Road records

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Its like the old joke, turn right where the pub burnt down, stop where the post office used to be

Or when you ask for directions and the response is "well, I wouldn't be starting from here".

[RobertL]

Its like the old joke, turn right where the pub burnt down, stop where the post office used to be

Funnily, the Gladstone post office was used as a pub for a year or so, after the Grand Hotel was badly burned. The Grand has now been repaired and the old PO is a cafe and shop.

[bychosis]

I think most of the original post offices would still be standing as many are heritage listed. I believe the post office to post office thing should still stand.

I agree, but I guess was pondering the future. Maybe you will need to start and stop at the local drone helipad and distribution warehouse.

[AUbicycles]

I'll need to get in touch with Christoph Strasser to see if I can get my hands on the GPS track of his Perth-Sydney ride last year.

I can ask him if you need.

[ldrcycles]

I'll need to get in touch with Christoph Strasser to see if I can get my hands on the GPS track of his Perth-Sydney ride last year.

I can ask him if you need.

Yes please! I came across the interview you did with him while I was searching last night. He is a true freak in the same vein as Oppy, it's hard to comprehend the level of physical and mental fitness.

Working out intermediate records between Perth and the east coast is going to be interesting, so far it appears Damian Richmond has the Perth-Melbourne record from 2008, and may have Gawler-Melbourne, but depending on exactly where and when Dave Alley's round australia ride went, he may have Perth-Melbourne, and will almost certainly have Melbourne-Brisbane and Adelaide-Brisbane.

Today's lunchtime task is to check if the Townsville library can find times for Charters Towers-Townsville and Ingham-Townsville, both broken around 1975 (or so says a bloke who tried to break the Charters Towers record around 1990).

[ldrcycles]

Just entered another few NSW records (I love the look of Tweed Heads to Murwillumbah and back, might need to arrange a road trip next year) and a quick count has the website at 150 records . I've only got 11 listed for Victoria so far, and there are definitely plenty more to come for NSW as well, so once I've got more of the Time and Distance records sorted it will probably reach over 200.

[ldrcycles]

Broke the Rocky-Yeppoon-Rocky record by less than a minute on Sunday Average speed was only 33.3kmh, so that's another one that will soon be beaten, but I'm looking forward to seeing other people get on the bandwagon. There's an article in the Rocky paper about it today, hopefully it will also have some details about the RRAA.

Vince Smith (an old Townsville rider) has found a few more details on the Charters Towers-Townsville record, so I'll get in touch with the Townsville library as it will make their search of newspaper microfilms a bit easier. There's a distinct lack of records for the Bundaberg area (with the exception of a very old record from there to Maryborough), which is a terrible shame as the post office there is particularly beautiful, so I'm looking at establishing a new record from Childers, or perhaps Bundy-Childers and back. Maryborough-Bundaberg would be a good record, but the surface on the highway north of Howard is especially dreadful and would make for an unpleasant ride.

[ldrcycles]

Christoph Strasser sent links to his GPS data yesterday (big thank you to Chris for arranging it!) and I spent a good few hours giving myself a headache with it The speed on the first day in particular is just unreal, 754km in 24 hours

Unfortunately, because his route was so direct there are a lot of intermediate records he missed, such as Port Augusta-Port Pirie, Perth-Gawler, Perth-Adelaide etc. He did go over 13 hours better than Oppy's 1937 Perth-Coolgardie time though, and all up I've got him as picking up 10 records along the way. 45h42m to cross the Nullarbor (Norseman-Ceduna) is just incredible. I'm looking forward to comparing Dave Alley's times.

[ldrcycles]

Got the details from Dave Alley this morning, he's got the Perth-Brisbane (16d21h7m), Adelaide-Brisbane (7d13h5m), and Melbourne-Brisbane (5d4h43m) records. He was also only 2d9h behind Damian Richmond's Perth-Melbourne record, even though Damian went straight from Perth to the Nullarbor, and from Gawler to Melbourne, where Dave stuck to the coast which meant another 450km between Perth and Norseman, with a lot more climbing. I'll go over the northern sections of his ride this evening and see what turns up there.

