Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is well known as a British astrophysicist of the early 20th century. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour. He is famous for his work regarding the Theory of Relativity. He was also a keen cyclist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stanley_Eddington
The Eddington Number 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 stumbled upon his interesting cycling statistic the other day and was curious as to what my Eddington number might be. I only have accurate distance stats from 2008 but I rarely if ever did long distance rides before then so I’ll just discount anything earlier.
Interestingly it works out that my current Eddington number is 49 (E49) and I’m only 5 rides of greater than 50 miles to achieve a milestone E50.
Not sure whether discovering this little statistic was such a good idea, I’m now motivated to do those 5 rides but then when will it stop? I’m not that far off E60 either!!
P.S. Eddington himself died at E87.
UPDATE – On 25th September 2011 I completed a 171km Audax ride which was my 50th ride over 50 miles. I’m now officially an E50 cyclist!!
UPDATE – On 9th June 2013 I reached E60! It’s going to be tough from here, E65 is probably achievable fairly soon, E70 will take much longer.
UPDATE – On 20th July 2014 I reached E65! It’s still a long while before I achieve E70.
UPDATE – As of 9th November 2015 I am E67. It will still take me a while to get to E70!