[HAMR] Current thoughts on the record attempt?

[jsabine]

Instead of 14 hour days with 11.5 hours riding time he would build to 16 hour days with 14.5 hours riding time. Even at his current average speed that's close to the upper limit of that plan that peaks at 225 miles/day.

225 miles in 14.5 hours riding needs an average of 15.5mph.
235 miles in the same time would need an average of 16.2mph.

If Steve's sine wave is to top out at 225mpd, he needs to be doing this pretty much from the beginning of March.

[Greenbank]

Greenbank,

If you want to believe in fairies and woodland folk and their magic in the context of this record, fine go ahead.

However, my palmares both racing and randonneuring bear out that I do have the experience and results to back up what I'm saying.

Your waffle about diet doesn't stand up to what happens in real cycling world it you want to go fast and far.

Right, so you ignore my main point about how he can go further by stopping/faffing less and riding more of time he's already awake (easier as the days get longer and the weather warms up) and not by riding significantly faster, then pick on one small thing that Idai said about how the new diet will change how many big feeds he will need a day (which is incidental really, but just an example of how he can spend more of his waking time riding) and then imply I'm not qualified or experienced enough to comment on the subject.

Classy.

[Greenbank]

Instead of 14 hour days with 11.5 hours riding time he would build to 16 hour days with 14.5 hours riding time. Even at his current average speed that's close to the upper limit of that plan that peaks at 225 miles/day.

225 miles in 14.5 hours riding needs an average of 15.5mph.
235 miles in the same time would need an average of 16.2mph.

If Steve's sine wave is to top out at 225mpd, he needs to be doing this pretty much from the beginning of March.

Yup. Steve's Interquartile Mean average speed (see the Statistics sheet of this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e6hVMqFKwaIvcj-Mx8GNRs1UZl5QiYmbg4LZjMMLYwg/edit#gid=769116057) for the second attempt is 14.93mph, this also includes the time he was ill and also the time he was adapting to his new diet. jo's recent average speed graph (it's somewhere, can't remember where) shows a general upward trend in the last few months too. It's not out of the question to get this to 15.5mph by March. It's then a question of being able to regularly put those 14.5 hours in each day and not accrue sleep debt, get ill, have an off day, etc.

Of course, this could be the fairies or woodland folk talking.

Some would have you believe that he needs to be getting to 17mph or higher in order to have a chance, that'd be lovely but I disagree that it's strictly necessary.

[LUCAS]

Which thread will get to 100,000 views first? 

Will it be the ‘Visualizing the OYTT’ started by Jo.  This is a steady thread, based on facts and figures, very little argument is encountered and everything is always clear and concise.  Sometimes a rather silly comment is raised but using numbers the issue is quickly dealt with by Jo. It is many people’s go to thread first thing in the morning.
Or will it be ‘Current thoughts on the record attempt?’ started by Jochta.  This is an erratic thread, based on personal thoughts and sometimes even fantasy.  Quite often, like a cycling peloton, this rolls along quietly, everybody is friendly but suddenly it kicks off for no apparent reason.   Emotions run high, minor arguments are plentiful and nobody clouds the issues with facts.  It appears to be the thread for people who are bored at work and bored at home.

About the only thing the above have in common is that everybody who posts or views these threads, wishes Steve Abraham the best, we just have different ways of showing it.

I enjoy both threads; please keep up the good work.
The race to 100k views will be gripping.
(To show my impartiality I will post this message on both threads)

[IJL]

Your waffle about diet doesn't stand up to what happens in real cycling world it you want to go fast and far.

But waffle is what internet forums thrive on, mainly because the facts are fairly straight forward, either Steve will increase his daily mileage and getting the record will remain a possibility or he will not manage to increase his miles and at some point it will be clear that the achieving the record is not possible.  Time will tell, even if its the first option it will remain on a knife edge untill the final days. 

