British ultra-cyclist Mike Hall has won the inaugural edition of the Trans Am Bike Race after riding more than 4,000 miles self-supported from Astoria, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia.
The 33-year-old from Harrogate took slightly more than two and a half weeks to cover the coast-to-coast route, arriving at the finish a little after midnight and taking to Twitter to express his relief at completing it.
Finally done at 00:30 this morning. Trans Am has no more unridden miles to taunt me with. Phew.
— Mike Hall (@Normally_Human) June 25, 2014
Hall rode a total distance of 4,406 miles at an average moving speed of 13.1 miles per hour. While that’s slower than the 14.0 miles an hour currently posted by second placed Jason Lane, who still has around 170 miles to go, Hall took shorter breaks than the Canadian – spending an additional 27 hours in the saddle.
In third place at the moment is 23-year-old Briton Ed Pickup from Salisbury, who is more than 400 miles from the finish, but 240 miles ahead of what is turning out to be a close battle for fourth place being led – just – by the leading woman in the race, round-the-world Guinness World Record holder, Juliana Buhring.
You can find out more information on the race and track riders’ progress on its website as well as through its Facebook group.
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.