[ldrcycles]

Finished going over Dave's numbers, he also has Townsville-Darwin (6d13h43m), Darwin-Kununurra (2d7h32m) and Darwin-Perth (11d15h12m). Really underlines what an incredible ride that was.


In addition to some more records that turned up around Rockhampton, and a few in NSW, I've added the various records for the Brisbane Valley and South Burnett rail trails (stretches the definition of "road" a touch, but no one else is listing them) and the tally is now up to 201 . I haven't even bothered to get into the Time and Distance records yet.

[ldrcycles]

Still chipping away at it, adding Christoph Strasser's 7 day record (1,245km more than the previous record set by Les Cecil!) has the tally up to 250. My last record attempt for the year is this Sunday, as Mrs LDR will then be 36 weeks pregnant and I'm not going to push my luck. It's a good thing, as I'm in need of a bit of a rest from the pressure of record rides, much as I'm hitting my stride physically.

Some of the average speeds on these old records are nuts, Mt Morgan-Rockhampton requires an average of 39.9kmh, Brisbane-Southport around 43.3kmh!

[jasonc]

Brisbane to Southport with a tail wind that's achievable

[Lukeyboy]

Brisbane to Southport with a tail wind that's achievable

Or with a locomotive on the front pulling you through Logan into a headwind....

[jasonc]

Brisbane to Southport with a tail wind that's achievable

Or with a locomotive on the front pulling you through Logan into a headwind....

I think he has to do them unassisted

[ldrcycles]

Brisbane to Southport with a tail wind that's achievable

Down the busway on the Bris to gold coast yea, but with the number of intersections just between the GPO and anything approaching an open road, you'd need to be going through Jacob's Well/Pimpama at a million miles an hour.

[Lukeyboy]

Early morning you can get a good run. I think I solo averaged 33kph (Fortitude Valley/Story Bridge-Eight Mile Plains busway exit) including lights when the Brisbane to Gold Coast was on. That being said reckon I could solo average 40kph on the flater busway route with no lights

LDR, just bang it up Queen Street mall, over Victoria Bridge and onto the busway early morning

[jasonc]

Early morning you can get a good run. I think I solo averaged 33kph (Fortitude Valley/Story Bridge-Eight Mile Plains busway exit) including lights when the Brisbane to Gold Coast was on. That being said reckon I could solo average 40kph on the flater busway route with no lights

LDR, just bang it up Queen Street mall, over Victoria Bridge and onto the busway early morning

No lights so no one sees him wearing all black?

[Lukeyboy]

Brisbane to Southport with a tail wind that's achievable

Or with a locomotive on the front pulling you through Logan into a headwind....

I think he has to do them unassisted

I was moreso taking a dig at towing you and geoff through Logan after our Tambo ride haha. Although to be fair you did drag me along on the Boonah ride but I did tow everyone back to Ipswich quickly when we had to turn onto that death trap of a road back in to Ipswich

[Lukeyboy]

Early morning you can get a good run. I think I solo averaged 33kph (Fortitude Valley/Story Bridge-Eight Mile Plains busway exit) including lights when the Brisbane to Gold Coast was on. That being said reckon I could solo average 40kph on the flater busway route with no lights

LDR, just bang it up Queen Street mall, over Victoria Bridge and onto the busway early morning

No lights so no one sees him wearing all black?

Nah just ride as you would normally.

[jasonc]

Or with a locomotive on the front pulling you through Logan into a headwind....

I think he has to do them unassisted

I was moreso taking a dig at towing you and geoff through Logan after our Tambo ride haha. Although to be fair you did drag me along on the Boonah ride but I did tow everyone back to Ipswich quickly when we had to turn onto that death trap of a road back in to Ipswich

I think Geoff still owes us sausage rolls anyway

[ldrcycles]

I'll leave the high speed stuff to you, I'm leaning more towards the long grinds like Gympie-Brisbane now. Lismore-Brisbane is on the list for next year along with a really big one around September if all goes well.

