Ride, Forrest, Ride!
My momma always said, “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
So how’s about this for a story via BikingBis on Twitter - Mark Brackett and Roger Ivester, two cyclists in North Caronlina have just notched up 100,000 miles each. Took one of them 17 years, and the other 25 years.
That’s a very long way to ride, and a HUGELY impressive statistic.
But actually, it is something that most regular commuters could achieve - with some dedication. Doing it in 17 years, means a weekly average of 113 miles, or just over an 11 mile each-way commute. If you took 25 years, that’s 77 miles a week, or just under 8 miles each way to work.
Hmmmm . . . do-able, but I’m just not sure I’ve the patience!
Not to take anything away from their achievement, but I suspect a lot more people do this sort of mileage than ever think about it.
The average dutch person does 2.5 km ( 1.55 miles) every day of their life by bike. Average life expectancy for a woman is a bit over 81 years, so that adds up to almost half the required distance simply by being average.
Obviously in reality some people do a lot more than average while some people do a lot less. You don’t have to do much more than double that average distance per day to get to 100k miles over your life-time.
As for myself, this year the utility bike has done 4500 km and the recumbent 2700 km so far. I’ve also done a fair bit on the Xtracycle and folder (but those don’t have speedometers). Anyway, if I just count 7000 km for this year and say I can do it over a number of years, that means it would take 23 years to make 100000 miles at this rate.
I don’t even have a commute these days. I used to, though, and it varied between a 4 mile round trip and a 26 mile round trip (the latter not for long). Maybe I’ve already ridden 100K without celebrating it. It’s not impossible. Perhaps I should bake a cake…
I am sure you will find that you will ride that far too, whether you have the patience or not. If you use your bike regularly it just happens.
My point precisely
[...] I posted earlier about how these two guys have done over 100,000 bike miles, and how although this is a long way (a very long way), it’s actually quite conceivable to [...]