What are your greatest achievements since you started cycling, excluding local rides?

[gavroche]

I started serious cycling at the age of 60 and my best rides are rather modest compared to many of you on here but I am still proud of them
I cycled the Isle of Man TT circuit, C2C from whitehaven to Sunderland, cycling 4 times the Tour de Mon on Anglesey. rode part of the Mont Ventoux ( too windy at the top to finish it).
My wish now is to ride around the country side of my home town of Orleans one day.
Like I said, modest achievements really but glad I have done it.

 

[matticus]

Riding no-handed.

 

[Sharky]

I cycled the Isle of Man TT circuit

The IOM is a good memory for me as well. Was there for the 1969 cycle week and the island was full of cyclists. Rode the one lap race, won by Willie Moore that year. I finished 35th out of over 100 starters. But just a few places in front was Terry Dolan, of Dolan cycles!

Also a sad memory of Peter Buckley winning the main 3 lap event. He fatally crashed a few months later. RIP

 

[PK99]

My 60th-year challenge:
6000 miles
60 x 60-mile rides ie Eddington 60 in the year
6 x 100-mile rides

 

[Drago]

Breaking the land speed record on a Raleigh Chopper in 1976.

 

[Paulus]

My greatest achievements are, riding up Mont Ventoux, 2hrs 55 from the bottom, and Lands end to John O' Groats, 10 days.

 

[ianrauk]

I think my greatest achievement is completing 12 years in a row of the 100 miles a month challenge (13th year this year). Not for the mileage, more for the fact that I've managed to stay the course over the 12 years without injury or suchlike curtailing the attempt.
I'm going to carry on until the 15th year and see how I feel after that.

 

[ColinJ]

My greatest cycling 'achievement' was a decision that I made in 1989.

I was 33, stressed out, very overweight, and unfit. At the rate that I was going the chances of me one day drawing my state pension were looking a lot slimmer than I was!

One evening that July I got back from work, slumped on the sofa and turned the TV on. It was a mountain stage of the Tour de France. I was hooked!

Instead of watching the superfit riders and thinking that it all looked way too hard, I decided to buy a bike and have a go myself. And I did just that...

Over half my life has gone by since then and I am still riding my bikes. I am not fast and I don't do ultralong distance rides, but I would still tackle 20+% gradients, undulating imperial centuries, or metric centuries with upto 2,500 metres of ascent.

Getting back on a bike in 2013 8 months after nearly dying from a severe pulmonary embolism felt like an achievement too. That illness (plus a second P.E. later in 2013) left me with damaged lungs but I can still do tough rides as long as I take my time.

 

[Alex321]

What do you mean by "local rides"?

All of my rides except 4 last week in Greece, one in Gloucestershire and one from llanelli have started and finished from home (or been commutes where one end is home the other is the office).

So if that is what you mean by "local rides", I really don't have any achievements excluding those.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Breaking the land speed record on a Raleigh Chopper in 1976.

You didn’t really manage to nail the landing in the sea though did you?

 

[Ming the Merciless]

My greatest achievement is never having been knocked off my bike by a motorist in my 54 years of cycling.

 

[HobbesOnTour]

i can think of two.

The first, was my decision to book (pretty last minute) a bike tour holiday along the Danube, then follow through with it when fear and anxiety started to get on top of me. Unfit, overweight, a very, very casual pootler, the thought of riding approx 40 km to my first hotel, bags being carried in a van, was terrifying.

The second, was taking the decision (in Germany, on my first ever self supported adventure) to veer off my meticulously planned (and laminated!) route to visit a forest. It taught me that a route was no more than a line on a map.

 

[Rocky]

Riding LEJOGLE taking the month of June 2012.

I did the Nice triathlon in 1986, beating the whole of the British mens squad (they all pulled out or crashed at various stages of the 80 mile Alpine bike section) and the European Ironman in 1987.

Now my greatest achievement is getting out for a 26 miler on my Brompton three times a week.

 

[PeteXXX]

Mt Snowdon just before my 63rd birthday.

LEJOG at 66.

Cycling around the Dead Sea, then up the Golan Heights overlooking the Sea of Galilee wondering if the signs saying 'Danger ~ Mines' actually meant it... (They did, apparently)

Several £thousand raised for assorted charities.

A ride down the centre of Santa Pod drag-strip (not at the same time as the cars.. Obv)

 

[Jameshow]

Lejog in 8 days.

Coast to coast - double centuries.

270 miles in just over 24hrs last summer Bradford to verwood.

First solo tent tour weekend before last 3days 240miles.