[Martin]

I don't think anybody on here has been less than encouraging to Steve and mindful of his well being. There are 2 other large factors which might account for disappointment on this topic with the way that Steve's challenge has progressed (putting aside for now the moped and broken ankle which was of course the biggest factor)

1. Steve always intended to approach the challenge from an Audax ethos, a more sedate pace than Tommy or Kurt (witness the "tortoise and hare" interview the day before the 2015 challenge started) self supported, not riding round and round in circles, no support vehicles or motor transport to a favourable location before or during each day. That sort of thing.

For better or worse that approach has not enabled Steve to make headway into Tommy's daily average for the year, and by and large his team are not really addressing it (or else Steve does not want it) when it's causing Steve to fall further and further behind.

2. Steve is being supported by donors. I don't think many of us feel any moral desire to have got our money's worth in terms of credible attack on the record so far, the amounts are generally trivial. It's just that in some people's opinion the funds will not continue rolling in for ever (who knows, maybe they will?). Carrying on on that basis (maybe until the end of 2017) was not what the OYTT fund was set up for. Not only that but there may be a feeling from Steve that he's being sponsored to ride so ride he should depite his sporadic health issues?

edit; plus taking this challenge into a third year is unprecedented; with possible health risks

my 2p, and wishing Steve all the best to find the talent we know he is capable of in his continuing attempt 

[Citizenfish]

Citizenfish, how likely do you think it is that Tommy spent the summer months crystal-cranking 18" from the back of a 20mph lorry on the A1?  Having seen the toll that consistent high mileage has taken on Steve, and assuming that if Kurt was finding it easy to knock out an average of 210mpd he'd have done more, it seems difficult to believe that from 17/7/39 onwards Tommy managed 5 straight days of 300m+ rides and that his midsummer 361m was followed by more than a month of Godwin+ rides, many nearer 300m than 200m.

I don't believe it as I think I would have found reference to it. His coach Charley Davey was a tough wizened record breaker who had taken the 24hr record and many other nails events. He would have taken no nonsense from Godwin and the record shows he harried him on during his five months of active pacing. Godwin's 348 day was witnessed by Cycling magazine, no mention of lorries, and clear indication in his splits that he rode fast then recovered, repeat.

Neat theory, little evidence that he used it during the Davey months. However, afterwards when the pacing was stopped I suspect he would have welcomed any lorry tows available.

[mattc]

CF:
I think there was a mention back inJan15 (remember then??) of Godwin getting just 2 hours sleep some nights in usmmer.

Can you confirm this? Any more detail??

TIA,
Matty

[Citizenfish]

CF:
I think there was a mention back inJan15 (remember then??) of Godwin getting just 2 hours sleep some nights in usmmer.

Can you confirm this? Any more detail??

TIA,
Matty

A fair few references to 4 hours in various articles and also 21st July 1939. Up at 5am rode till midnight, 361 miles total. 308 miles day before, 235 miles day after.

[Exit Stage Left]

Are you suggesting Hoppo is deliberately undermining Steve's attempt in order to further his own future chances of taking the record? That's a pretty serious allegation and not one to be bandied about lightly. If you are not, what is the point in hinting at conflicts of interest?

I wouldn't be surprised if Hoppo gave the HAMR a go, he was instrumental in setting it up, he knows Kurt, and it would be a good way to go out. There's a peak of interest with the end of Kurt's successful ride. Kurt's new record strikes me as similar to the way that athletes shave tiny amounts off times to allow another record-breaking payday, so there's plenty of space for a reply. The hand issue might put Chris off though.

Bruce Berkeley won't be available to the UK media until later in the year, so there's a bit of a gap. I sympathise with  Hoppo, he must have felt that he'd be able to pace Steve as a way of training. That was tried early on, and it burnt Steve out. Steve's requirements for a pacer are the opposite of training, a constant low output, slow uphill, fast downhill, a heavy tandem couple are probably ideal.

