[HAMR] A new challenger - Miles Smith

[wajcgac]

He should know what the correct required distance is as it's part of the main heading on his own Facebook page.
 
and is, 1 MAN 365 DAYS 120,805 KMS

https://www.facebook.com/GoMilesAU

[Deano]

He could beat the Australian record (just over 100,000 kms by Ossie Nicholson).

[simonp]

An alternative that occurred to me is that he’s doing the required distances but it’s not all on Strava, giving the problems he’s been having. I’ve not looked at the official leaderboard.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Just checked the official board. According to that, Miles is, well, Miles off pace.

Annoyingly, the official board doesn't show Steve's restart.

[wajcgac]

The HAM'R site is a little confusing in the fact that the only 'officially verified' stats are linked to on this page.

http://ultracycling.com/sections/records/data/hamr/official_results/

and select the current xlsx file to download

This one does include Steve's restart.

[jochta]

According to FB Miles was knocked off his bike yesterday which trashed yet another rear wheel. He was basically unhurt, a few bruises as far as I can tell. He seems to spend a lot of time riding down the hard shoulder of freeways according to what he says on there. I stopped following him on Strava as I got fed up of dozens of 0km rides on my timeline

[TimC]

That's not good. I hope he's ok. That said, has anyone got to the bottom of what his target really is for this effort? He's patently not aiming at Tommy's total, so what is the point of his pain and suffering at the hand of the pitiless Oz motorists?

[crowriver]

According to FB Miles was knocked off his bike yesterday which trashed yet another rear wheel. He was basically unhurt, a few bruises as far as I can tell. He seems to spend a lot of time riding down the hard shoulder of freeways according to what he says on there. I stopped following him on Strava as I got fed up of dozens of 0km rides on my timeline

Where is his FB page? Can't find it...

[Sio2111]

https://www.facebook.com/GoMilesAU?fref=ts

[DaveE128]

That's not good. I hope he's ok. That said, has anyone got to the bottom of what his target really is for this effort? He's patently not aiming at Tommy's total, so what is the point of his pain and suffering at the hand of the pitiless Oz motorists?

Glad to hear he's basically ok.

Yeah, I've been wondering the same for a long time. To begin with, I figured that he was just not going for Godwin's record, just the UMCA one, and was having a go in case the other two didn't make it through the year. However, Tarzan clearly has enough miles in the bank to make it impossible for Miles to catch him now even if he stopped today, so I guess that isn't the current plan.

Having said that, there are several things about Miles' attempt that puzzle me, including the chain ring.

Maybe he just enjoys riding and wants to see how far he can go? Maybe it is the Oz record?

[mrcharly-YHT]

That's not good. I hope he's ok. That said, has anyone got to the bottom of what his target really is for this effort? He's patently not aiming at Tommy's total, so what is the point of his pain and suffering at the hand of the pitiless Oz motorists?

Glad to hear he's basically ok.

Yeah, I've been wondering the same for a long time. To begin with, I figured that he was just not going for Godwin's record, just the UMCA one, and was having a go in case the other two didn't make it through the year. However, Tarzan clearly has enough miles in the bank to make it impossible for Miles to catch him now even if he stopped today, so I guess that isn't the current plan.

Having said that, there are several things about Miles' attempt that puzzle me, including the chain ring.

Maybe he just enjoys riding and wants to see how far he can go? Maybe it is the Oz record?

I think that as far as most australians are concerned, the only record that counts is Ossie Nicholson's at 62,657 miles.

[SoreTween]

From Miles' Facebook on the 11th:

Great news, we have a new HAM'R competitor joining in a couple of months time.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

My understanding is that Miles has recently had to cope with Victoria's worst weather in 3 decades. I doubt that any Aussie cyclist would ignore Tommy's record and only aim at Ossie's.

[bryn]

Plenty of 300km+ days on the raw strava data page on gomiles.com.au and latest fb page says he was heading for 400-450km on that day.

Sounds serious to me.  ISTR we didn't expect Tarzan to be serious back in January.

[red marley]

Not sure who the "we" refers to in your description, but there have been plenty here who have always regarded Kurt as a serious contender for the record.

I think most here were also open minded about Miles's attempt at the start, but it seems clear to me at least that he has no chance of taking the record now. His attempt is admirable, and the conditions unexpectedly harsh, but he is further behind pace than Steve was after his injury and month or two of slow recovery. He is twice as far behind pace (c. 8,500 miles) as Tommy was at his furthest drift from the WR. And that is with the benefit of restart that skipped a few weeks of non-riding. Tommy managed some exceptionally long days over several months to recover from a 4,300 mile deficit. Miles has so far not ridden ~any~ consecutive days of more than 206 miles on his reboot. On his original attempt his longest string of >206 mile days was two, which he managed on four occasions. In contrast, with only a small deficit, Kurt has managed numerous strings of 2-3 weeks of riding where every day was >206 miles.

[jochta]

The most bizarre thing is he keeps saying things like 'back on it' or 'covered my target distance'. I just wish we knew what exactly his target is or what he thinks it is. I see that this question has been asked directly on FB but not been answered. It's frustrating not to know as what he's doing is admirable but doomed to failure and it makes me wonder why bother?! There's other ways to enjoy cycling your bike?!

[TimC]

Plenty of 300km+ days on the raw strava data page on gomiles.com.au and latest fb page says he was heading for 400-450km on that day.

Sounds serious to me.  ISTR we didn't expect Tarzan to be serious back in January.

