Iron Butt and endurance motorcycle riding

Published by: 2Wheeltips on 16th Jul 2010 | View all blogs by 2Wheeltips

I will probably get in trouble for writing this but it is something that has been on my mind for a while.....long distance endurance motorcycle riding. I'm not talking about an all day 400 - 500 mile ride with plenty of stops. I'm talking about extreme rides of 1000 miles or more everyday for a week!!

One guy I run into occasionally is a big endurance motorcyclist and even holds the world record for crossing North America. He rode from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Key West, Florida in 86 hours!!

The first question that comes to my mind is why would anyone want to do that? I wouldn't drive that many miles in my car let alone on a motorcycle. My ass is sore and I'm tired after a 250+ mile day of winding roads, so there is no way I'd enjoy riding that many miles in 3 1/2 days. The second question that comes to mind is how safe can this be?

We all know that riding a bike takes a lot out of you physically. In addition to operating the controls, you have to watch the road, stay out of the way of cars and look out for animals. After an hour or so of riding, your brain gets fuzzy and it's time to take a break.

To finish any of the endurance rides, you need to ride fast for many hours while you are tired. And this is where I think a rider can make a mistake and end up crashing or worse.....

Comments

3 Comments

by Reggie 1 year ago

Tony Hi, I found your article very interesting as I had the same impression and no I have no plans to endurance riding anytime soon! But I did get curious about how the men and women who do these incredible long rides, well, do it. I'm with you, my scrawny butt is aching after about 300 miles in a given day. Anyway, I bought Ron Ayres book, "Going the Extra Mile" and found it quite helpful. My thinking was, because my wife and I are doing longer distant riding, there is probably some good info based on how these endurance riders can ride 3 times longer/farther then us slackards!! Well I wasn't disappointed and got quite a bit of useful info from the book and learned about how the whole Iron Butt thing works (I was clueless on that) but not too much different then doing long distance road rallies but on a motorcycle.

After reading about it I truly take my hat off to the people that can do this as the ability to map out the routes on short notice and then actually do the ride time is like a marathoner doing a 50 mile run given several destinations and nothing more. Bang the starting gun goes off and you'd better have a plan or forget about being a contender.

Regarding the question of doing this safely, well for me it would be a definite death wish, but you look at combat soldiers, astronauts, forest fire fighters, salt truck/snow plow driver in Iowa and these people spend ridiculously long hours doing very demanding jobs and make it through. To put that kind of effort into a sport is beyond my comprehension but when you look at these teams that plan for 3 years to climb Mount Everest well, it is definitely a different breed!! Reggie-the-Slackard (How far to the Dairy Queen Honey?)
by 2Wheeltips 1 year ago

I didn't want to mention it in the article but I know personally that the guy who road the above ride (and other endurance rides) uses a catheter and it drips down the side of his boot. Enough said..........
by Reggie 1 year ago

As far as I'm concerned that's definitely "over the top"!! I've never read through the Guiness book of World Records but I guess there is all kinds of that type of excentric behavior from eating ungodly amounts of food to flag pole sitting to marathon anything. I know the sponsors of these events take strong exception to them being classified as "dangerous and irresponsible" but common sense would seem to say otherwise. Just my opinion.

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2Wheeltips