[notlobgp14]

" a constant low output, slow uphill, fast downhill, a heavy tandem couple are probably ideal."

Now we are talking.  Tandem Club to the rescue.

[Exit Stage Left]

I asked Steve why he didn't like taking pace at 3.30 in this interview, his answer made me think of tandems at the time. It may just be a concentration issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIMA9Zux9gE

[Arry-R]

Or better still you could just support steve!!!! Some of you on here are supposed to be his friends, yet you seem happy to stab him in the back!!!  Steve will carry on and what ever happens will achieve something no one on this forum ever will.  I was taught from a early age in my cycling life not to criticize those doing things your not capable of!!!  Some on here need to have a long hard look at them selfs.

NOT a silly post in the least.  As Postie rightly says Steve will ride on.  If he were not to quite grab the record he would at least learn what he can maintain week in and week out during spring /summer.  This would pay devidends should a later attempt be required.  However we all hope as the warmer weather arrives his daily distances will increase and hopefully his speed.  Well posted Postie and keep going Steve. Steve please shine and impress us all and indeed yourself.

[danridesbikes]

However we all hope as the warmer weather arrives

winters not even started yet

[Somnolent]

I completely agree with Postie's sentiments and am amazed at the level of un-niceness and bitterness towards Steve in this thread.   There is far too much in this thread with fails the forum rule about being nice to each other.

I agree.
Whether those who spout a lot of self-serving ire intend it to be directed towards Steve, his team, or just those who disagree with them in general is not relevant. 
We all know that the arithmetic is balanced on a knife edge, endlessly repeating the same arguments with slightly different numbers each week just makes YACF a less and less pleasant place to visit.

[MacB]

I asked Steve why he didn't like taking pace at 3.30 in this interview, his answer made me think of tandems at the time. It may just be a concentration issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIMA9Zux9gE

interesting stuff, especially when he starts talking about caravans/vans and also how his 'team' have their own things to do as well. Almost as if ideas of a support vehicle and a dedicated support person(Alicia) are out of the blue.

[Exit Stage Left]

We were using a van that Julian Dyson had bought to transport various tandems to PBP. Steve was being supported with a caravan. We saw him on the last night heading to it, when we were staying in Senonches. Having that support on PBP was a novelty. We'd planned to film, and Heather wanted that as a defined goal, she was driving the van, and Dave and I were on a motorbike.
We were approached to provide support for Steve on PBP, and there would have been money for that, but we had our own things to do, as I make clear. I was asked if I'd be interested in making a film early on, which is one reason that I wrote that piece about how I saw the record attempt. I made it clear that I'd be happy to film him if he came up North, and whenever our paths crossed. He stayed largely in the South and East, and I filmed Steve whenever our paths crossed.
I focused on preparing for the PBP myself, it wasn't clear if I'd ride it myself or not.

[Arry-R]

winters not even started yet
[/quote]



Correct

[Von Broad]

We all know that the arithmetic is balanced on a knife edge, endlessly repeating the same arguments with slightly different numbers each week just makes YACF a less and less pleasant place to visit.

So why do people repeatedly visit the thread then? Only to post their antipathy towards some of the views expressed here? Well, why the hell shouldn't they I suppose is the answer to that.

A group worth it's grain of salt should be able to hold all views. I really don't see much that is wrong with this thread - [other than the posts I don't like of course - and there are many!]. Is it really that bad? Personally I don't think so. For the most part it's engaging. Surely the forum can handle views that might clash every now and then?

It's the internet, and the thread is called, 'Current thoughts about the record attempt' - it's an invitation to empty your stuff into a virtual letter box. The clue is in the title. Looks like many have taken up the invitation too.

What I find equally bizarre is those that don't like what they read but constantly return only to be continually agitated by what other people have posted to the point of saying it's a negative thread. Like, what are you doing? On the one hand some people don't like what they read, but then return again and again. Why read it, if it's that negative to you? Do you really think Steve cares that much? Do you really think he cares about Kurt's recumbent like some people do here? Does he really care about mileage estimates going on? Does he really care about the weather in Florida as opposed to the dark skies over a an already drenched MG? I doubt it somehow.

