The longest bike race in the world!

Started today!

Its called the World Cycle Race (was going to be the global bike race) and involves 10 riders all gunning for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe (18000 miles through antipodes in one continual direction)

Riders left Greenwich at 9 this morning and some are aiming for just over 100 days! The current record stands at 106 days but that was a supported effort and isnt differentiated currently by Guiness, the REAL record is something like 163 days held by Vin Cox who was planning on organising the event as a “RACE” but it all kind of fell apart due to sponsorship and other details related to money.

Anyhow, my mate Mike Hall (Strathpuffer solo winner last year) is going for it (you may have also seen some write ups about him doing the Great Divide race last year so if you want someone to follow send him some words of wisdom

Bit of guff here about it on the enemy

Mike Hall’s site is here[/url]

And the link to the trackers is here

Here is some pictures I took at the start:

Mike is in the black kit and bike with orange detailing.

MH asked me to do some moderation, along with a couple of others, of comments on the site. So behave yourselves unless you want to be banned 😉

Mike looks damn fast stood still!

I told him REAL men do it in 80 days! He laughed it off but i reckon he wont be far off if all goes well. The distances he has been speaking of are nuts, and the training, brum to cardiff and back in a day, riding to strathpuffer, wales north to south coast in a day………..

Looking forward to following this

Looks interesting, its long race thought, going through some hostile terrain, and a lot can happen. Impressive stuff.

Is a set route or is it upto riders to choose there own?

seems to be quite a mix of bikes there
will be interesting to follow this

They choose their own and have them verified by guiness worl record folk. It just has to be 18000 miles through two antipodal places and must be in one direction, i.e. east to west or vice versa

Mike is going to east Turkey, flight to India, ride south to north India, fly to Perth, then Brisbane, south to north NZ, across the states, across Iceland and then portugal to home.

The crazy thing is he is planning on being in Perth in 25 days time!

He doesn’t seem to be carrying much with him, I hope the roads are good for him with those tyres too 😯

Looks like it should be a good race. Nice to see the like tracking also.

😯 – that looks very different to the sort of setups I’ve seen previously for this sort of ride. Shall be interesting to see how the hare does against the tortoises.

I also see the recognition by GWR of a supported ride – well for me GWR are totally discredited as an organisation by their willingness to accept Helen Skelton’s records despite very good evidence of them being nowhere near as good as other people have done (just that the BBC had the money and the people to jump through the right hoops).

Wow – used to work with Mike a few years back at Goodrich. Last saw him at a Merida and had no idea he’d got into these kind of events. Good luck to him!

looks like Mike’s winning!

Seems he can camp in my backyard tonight

I just read his twitter feed and it said yesterday he rode 265miles 😯

whats his twitter tag?

@Normally_Human

There is also this official race one
@WorldCycleRace

I met this chap at ssuk seemed a nice bloke he won the rollapalooza as well I think

It’s going to be quite tricky to work out who’s in the lead at any given moment, isn’t it…

wwaswas – yep, should have miles travelled by bike on it so you can see who’s covered most. I assume as Kyle Hewitt vanished around Gatwick for example, he’s got a plane somewhere warmer so it’ll be impossible to know what’s going on.

or at least have a route they’ve pre-submitted so you can see miles done/miles left to cover…

It is interesting seeing the different bikes, a bit like the early single handed round the world yacht races where big cruising boats (the tourers with panniers) were raceing against the purpose built open50/open60 boats (the race bikes with a bivi bag).

What’s the definintion of unsupourted? Surely they’re all able to draft passing cars and clearly aren’t carrying all the food/kit like a unsupourted polar expedition? And presumably hotels are allowed?

How do they come up with it needing to be 18000 miles then ?

Interesting in that he has no mud guards – hope it doesnt rain, or will he be able to change bikes / setups on the journey ? I like the fact he has disc brakes though, but those bars look like hard work for the whole journey.

