reached 100,000 miles in 423 days. She also holds the world record for "Highest Monthly Miles" at 8,012 miles.