Right now, he hasn't got a lot of time to care about any of this anyway.

[contango]

Or better still you could just support steve!!!! Some of you on here are supposed to be his friends, yet you seem happy to stab him in the back!!!  Steve will carry on and what ever happens will achieve something no one on this forum ever will.  I was taught from a early age in my cycling life not to criticize those doing things your not capable of!!!  Some on here need to have a long hard look at them selfs.

I've read this thread periodically over the last year, keeping a fairly loose eye on what Steve and Kurt have been doing. It's truly mindboggling to think of Steve "only" doing 160 miles a day for however many days it was. Truly both Steve and Kurt have done something amazing, whatever the final figures turn out to be.

That said it's not stabbing anyone in the back to look at the basic metrics with a view to determining whether the stated goal is still achievable. That's basic planning, not backstabbing. So if the aim is to take the one-year record it's perfectly reasonable to say, as some have done here, that he needs to ride X miles in a day and then observe he's consistently been riding X-30 miles and therefore he needs to increase his daily mileage substantially. It's perfectly reasonable to say that if he needs to cover 200 miles in a day that means either 10 hours at 20mph average, or 13h20 at 15mph average, or 20 hours at 10mph average. That's mathematics, not backstabbing.

I'm not going to knock Steve because he is doing something that is so far beyond my physical abilities it's just not funny. That doesn't mean my only option is to stand at the sidelines shouting "Go Steve, Go Steve!!!" as if any voice questioning The Plan were inherently a bad thing.

Where beating the record is concerned it is a very simple binary success/failure outcome. If the record to beat were 75,000 miles and Steve finished his year at 74,999 then he failed to break the record. If he finished his year at 75,001 then he succeeded in setting a new record. It really is that simple. If he finished his year at 74,999 miles it doesn't make him a failure as a person - he's still riding more in a month than I ride in a year, and his achievement is still huge - but he did fail in his specific attempt.

I can't say I've looked at his numbers in enough detail to really take a view on whether he's likely to succeed or fail in his specific record attempt. It would be great to see a British athlete take a record like this one and hold it for a Very Long Time but that, like so much else, doesn't actually make any difference regarding whether any specific projection is likely to actually come to pass.

[Greenbank]

One last reply to this as I hadn't touched on one important aspect...

Greenbank,

If you want to believe in fairies and woodland folk and their magic in the context of this record, fine go ahead.

However, my palmares both racing and randonneuring bear out that I do have the experience and results to back up what I'm saying.

Your waffle about diet doesn't stand up to what happens in real cycling world it you want to go fast and far.

By the way, hardly any of this plan is my work at all. It's pretty much all based on Steve's original plans but scaled back, diluted, taking the lower end of any ranges of riding times, chopping bits off, and using only a modest (~0.5mph) improvement on his existing average speed (which he seems to be trending towards) rather than his wild expectations of reaching 17mph in the summer.

The riding times per day came from: http://oneyeartimetrial.org.uk/the-schedules-explained and the schedules themselves

The next thing I did was to think about how many hours I’d expect to spend riding, not including stops, on a typical day for whichever given month. For example, I thought that spending 12-14 hours would be about right for a typical January day, on a daily basis. Whereas in June, riding for 16-18 hours would be about right. I based the figures on my years of experience of all year round long distance cycling.

For the more ambitious schedule, I left the hours alone. Because of the weather, sleep and natural gains and losses in performance during the course of a cycling year, I considered the hours to be unmovable.

I just picked values at the lower end of his estimates, which he's been pretty much keeping track with since the illness/diet changes, and was also roughly maintaining in the first 3 months of the challenge before the moped.

