The Year: Reawakening the legend of cyclings hardest endurance record

In 1939 British cyclist Tommy Godwin cycled 75,065 miles in a single year. Think about that for a second: its an average of over 200 miles each day. And its a mark that still stands after almost eighty years. In The Year, Dave Barter resurrects the legend of the year record a challenge nearly as old as bicycles themselves and the cyclists who pushed themselves to establish and break it.

Barter uncovers the stories behind these riders who would routinely cycle over a hundred miles a day in the race to set new records. Americans such as John H. George who recorded over 200 centuries, nineteen double centuries and three triple centuries in the late 1800s. The British advertising executive Harry Long, whose annual tallies of over 20,000 miles in the early twentieth century led to the founding of the formal cycling year record and Cycling magazines Century Competition.

The Englishman of French descent, Marcel Planes, whose 1911 record of 34,666 miles stood for over twenty years. Not forgetting the legends of the job-seeking Arthur Humbles, the one-armed vegetarian communist Walter Greaves, the keep-fit girl Billie Dovey and the staggering mark set by Godwin who left a youthful Bernard Bennett trailing in his wake.

Meticulous research through the annuals, archives and news stories of the bicycling world is backed up with insights from the families of these legendary cyclists, as well as Daves own analysis of the riders years in numbers.

There is no more difficult challenge in cycling. The Year is the definitive story of these phenomenal cyclists.