On December 31, 1939, Tommy Godwin rode his Four-speed metal Raleigh File Ace a modest 60 miles via chilly rain and snow, bringing his 365-day complete to 75,zero65 miles. That shattered biking’s “yr report” by practically 13,000 miles. The subsequent morning the 27-year-old Englishman climbed again on his bike and stored driving, en path to 100,000 miles, which he accomplished in Could 1940 in a good 500 days.
Take into consideration that. Godwin averaged a double-century for 500 consecutive days, on gear that’s virtually laughably primitive by our trendy requirements, with solely modest help, via the chilly and darkish and damp of two British winters and the outbreak of the Second World Struggle, sporting wool tights and silk knickers, discovering his personal routes and infrequently his personal meals—a seemingly countless practice of eggs, cheese, fruit and bread, washed down with copious quantities of tea and water. Godwin had additionally turn into a vegetarian as a teen when a job in a meat-pie manufacturing facility put him off meat for good.
He initially relied on lotions to ease the bottom ache, till a feminine rider steered he attempt silk attracts beneath his biking shorts—one thing the straightlaced Edwardian boy had not but thought of.
Godwin was born in 1912 in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent in central England. To assist pull his weight in a working-class household of 12, he took work as a supply boy for an area greengrocer, which got here with the great perk of a heavy iron bicycle geared up with an unlimited basket, through which Godwin would carry all method of products round city. Godwin liked to cost via his rounds, and shortly acknowledged he had a expertise for driving quick and much. When he was 14, he eliminated the basket, bolted on a borrowed set of wheels and entered a 25-mile time trial, then as now the gold commonplace of the self-discipline. Younger Godwin coated the gap in 65 minutes, a powerful journey for anybody, not to mention a 14-year-old on a supply bike.
Godwin stops to talk on the final day of his yr report, Dec. 31, 1939. The subsequent day he stored driving. Photograph Raleigh UK
He loved a profitable racing profession as an novice , piling up greater than 200 wins. In 1938 he started to assume critically in regards to the yr biking distance report, an unbearably grueling check of man and machine that had been on the books since 1911 when Frenchman Marcel Planes rode 34,366 miles in 12 months. Within the 1930s the report gained renewed curiosity as bicycle firms vied to exhibit the reliability of their machines and nationwide rivalries took maintain. Billie Fleming had simply set a brand new ladies’s yr report, and from 1932 to 1937 a sequence of challengers packed practically 30,000 miles on prime of Planes’ mark, with Australian Ossie Nicholson setting a brand new report of 62,657 miles.
Godwin was considered one of three males who set out on the frozen pre-dawn of January 1, 1939, to carry the report again to Jolly Previous. One crashed out after lower than 1,000 miles, however Bernard Bennett would show a gritty competitor to the top.
Godwin’s employer A. T. Ley agreed to sponsor the journey and had a bicycle made to Godwin’s specs. In response to TommyGodwin.com, the “Ley TG Particular” was constructed with Reynolds 531 tubing and fitted with a Baylis-Wiley backside bracket, Williams chain wheel and cranks, high-pressure 27-inch Dunlop tires, a Brooks saddle, Solite entrance hub, and a Sturmey-Archer Three-speed hub. The bicycle included a tamper-proof speedometer/odometer, which was considered one of a number of strategies Godwin used to trace and confirm his mileage.
Constructed for sturdiness, the bike weighed within the neighborhood of 30 kilos, not counting the load of spare tires—Godwin rode with a bundle of as many as 10 tubulars strapped to his saddle—and a sidewall generator that powered the headlight he used to choose his method via the gloom. He typically rode 16 or extra hours a day, however an English winter day brings solely eight or 9 hours of daylight.
You may think about him rattling down a rustic lane in an evening thick as pitch, legs churning, generator buzzing, chasing a feeble beam at 20 miles an hour or extra. We will solely guess what he ran over and thru. Ultimately, the price of tires, wheels and substitute components proved an excessive amount of for outdated Mr. Ley’s funds.
Godwin despatched three postcards a day to the Biking places of work to confirm his travels, typically signed by policemen or different public servants. Photograph Raleigh UK
In Could, some 27,000 miles in, Ley transferred Godwin’s sponsorship to Raleigh Cycles, and Godwin completed out the journey on a top-of-the-line Raleigh File Ace, related in weight and efficiency to the Ley. The odometer and a Four-speed Sturmey-Archer hub Godwin had begun utilizing in March had been transferred to the Raleigh, and Godwin rode the brand new steed arduous straight out of the gate.
