Saturday, February 13, 2010

Eddington Cycling Number

On a cycling forum, I saw a reference to a measure of long distance cycling achievement, the Eddington Cycling Number, or E

For some background:

Who is / was Eddington?  Arthur Stanley Eddington
What is / was the "Eddington number"?  Eddington number
What is the "Eddington cycling number"?  Eddington cycling number

The key section of the immediately above Wikipedia link defining one's E reads as follows:

"Eddington is credited with devising a measure of a cyclist's long distance riding achievements. The Eddington Number in this context is defined as E, the number of days a cyclist has cycled more than E miles. For example an Eddington Number of 70 would imply that a cyclist has cycled more than 70 miles in a day on 70 occasions. Achieving a high Eddington number is difficult since moving from, say, 70 to 75 will probably require more than five new long distance rides since any rides shorter than 75 miles will no longer be included in the reckoning."

I think a better definition would be:

"One's cycling E is defined as the maximum integer for which the following is a True Statement:
 __ 'I have at least E rides that were at least E miles long.' "
 
So, what is my E?  Better yet, what is the history of my E?
  
Cumulative career statistics through the end of:
  
year rides _miles _mi./r _long _E  

2004 __38 _1,176.2 _31.0 _53.4 _26
2005 __75 _2,441.7 _32.6 _75.6 _33
2006 _133 _4,926.6 _37.0 _75.6 _42
2007 _212 _8,457.2 _39.9 109.0 _49
2008 _294 12,222.5 _41.6 109.0 _54
2009 _420 18,439.2 _43.9 126.3 _63


As of this post, my E is still 63.  I need two 64+ mile rides to get to an E of 64, and nine 65+ mile rides to get to an E of 65.

If I duplicate my 2009 rides in 2010, I will end 2010 with an E of at least 68, and it may be as high as 70. 

1 comment:

  1. Seeing as your ride stats are kept to 1 decimal place you may be cheating yourself out of some E by restricting it to integer values. Get the most out of your E!

    I'm looking forward to raising my E, as soon as I get this running stuff done.
    Mallet

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