Author Topic: What's your Eddington number ? (Read 104434 times)

Whitedown Man · « **Reply #250 on:** 02 November, 2015, 05:20:37 pm »

An Eddington-tastic weekend: 2 x 200km rides meant increases in my Eddington no. (to 86), my metric Eddington (to 120) and my 2015 Eddington (to 63). Phew. Off for a lie-down.

Wowbagger · « **Reply #251 on:** 14 November, 2015, 10:50:24 am »

Quote from: CrazyEnglishTriathlete on 17 September, 2015, 09:07:48 pm

Quote from: Whitedown Man on 16 September, 2015, 08:09:24 am
For the first year ever I have an annual Eddington number in the 60s (OK, exactly 60). Only two more rides to get it to 62, but then I pay the price for too often climbing off as soon as I hit 100k and will need a further 11 to get to 63.

I know the feeling. I took forever to get from 100 to 101 to 102. I am now in a period of slow progression until about 5 years time when I hit 125, after which forward progress will be glacial. Eddington was a hard taskmaster.

Interestingly enough Eddington is getting a bit of a renaissance as a physicist as well, based on my recent reading of an article in the Economist which was reappraising some of his ideas vis a vis Enstein.

As opposed to his firstborn, En+1stein.

woollypigs · « **Reply #252 on:** 14 November, 2015, 04:32:44 pm »

I'm so looking forward to be able to say that my Eddington number is 1, heck even 0.5 (Coming up to three years of the bike...)

mikek · « **Reply #253 on:** 14 November, 2015, 08:39:15 pm »

Quote from: CrazyEnglishTriathlete on 13 November, 2015, 08:57:46 am

To put these numbers in context I wonder if anyone apart from TG on this forum has a lifetime Eddington number >150 miles

Mine is 167 at the moment. I'd be very surprised if there aren't many others with higher than this, I've not been doing long distances for that long.

LittleWheelsandBig · « **Reply #254 on:** 14 November, 2015, 10:00:45 pm »

You've not been riding long distances for very long and have done 5 months' worth of rides of at least 167 miles?

mikek · « **Reply #255 on:** 15 November, 2015, 07:28:44 am »

Quote from: LittleWheelsandBig on 14 November, 2015, 10:00:45 pm

You've not been riding long distances for very long and have done 5 months' worth of rides of at least 167 miles?

Yes. 34 of 600k+, 27 of 400k and 58 of 300k audaxes. That's 119 rides and the rest will be riding to and from 200k events mostly. That's in 10 years and many of those years have been quite lean years for long distance rides. What I was thinking is that those who haven't kept records could be surprised at how large their number could be.

LittleWheelsandBig · « **Reply #256 on:** 15 November, 2015, 07:37:36 am »

600+km in a single day each time?

mikek · « **Reply #257 on:** 15 November, 2015, 07:48:46 am »

Quote from: LittleWheelsandBig on 15 November, 2015, 07:37:36 am

600+km in a single day each time?

Obviously not, but as I'm only counting 167 miles of them for this purpose, that's a strange thing to say. Are you implying that I don't understand what the Eddington number is? I generally record my 600s as 2 rides for each of the 2 days unless I go without sleep. Either way, they'd only add 1 to my Eddington number as I rarely need to do more than 150 miles on day 2. I've only done a handful of longer rides than this.

I hope this is the inquisition over, people must be getting bored reading this now.

LittleWheelsandBig · « **Reply #258 on:** 15 November, 2015, 08:42:05 am »

Most folk wouldn't associate 'not that long' and a decade's worth of long rides.

CrazyEnglishTriathlete · « **Reply #259 on:** 15 November, 2015, 03:28:15 pm »

Quote from: mikek on 14 November, 2015, 08:39:15 pm

Quote from: CrazyEnglishTriathlete on 13 November, 2015, 08:57:46 am
To put these numbers in context I wonder if anyone apart from TG on this forum has a lifetime Eddington number >150 miles

Mine is 167 at the moment. I'd be very surprised if there aren't many others with higher than this, I've not been doing long distances for that long.

Well done mikek.

