The Man Who Cycled Around The World

[Toks]

The next stop for you 12 hr peeps, surely?. Did anyone watch this? I caught around half an hour of it yesterday. The guy was riding 100 miles every day like forever. Seemed a nice bloke too http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b009w11s/

[Antloony]

Ive been watching this all week. Great stuff. Just way to condensed, needs to be on for an hour an episode to give more insight and detail.

[Rob C]

http://www.mydamnchannel.com/Big_Fat_Br ... 1_398.aspx

Internet TV, I like it!

[Apples]

I watched some of this, amazing !!

100 miles a day for 200 days...apparantly he got to Croydon and had his bike nicked

[Andrew G]

Watched, and loved, all of it. Amazing bloke, can't wait for the book he's doing about it. Went through Pakistan and numerous "tricky" places and it was only in the US when he got hit by a car and mugged (safe to say that was a bad day ).

Only 24 when he started! It said he'd been riding long distances since he was a nipper and did a coast to coast at 14 and JOGLE (I think that way round) when he was about 16 I think. There was a small article in Cycle (CTC mag) about him

[quote="Toks"]The next stop for you 12 hr peeps, surely?

[Graham O]

I've been watching this. Can't get my head round how he managed this. On his own for 200 days @ 160K per day. Camping most nights next to the road. He was such a positive blke....

Can't help but be impressed...

[Jon H]

A mere 18000 miles? That's nowt...

[quote]Tommy Godwin, was born in 1912. To help support his family, he took the position of delivery boy for a greengrocer's shop. With the job came a heavy iron bike, complete with metal basket. Tommy loved that bike and rode it like a demon on his daily round. The basket was hacked off and at the tender age of fourteen Tommy entered his first twenty-five mile time trial. He flew round in 65 minutes winning the race and setting a standard that would define the rest of his cycling career.

Tommy grew quickly as a cyclist and was soon spotted. He left his amateur status at Potteries CC to join Rickmansworth Cycling Club as a professional rider. After more than two hundred road and time trial wins Tommy sought a new challenge and the year mileage record beckoned.

In 1937 the Australian Ossie Nicholson had regained his year record from Briton Walter Greaves by covering a verified annual mileage of 62,657.6 miles. At 5am on January 1st 1939 Tommy set out to bring the record back home. He wasn't alone in his attempt; two other British riders started that day, Edward Swann and Bernard Bennett. Swann crashed out after 939.6 miles, but Bennett fought it out with Tommy for the rest of the year.

The details that surround Tommy Godwin's record belittle the modern cyclist. His bike weighed well over 30lb. As war came he rode through blackouts, his lights taped to the merest of glows. He had none of the modern cycling comforts. Silk knickers were substituted for chamois inserts and Tommy maintained his strict vegetarian diet throughout. For the first two months Tommy's mileage lagged 922 miles behind Nicholson's record-breaking schedule. Fighting back Tommy increased his daily average beyond 200 miles per day, and on Wednesday June 21st 1939 he completed a staggering 361 miles in eighteen hours, his longest ride of the record.

On October 26th 1939, Tommy rode into Trafalgar Square, having completed 62,658 miles, gaining the record with two months to spare. That wasn’t enough. He rode on through the winter to complete an astounding 75,065 miles in the year. Still that was not enough; in May 1940 after five hundred days of riding he secured the 100,000 mile record as well. Tommy dismounted his bike and spent weeks learning how to walk again before going off to war.

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

[quote="Graham O"]I've been watching this. Can't get my head round how he managed this. On his own for 200 days @ 160K per day. Camping most nights next to the road. He was such a positive blke....

Can't help but be impressed...

[Andrew G]

Good shout PVT, that sort of long ride doesn't always make for great viewing but he was such a nice bloke and clipping it up to small bits made it good. Was the danger of just having loads of shots of a bloke camping, packing panniers, and cycling along at a steady pace which would have become a bit boring and probably devalued what he did.

Ends up to a great 2hr documentary.

I'll probably have a proper look at the wesite later - [url]http://www.pedallingaround.com/start/[/url]