Also Martin Walkers cockpit looks a bit Blue Peter – to actually plan to do that event Im surprised at such a seemingly poor set up.

It looks like hes bunged it all together in a rush this morning and is just out for a ride to the shops, not round the world !

Still, he will probably ride further in a day than I do in a year.

What’s the definintion of unsupourted?

No dedicated support crew following you around – ie you live off the land and what you’re carrying (though “the land” includes bike shops, food shops and presumably hotels?) Largely an honour thing with something like this though.

wwaswas – Member
or at least have a route they’ve pre-submitted so you can see miles done/miles left to cover…

Think they must have been listening to you as some of the riders now have there planned routes up, though not miles covered/to go.

Just worked out that Mike Hall rode Dieppe to Agde, a France C2C, in around 2days 13 hours. Distance about 1,000km as he went through Limoges and paralled the coast for a bit.

Holy Schmoke, he’ll have it nailed in a fortnight at that rate ? Sure he knows what he’s doing, best of luck to all of em – lets hope they “enjoy” it and don’t treat it too much like a race (or is that me just sounding old?)

Holy Schmoke, he’ll have it nailed in a fortnight at that rate ? Sure he knows what he’s doing

Well the aspirational target appears to be 80 days, or 362km a day (average including flight days, rest etc.) – 1000km in 3 days of riding isn’t even managing that (it’s barely managing the 290km a day needed for the 100 day target it seems somebody might break).

Mike has just hit the 1000mile mark in 5 and a bit days which isnt bad considering he has crossed the southern alps and had a 50 mile day due to the ferry crossing at the start.

The first week will be the most punishing on people, the second probably painful but thereafter they should settle into a routine and be able to really crank the miles out.

106 days is the target that i know mike has, 80 days is a 225mile/day average and while im sure all would love to achieve it in reality anything close to 100 will suit most.

Mike has an article in this months issue of Privateer which is something relating to pain so will be worth a read. From knowing Mike for years too, he has never been silly fit, he just doesnt feel pain. Is Sadist the word?

Interesting to see the choice of routes, some enjoying the sun while others complain of fog and cold in Germany. One of the routes follows the Australian North coast, boy that looks a tough choice, hot and rough roads up there isn’t it.

Great fun watching the trackers

Mike is leading by nearly 1000 miles now!

I was cone in off 2 days commuting last week! Im not even going to say how far it was but trying to do 1/18th of his mileage (i.e. 1000miles while he is away is near impossible for me i reckon

edit – KM not miles, axis on the graph was wrong! Still a fair lead for 8 days

I read this on a site also, not sure how true it is but food for thought……

They will eat and drink their entire body weight every two weeks. On some days they will burn the equivalent of 67 Mars bars worth of calories and be creating enough electricity to power a laptop at work for two years

Mike’s bike looks the nuts for this 🙂 travels light too!!

Think Mike might have hit a small problem! Hope he manages to fix it and it doesn’t slow him down to much.
Broken

Mike seems to have taken a wrong turn today – compared to his planned route anyway. All great stuff this.

Been following this on Twitter mainly, made a list of there accounts here Global Cycle Race Twitter list if you want it. Cannot believe the problems they are hitting, 13 punctures in a day, snapped mech hangers, airline leaving bikes behind, all sorts. Proper adventure 🙂

Thanks for the list tracker1972. Proper adventure as you say, also can’t believe how long some of them at riding for each day, then they go and do it the next day. Fascinating to watch it all unfold.. Looking forward seeing if the record gets broken.

That’s Mike Hall in Ankara. He’s a bleedin machine!Almost 5000KM ridden so far. Enjoying the live tracking & twitter, although wish there was a bit more of that going on (blogs/photos etc), but no time for pics with a race to win 8)

On some days they will burn the equivalent of 67 Mars bars worth of calories and be creating enough electricity to power a laptop at work for two years

Doubt they’re doing more than 200w average, so if they ride 10 hours that’s 0.2kWh. Nowhere near enough to power a laptop for anything like that length of time.