Like me you don't necessarily split multi day audaxes into separate days. This means that my Enumber is understated as there will be about 20 days where I've exceeded my Enumber on 2nd, 3rd and occasionally 4th days of events, but not counted them, possibly because I've never bothered to check my distance at midnight. (and there aren't any counting rides at the moment where I did less than my Enumber on both days of a multi day event)

I've been doing long rides for slightly longer (12 years of 400k plus) but I don't get the opportunity to do as many long rides so mine will take a few more years to get to 125, and I'd need to get to about 30SR series to get an Enumber close to 167 - so its probably more impressive than you think.

Whitedown Man · « **Reply #260 on:** 15 November, 2015, 06:09:31 pm »

Averaging a 167+ mile ride roughly every 3 weeks for 10 years is both a very impressive achievement and - in my eyes at least - counts as being over a long period of time. Congratulations mikek.

I don't think there's a universally agreed answer to the "how to account for rides >24hr" problem. Personally, any ride that takes me less than 24 hours I count as a single day's riding regardless of whether or not it falls entirely within a calendar day. If a ride takes me more than 24 hrs I pro rate the distance by the number of hours ridden each side of midnight (which I suspect probably means my E is understated as I end up throwing some miles away uncounted if the ride was unevenly spread across the days).

Can't see myself ever getting to 167 but I'll hit three figures next year (all being well) and 125 isn't an unrealistic goal before old age overtakes me.

Legs · « **Reply #261 on:** 15 November, 2015, 08:27:22 pm »

(cut&pasted from the TG thread)

Quote from: jochta on 13 November, 2015, 02:17:00 pm

Inspired by Jo's magnificent visualisation of the Eddington numbers I had a go at recreating it in Google Sheets for my data. Pretty straightforward to do. I used the .csv datadump from VeloViewer to get all my rides then used MS Access to total up the daily mileages.

See it here...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c3WkBdf4T9TsZ-mM254QHBsaqt7n4AguOxeTgJPxCBk/edit?usp=sharing

Cool, thanks for that jochta. I've graphed my running Eddington number and concluded that, from my current 15, 17 is easily achievable within the next year, 19 within the following marathon-training cycle, and I may well never get to 20!

(just a small point - the inequality in column F needs changing to a ">=", rather than just ">". Otherwise, nothing shows up at the exciting moments when, so to speak, E=E+1

)
(Edit to add: the same for the one in column E - I assume you want your 15.00 mile ride to contribute to E=15, and your 28.00 to E=28. I don't normally log warming up and cooling down from races, so Strava or Veloviewer would (should) record a 10m race as 10.00 miles. If it recorded it as 9.99, I would manually change it in the spreadsheet to 10!)

jochta · « **Reply #262 on:** 16 November, 2015, 04:01:18 pm »

I added metric Eddington to my Google sheet and I'm E100 which is rather neat!

I'm one day of >=68miles to go up to E68. It's going to take me a while to get to E70 though as I need 15 days of >=70 miles...

marcusjb · « **Reply #263 on:** 16 November, 2015, 07:05:37 pm »

According to veloviewer I am at Eddington of 90.

I know it is considerably under calculated. I have uploaded most multi day events as 1 long event, which it just counts as 1 ride no matter that it took 4 days (or whatever).

Even without going back to pre GPS days, I would reckon there's 10-15 days that would work for me.

But, I will celebrate when I hit 100 even though I am most likely already there.

No doubt I will top out somewhere at 125 like most Audaxers.

JennyB · « **Reply #264 on:** 26 November, 2015, 02:27:22 pm »

I'm wondering how total mileage graphs with increasing Eddington number. I've just noticed that in my most recent 5000k of riding I have a metric Eddington number of 50, and somehow that seems about average (twice the minimum distance required). But is that anywhere near right on a larger sample or over a wider range?

CrazyEnglishTriathlete · « **Reply #265 on:** 06 December, 2015, 09:57:56 am »

Quote from: JennyB on 26 November, 2015, 02:27:22 pm

I'm wondering how total mileage graphs with increasing Eddington number. I've just noticed that in my most recent 5000k of riding I have a metric Eddington number of 50, and somehow that seems about average (twice the minimum distance required). But is that anywhere near right on a larger sample or over a wider range?

