Latest:
St. Christopher’s Long Distance Riders
Published: November 30, 2024
The Secret Weapon 4
Positioned at Central Control were a team of helpers including Mike Ralphs and Peter Hambley.
Engineer Peter had purchased a Hewlett Packhard 29 C programmable scientific calculator.
By inserting time of start for each rider, distance to Control where current time was added manually, an HMC sub routine gave speed of the rider and the additional lengths ridden could be added to give overall distance travelled.
After monitoring the riders over a number of races a pattern emerged. By studying rider speeds a decay in performance was noted and final distance predicted.
At 100 miles in the 1980 Championship John Cahill was riding at 25 miles per hour. John Woodburn was under 4 hours, 497 and 505miles were the respective finishing distances.
One rider however George Berwick Glasgow R.C. rode at constant speed throughout to complete 460 miles.
With this current information St Christopher’s had an advantage over opposing teams and it was 39 years before their record was beaten.