|
AdventureCORPS Presents Michael Secrest Photos by Chris Kostman at the ADT Event Center (LA Velodrome), June 15-16, 2007
Michael "Bulldog" Secrest, one of the greatest superheroes of ultracycling, broke the 24-Hour Indoor World Cycling Record Friday-Saturday, June 15-16, 2007. This was his second successful attempt at this record in well under a year. Beginning at 835am on Friday, Secrest circled the amazing indoor velodrome at the ADT Event Center in Carson, CA for 24 hours, covering 535.86 miles (exact distance to be certified soon). Secrest actually broke this same world record in October, 2006 at this same velodrome, when he bettered the 530.41 mile mark set by Rod Evans in Australia in 1994 with a distance of 534.75 miles. He finished that effort knowing he could go further, hence his return to the LA Velodrome. Prior to last Fall's record, Secrest actually bettered Evans' mark at the outdoor Dominguez Hills, CA velodrome almost exactly 10 years prior when he rode 532.74 miles in 1996. However, one record is indoor and the other outdoor, so they are recorded and recognized in different categories. Additionally, in this new attempt, Secrest also broke the 12-Hour World Record of 281.316 miles, set by Marko Baloh in Slovenia in August, 2002. Secrest rode 283.407 miles in the first 12 hours of his recent 24 hour effort, thus surpassing Baloh's distance by just over two miles. Back in 1985, Secrest rode 516.2 miles at the indoor velodrome in Montreal, using a traditional (no aero bars or wheels) bike. He also set the 24-hour road mark of 505 miles in Iowa in 1996. Perhaps his most outrageous, purely zen-based 24-hour effort was in 1990, when he drafted an 18-wheeler around the Phoenix Motor Speedway for 1216.81 miles over 24 hours (a 51-mile an hour average!). Secrest also won the Race Across America in 1987 (the year I placed 9th as the youngest ever finisher) and set the still unbroken transcontinental record of seven days, 23 hours, 16 minutes in 1990. Secrest, though 54 years old now, proved his pre-record comment that he's not a lick slower now than ten or twenty years ago. It's also impotant to note that he used the exact same bike for both his 1996 and 2006 records. The only difference was that he rode Aerospoke wheels with clinchers in 1996, while in 2006 and now in 2007 he rode Hed wheels with tubulars. On hand as head judge for the duration of the effort was John Marino, the godfather of ultramarathon cycling and founder of the Race Across America and Furnace Creek 508, along with myself, Deborah Schlis, and Marino's son John, Jr. Secrest had a support crew of four which took care of him and his equipment while he circled the track.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