The minimum distance you need to ride to achieve an Eddington number is the square of the Eddington number - so if you had only ridden 50 rides and they were all 50 miles long there would be no superfluous mileage - and you would get it done in 2500 miles. OF course, no one does this, and of course in this example, you would have no riders to count for E51 and above - if you wanted to get to 100 you'd need to do another 100 x 100 rides.

I've kept records on a spreadsheet of my rides over 20 years so you can see how things might progress - although with Audax and other things - over the last 5 years I have tended to do longer rides which helps advance the Eddington number.

Year Cumulative Miles Eddington Miles/Eddington
1995 859 20 43
1996 1694 31 54
1997 2814 36 78
1998 4114 40 102
1999 5557 42 132
2000 7951 47 169
2001 11298 51 221 (about 7500 miles more than minimum necessary for E=50)
2002 14482 56 258
2003 18241 61 299
2004 21821 63 346
2005 25822 68 379
2006 29842 72 414
2007 35450 75 472 (About 29000 miles more than minimum necessary for E = 75)
2008 41804 80 522
2009 47122 82 574
2010 54599 93 587 (Normally if my ride gets to 90+ I do the bit extra to get the ton)
2011 61601 100 616 (It was about 48000 miles more than minimum necessary for E = 100)
2012 69461 101 674 (My maximum mileage in a year but E only went up 1 because of all the 100 mile rides)
2013 74975 103 728
2014 80905 109 742
2015 87000 113 770 (To date - about 74,000 miles more than the minimum necessary for E = 100

The Eddington numbers are understated because I count multi day events (such as 600km Audaxes) as single rides, if I followed miles ridden in a day my E would be approximately 125 (but I've no way of measuring as I don't tend to care where I am and how far I've gone exactly at midnight on such events).

To give an idea of how hard it gets, I've ridden 80 x 100 mile rides since June 2011 to increase my Eddington number from 100 to 113. I need 4 x 114+ rides to get to E = 114 which will probably be April next year, and on current progress I will get to E = 125 by 2019 and E = 130 by 2025.

TigaSefi · « **Reply #266 on:** 08 December, 2015, 02:11:32 pm »

Eddington: 54 (miles), 71 (km)

What that means I have no idea!

zigzag · « **Reply #267 on:** 08 December, 2015, 02:57:28 pm »

only got my head around this. so, let's say someone decides to achieve e=250, this would mean doing 250mile rides 250 times? assuming one ride takes one (long) day, and riding such a distance is better in warmer weather (apr-oct), and without going too crazy doing this twice a month - it would take almost 18 years?! doing srrty (as discussed in another thread) could reduce to 10 years.
i can see this challenge being appealing to a dedicated rider.

LEE · « **Reply #268 on:** 08 December, 2015, 03:43:15 pm »

Quote from: zigzag on 08 December, 2015, 02:57:28 pm

only got my head around this. so, let's say someone decides to achieve e=250, this would mean doing 250mile rides 250 times?

Exactly, and rides of 249 miles would have no value towards it.

Even Steve Abraham is likely to top out around 200 I expect, because he done loads of 200 milers, but they count for nought against an Eddington of 201.
I'd be surprised if Steve didn't end up with E=220 at some point (which is a fairly exclusive club I bet).

As Marcus implies E=125 is likely to be engraved on the gravestone of many Audaxers.

It's best not to learn about Eddington because it can lead to you thinking too far ahead.

For example, I have an E=87 (possibly more but I only track rides of 100 miles or more).
If I want an E=100 then I ride 100 miles 13 times HOWEVER.. If I rode 110 miles 24 times I'd have E=110. If I don't turn those first 13 rides into 110 miles then I get no closer to E=110.

So, if you want a big E number you'd better make up your mind at an early age and don't bother dicking about with rides under 250 miles.

JennyB · « **Reply #269 on:** 09 December, 2015, 06:17:54 am »

Quote from: LEE on 08 December, 2015, 03:43:15 pm

It's best not to learn about Eddington because it can lead to you thinking too far ahead.