Naturally, all these miles had been arduous on Godwin’s bottom. He initially relied on lotions to ease the ache, till a feminine rider steered he attempt silk attracts beneath his biking shorts—one thing the straightlaced Edwardian boy had not but thought of. His clothes, like his bicycle, was typical for the time. A whole lot of wool, cotton cap, leather-based cleats. The winters had been depressing, notably 1940, which was unseasonably chilly. On snowy days he wore wellington boots to maintain his ft dry “through the frequent events that he would wish to place them to the ground to maintain himself upright,” writes Dave Barter, who maintains a wonderful FAQ on Godwin.
As the times grew hotter and longer, Godwin’s mileage figures soared. He averaged 212 miles a day in Could, 255 in June, 277 in July. On the longest day of the yr, June 21, 1939, he rode 361 miles. Godwin was closing the hole on Bennett, who had opened a virtually 1,000-mile lead within the first months of the yr. As their rivalry heated and it appeared that one and even each had been on tempo to unseat the Aussie Nicholson, the press started to take be aware. Godwin, typically clad in a heavy wool jersey boldly embroidered along with his identify and the phrases “world’s yr’s mileage report” was acknowledged wherever he popped up.
He stored bases at Stoke-on-Trent and Hemel Hempstead close to London, the place he’d typically sleep for a couple of hours earlier than rising at Four a.m., chewing a stick of gum and driving 40 miles earlier than breakfast, although he ceaselessly turned up farther afield, in Canterbury, Winchester, Land’s Finish—nearly anyplace in Southern England, and typically farther afield.
He favored to differ his routes, looking for favorable winds and climate, or just to keep away from boredom. Along with the sealed-and-certified odometer bolted to his handlebars, Godwin mailed three “mileage playing cards” every day from his numerous stops to the Biking journal places of work, the place each route was vetted and recorded. Every card needed to be signed by a witness, often a postmaster or policeman. Bennett was topic to the identical protocol, and Biking journal carried out spot checks to make sure each riders had been on the up-and-up. There’s no purpose to consider Godwin didn’t journey each a type of miles; in actual fact, he in all probability rode a couple of additional on the lookout for constables and letterboxes.
Each Godwin and Bennett rode with pacemakers within the first half of the yr, however as each approached the 50,000-mile mark their respective camps reached a gentleman’s settlement: Each would journey alone for the rest of the yr.
Godwin’s File Ace was kitted out with a tamper-proof odometer, generator-driven mild and a very huge wad of spare tubulars. Photograph: Raleigh UK
Their rivalry, epic because it was, paled subsequent to the information from the continent, the place the darkish cloud of Nazi menace had lastly damaged. In March, Hitler’s troops occupied Czechoslovakia, and on the primary of September, his armies crossed into Poland. As promised, Nice Britain and France declared conflict on Germany two days later. Probably the most harmful conflict in human historical past was underway, and Godwin would quickly discover himself in the course of it as a member of the RAF. Till then, he stored pedaling.
He surpassed Nicholson’s 1937 report on October 26 and two days later took his solely time without work the bike. “His diary states ‘Prince of Wales,’” although no royalty had come to congratulate him,” Barter notes. “It seems this was a gathering at a pub the place many cyclists used to collect.” Godwin was a teetotaler, however we’ve to think about the celebration was a raucous one.
The subsequent day he was again on the bike, padding the report and his lead over Bennett, who would additionally break Nicholson’s mark, ending the yr with 65,127 miles. Godwin beat that stupendous mark by practically 10,000 miles, after which simply stored going.
His yr report of 75,zero65 miles would stand for 76 years, and the hundred grand for 79. Even now, to say they’ve been surpassed invitations an internet asterisk-citing marathon with a pack of individuals whose endurance in that recreation rivals Godwin’s on the bike. For the report, Kurt Searvogel rode 76,076 miles in 2015, and Amanda Coker logged 86,537 miles in 2017 and stored going to say Godwin’s fastest-to-100,000-mile report.
Badasses all, however the historic nature of Godwin’s journey—the wool, the silk knickers, the four-speed hub, signing postcards, and that generator mild taped to a sliver so he might journey via the Blitz—all of that’s of one other time. Tommy Godwin’s information have been surpassed, however they’ll by no means be equaled.