And on spending less time stopped during the day from: http://oneyeartimetrial.org.uk/preparation

As fitness, conditioning and weather improves, I expect to be able to ride for longer without stopping, so although there is a 4 hour difference of riding time on the schedule between summer and winter, I expect there to be more like an hour or two difference between a days ride as I’d spend more time stopped to take shelter and have a warm drink in the winter.

The diet changes (3 big feeds instead of 4 to save time) came from Steve's Facebook update on Christmas Day: https://www.facebook.com/stevenabraham2015/photos/a.1523448711237093.1073741830.1520678421514122/1655061301409166/?type=3&theater

I could forsee spending as much time not moving as I did last winter. Once my new diet is in full flight I think I may be able to spend less time stopped in winter than I did last year, though this remains to be seen.

My new diet is well under way but not quite up to speed yet. I initially needed 4 big feeds a day and now only need 3.

Next step is to space out those feeds and I should also not need to eat as much for each feed, which will save even more time.

Now there are plenty of bits in his plan which have turned out to be fantasy (4.30am starts to avoid traffic, faster riding, etc), but if you have any problems with the provenance of the plan then I'd take it up with Steve. I believe you know Steve's palmares and experience/results in randonneuring and racing, but feel free to pick on me if that helps.

Whether or not it is achievable is the million dollar question and, again, pointing at history doesn't really prove anything, he's already exceeded anything he's ever done before. He didn't increase his speed significantly as he wanted/hoped/expected/planned, but with some adjustments it seems he might not have to.

[Somnolent]

We all know that the arithmetic is balanced on a knife edge, endlessly repeating the same arguments with slightly different numbers each week just makes YACF a less and less pleasant place to visit.

So why do people repeatedly visit the thread then? Only to post their antipathy towards some of the views expressed here? Well, why the hell shouldn't they I suppose is the answer to that.

A group worth it's grain of salt should be able to hold all views. I really don't see much that is wrong with this thread - [other than the posts I don't like of course - and there are many!]. Is it really that bad? Personally I don't think so. For the most part it's engaging. Surely the forum can handle views that might clash every now and then?

It's the internet, and the thread is called, 'Current thoughts about the record attempt' - it's an invitation to empty your stuff into a virtual letter box. The clue is in the title. Looks like many have taken up the invitation too.

What I find equally bizarre is those that don't like what they read but constantly return only to be continually agitated by what other people have posted to the point of saying it's a negative thread. Like, what are you doing? On the one hand some people don't like what they read, but then return again and again. Why read it, if it's that negative to you? Do you really think Steve cares that much? Do you really think he cares about Kurt's recumbent like some people do here? Does he really care about mileage estimates going on? Does he really care about the weather in Florida as opposed to the dark skies over a an already drenched MG? I doubt it somehow.

Right now, he hasn't got a lot of time to care about any of this anyway.

I certainly don't expect to agree with everything posted on this thread (or indeed anywhere else on the internet).... but in the face of a challenge of such magnitude what I find objectionable is the complete lack of humility from some posters who claim to have Steve's best interests at heart.   Not even an ironic IMHO, or a YMMV.
Instead we get (paraphrasing slightly) I ride three times as many miles in a year as you, therefore I know best, my arithmetic is better than your arithmetic, I'm right, you're wrong, Steve's doing it wrong.

Not nice. (IMO)

[Arry-R]

Greenback  - a good posting

[jsabine]

Truly both Steve and Kurt have done something amazing, whatever the final figures turn out to be.

This is something I can certainly agree with and add my awe to; Kurt exceeding (and still continuing to exceed) the Godwin record, and Steve riding into 4th place *despite a broken ankle* (and only (I think, given the context, 'only' is more than justified), *only* 1500 miles behind Bennett).

[Feline]

I've been supporting Steve since the start by direct debit, and any hosting etc. I can offer him. I have changed my direct debit to the new details. I will continue this until is over one way or the other (as stated by Steve and no-one else). Go Steve!