Nope. He's way behind the pace needed to make 120,000km (75,000 miles) in the year, and he needs to be doing something like 360km¹ every day now. He knows what the record is - it's stated on the top of his FB page. He's putting in some serious miles by anyone else's standard (except Kurt, Steve and Tommy!), but he's an also-ran as far as the HAMR is concerned, and I can't take him seriously in that context.

1. Edit: 387km per day, if I read Jo's graphs right (122 days completed on attempt 2, 16500 miles done, leaving ~58500 miles to do in 243 days = 240mpd = 387kmpd. Ain't gonna happen.

[jochta]

I see the question got answered on FB...

"To answer Tim Corbett's question. I know what the minimum is I need to do each day. I keep only two running totals and that is the + or - figure with regard to the average daily and the target figures. Put another way how much over or under the current record set by Tommy and how much over or under the target I've set myself I am.

Like any large project you just got to slice and dice it into 'achievable and digestible' chunks. You don't get up and think 'OK 120,800 km's less the massive 400 I did yesterday wow that's only 120,400 km's to go'."

After a few days of WR pace plus he then does this "Miles keeps it shorter on a couple of bay trips with a total of 93 miles.". Which puts him even further behind.

[TimC]

I've asked the question on his FB page of how he intends to get his average up from 217km a day to the currently needed 387km a day. At the moment, it seems to me almost as though he hasn't really grasped how far behind he is, and that completely undimmed the credibility of this attempt. Perhaps there's a plan.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I think he has fallen victim to 'bogey score' syndrome in a big way.

This is a well-known issue in sport. Say you are an amateur 10 000m runner. Your PB is 59m, you commonly run 65. At 5 000m you are on 28m, well ahead of PB pace. You congratulate yourself, and slacken off focus - finish the race in 61m. It's a psychological problem, focussing on recent good achievement rather than on the remaining work.

Miles does some good rides, ahead of WR pace. Feels good about it - subsequent days are well down. Overall average ends up being too low. He loses sight of this, because he thinks about the good rides and forgets the poor ones.

[TimC]

Yes, that makes sense. I definitely don't think he's looking at the whole task!

[Legs]

To be so massively deluded about how far off the pace he is suggests that Miles is being a bit of a space cadet.  If he's not serious about getting the record - merely about clocking up as many miles as he can - that's fine, but he does himself a disservice by showing the world that he's actually expecting to be challenging for a record which is already well out of his grasp. 

[red marley]

Perhaps a little harsh Legs.

I agree Miles is unlikely to take the record, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he is "massively deluded" or that he is doing himself a disservice. It was less than a year ago that Steve, one of the UK's most experienced ultra-long distance cyclists, had an upper schedule that would see him gain 12,000 miles over the WR pace in 8 months (see the orange 'wave' on my OYTT chart). If Miles were able to follow that, he'd take the record.

We are realising, thanks to the experience of all three riders, that this kind of performance is much less likely than anticipated, but because these huge annual distances are so rare, there's a lot of uncertainty about how performance develops over a year.

[Legs]

Perhaps a little harsh Legs.

Maybe, but there's a lot of head-in-sand burying going on, to the extent of denying that there's a problem.  "Slicing and dicing" this "large project" into "digestible chunks" would entail either (i) doing about 206 miles per day, every day, or (ii) following a schedule which keeps you within catching-up-distance of the GODWIN LINE.  Miles, in spite of his protestations, is not doing either of these.

I agree Miles is unlikely to take the record, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he is "massively deluded" or that he is doing himself a disservice. It was less than a year ago that Steve, one of the UK's most experienced ultra-long distance cyclists, had an upper schedule that would see him gain 12,000 miles over the WR pace in 8 months (see the orange 'wave' on my OYTT chart). If Miles were able to follow that, he'd take the record.

...and if Miles hasn't learnt from the intell gathered by Steve and Kurt about how unsustainable it is to actually enact that wavey profile of seasonally-bolstered riding, then he's not to be taken as a serious contender.  Steve and Kurt have shown that back-to-back riding of ~215-220mpd is sustainable when all is going well, but that you have to make allowances for days (and sometimes weeks) when things don't go well.  Whenever Steve or Kurt have pressed on beyond this amount for any more than a couple of days, their bodies have brought them back down to equilibrium.  OT musing: How Godwin did his summer mileages, goodness only knows...  Had he taken a more aggressive approach to the winter riding - in keeping with the stamina he showed he had in the summer (and a less harsh winter to do it in), Godwin could well have put this record beyond the reach of all three of these contenders.

We are realising, thanks to the experience of all three riders, that this kind of performance is much less likely than anticipated, but because these huge annual distances are so rare, there's a lot of uncertainty about how performance develops over a year.

The only certainties are  in the rides that they have already logged, the distances to go, and the amounts of time to do it.  It is a reflection of their planning and preparation that Kurt is looking likely to break the Godwin record (touch wood), Steve is looking to be there or thereabouts (touch wood - he's got to have a strong winter to ensure that his progress doesn't slump much), and that Miles is not even in the ballpark - he's only ever topped the now-required 240mpd a handful of times so far.

[crowriver]

I think it is unnecessary and rather disrespectful to be quite so critical of Miles.

We're not talking about an attempt at an SR, LEJOG, or RRTY, PBP/LEL or even RAAM. This is an unbelievably punishing amount of riding across an entire year, such that only a very few cyclists have even attempted it in over a century. I doubt if anyone on this forum, even the highly experienced audax riders or time triallists, can even begin to imagine what attempting this record must be like, riding day in, day out.

So please, a little more humility and respect from those commenting on any of the riders challenging for this record.

Personally, I'm supporting Miles just as much as I am Steve or Kurt. Maybe he won't break the record, we'll see. The year is not yet out.