I have a blurb on my bulletin board that I cut out of a cycling magazine years ago. Here's what it says:
A Lifetime of Cycling:
From 1922 to 1973, Tommy Chambers of Glasgow, Scotland rode a verified total of 799,405 miles.
Suppose he rode for exactly 51 years. That's 18,627.75 days (counting leap years). Chambers averaged 42.9 miles per day for 51 years! I'm dying to know more. For example, what did he do for a living? Did he ride to work? Was he a racer? Why didn't he make it to 800,000 miles? How old was he in 1973? What sort of bikes did he ride? Did he ride all or most of it alone? Did he have any accidents? If so, how many and how bad? What does "verified" mean in this context? Does it mean (merely) that Chambers recorded the mileage of his rides? That someone rode with him?
Addendum: I found this during an Internet search. It has an image of Chambers, as well as an image of two men riding on a trail. There's a segment on Chambers at the very end. The article says that Chambers rode 217 miles in 12 hours at the age of "60-plus." That's an average of 18.08 miles per hour! Sheesh.
Addendum 2: Here is a story about Danny Chew, who is trying to accumulate a million miles. Suppose he makes it, and suppose, for the sake of analysis, that he averages 15 miles per hour during those million miles. That's 7.6 years on the bike. I don't even want to think about the condition of his, well, you know, posterior.
Addendum 3: Here is Chew's web site.