For example, I have an E=87 (possibly more but I only track rides of 100 miles or more).
If I want an E=100 then I ride 100 miles 13 times HOWEVER.. If I rode 110 miles 24 times I'd have E=110. If I don't turn those first 13 rides into 110 miles then I get no closer to E=110.

So, if you want a big E number you'd better make up your mind at an early age and don't bother dicking about with rides under 250 miles.

But under more 'normal' circumstances the figures seem to show that when to I've been riding for some years, the square of your E number tends towards the distance you rode in the last year (or two of you're lucky, regardless of how many years you've been riding.

Whitedown Man · « **Reply #270 on:** 09 December, 2015, 06:28:42 am »

Quote from: JennyB on 09 December, 2015, 06:17:54 am

Quote from: LEE on 08 December, 2015, 03:43:15 pm

It's best not to learn about Eddington because it can lead to you thinking too far ahead.

For example, I have an E=87 (possibly more but I only track rides of 100 miles or more).
If I want an E=100 then I ride 100 miles 13 times HOWEVER.. If I rode 110 miles 24 times I'd have E=110. If I don't turn those first 13 rides into 110 miles then I get no closer to E=110.

So, if you want a big E number you'd better make up your mind at an early age and don't bother dicking about with rides under 250 miles.

But under more 'normal' circumstances the figures seem to show that when to I've been riding for some years, the square of your E number tends towards the distance you rode in the last year (or two of you're lucky, regardless of how many years you've been riding.

Interested in this

Do you have any graphs / stats / other evidence to support? I typically average between 10,000 & 12,500 miles per year (variable work patterns mainly to blame) which suggests if you're right I'll never reach the gold star E=125 target but instead top out at around E=110.

Ivo · « **Reply #271 on:** 09 December, 2015, 09:28:14 am »

With the high amount of audax riders there are no normal circumstances here

My imperial Eddington is 143 while I typically ride around 10.000k (so 6250 miles) a year.

CrazyEnglishTriathlete · « **Reply #272 on:** 09 December, 2015, 06:25:11 pm »

Your Eddington number will tend to get stuck around normal milestones. So mine progressed slowly through the 60s because that's the distance of my typical cycle club run. It raced through the 80s and 90s but made very slow progress from 100 to 103 as a century is a target distance and a lot of my rides tend to be of that distance (including my occasional commutes to London). Like many Audax riders it will then get stuck in the high 120s due to the number of 200km events - although I am luckier than most.

However, beyond about 130, you are going to be a seasoned Audaxer, one who regularly gets 5000km+ of events a year, a super-tourist, or a record breaker, or someone who has decided to dedicate their life to an obscure record and set out (as a few posts above have mentioned) to specificaly reach an e-Number.

I view mine as a mathematical curiosity that defies any attempt to deliberately influence its outcome, but is simply a consequence of me doing what I like doing which is riding long distances on a bicycle. Freed from work and family constraints it would probably go up much quicker, but I rather value both my job and family so such things are idle fantasy.

Rimnod · « **Reply #273 on:** 10 December, 2015, 02:30:10 pm »

Just picked up this additional challenge

Been commuting regularly since Apr 09 and building towards longer distances as domestic circumstances permit.

Eddington= 57 (=age)

Got 3x 200 to complete for my RTTY so a slight increase may be possible.

CrazyEnglishTriathlete · « **Reply #274 on:** 11 December, 2015, 04:02:04 pm »

Out of curiosity I searched on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number#E100.E2.80.93E199_.28colours.29
to see what my E-number (food additives) my Eddington Number coincided with. Sadly there isn't anything until I get to E120 - Cochineal. However you could have the equivalent of a judo belt system as I discovered they are based on colours:

E100 - 109 Yellow
E110 - 119 Orange
E120 - 129 Red
E130 - 139 Blue
E140 - 149 Green
E150 - 159 Brown/Black
E160 - 199 Gold

Tarzan and Teethgrinder, who are in the E200+ range unfortunately have entered the world of preservatives.

Author Topic: What's your Eddington number ? (Read 104434 times)

Rimnod