[ldrcycles]

Absolutely ecstatic to report a record attempt by someone other than me! A bloke called Troy Geltch from Hervey Bay who read about my Gympie-Maryborough ride was inspired to have a go at Maryborough-Bundaberg, and yesterday averaged 37kmh for 112k to set the men's record at 3:02:50, and broke the women's record by nearly 3.5hrs.








On the topic of Gympie-Maryborough, as far as I could find the record was 3h53m set by Alan Fisher on his Brisbane-Rockhampton record ride in 1939. Hours of searching turned up nothing faster, so that was the target in mind, and I managed 3:06:16. Posting that on facebook lead to Troy being tagged by a mate, and as well as expressing his interest in having a go, he managed to find a facebook post from his local club on a record ride in 1975 by a club member. 32.5kmh average for 280km, with a section of dirt near Bauple!









There was also a mention from a bike shop owner in Noosa that he sponsored a Bris-Maryborough record by a Michael Brown around the year 2000, but he can't remember what time was set. My average from Gympie-Maryborough was 32.2, so until I can get in touch with either Trevor Geysing, or Michael Brown and find out what their sectional times were, Gympie-Maryborough is in limbo. It's the perfect example of why the Record Association is needed, and I was happy to be able to say as much in the articles the local papers printed.

[human909]

Its like the old joke, turn right where the pub burnt down, stop where the post office used to be

Or when you ask for directions and the response is "well, I wouldn't be starting from here".

Oh I must have gotten lucky!

The one time I did manage navigate myself such a town. It was an intersection of two roads and a single sandstone ruin of what could have once been a post office. I had some nice old ladies stop and offer me very exact directions to the farm of the people I was looking for.

[ldrcycles]

I got a signed copy of Rupert Guinness' Power of the pedal for christmas, and was very excited to see mention of road records set by one Margaret McLachlan in the 1960s. She was initially allowed to race against men (there being apparently no women's racing on offer at the time) until she started winning, at which point the NSW Amateur Cyclist's Union first restricted her licence to club events only, then refused her a licence altogether.

So to spark interest in the sport, she made an attempt on the women's Sydney-Melbourne record. Another article describes how she suffered from hallucinations towards the end of the ride, weaving because she thought her handlebars were broken, or to cut across white lines she thought were tram tracks. You might notice that her time is given as 36hr33 ("4hrs faster than Joyce Barry's unofficial record"), yet the duration between start and finish was actually 58hr10. Note also the Canberra-Sydney record mentioned.


Looking for her time from Sydney-Newcastle (the record at 6:14:30, within a very creditable distance of Opperman's 5:38:00) I found the Sydney-Melbourne attempt of Christine Fernon in 1990. There are some fascinating details in that article, and it's very interesting to note the author describing that "..all the authorities I have spoken to deny all knowledge of place to place records". Christine's time was 52hr30, and while McLachlan's riding time of 36hr33 is mentioned, her record is correctly shown as the overall time of 58hr10.


Now for the sad part. Neither of those women actually broke the record at all. Joyce Barry did hold it in 1937 with a time of 50hr47 (having been inspired by Billie Samuels' 1934 record of 79hrs), but that was broken the following year by Irene Pyle, whose time of 40hr23 was celebrated by 40,000 spectators at a carnival that night.

It really makes me feel a little ill to think that 40,000 people, all of officialdom, and countless more newspaper readers had apparently forgotten Pyle's achievement so completely in less than 30 years that two women put up truly heroic rides in vain. McLachlan's Canberra-Sydney ride was also just over an hour short of Edna Sayers' 1936 record.

I couldn't imagine a better example of why the record association should have been set up back when the idea was first floated in the 1930s, and why it's still needed today.

[foo on patrol]

Foo