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Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

I have a soft spot for these kind of "meaningless" challenges. Personally I'm now trying to figure out how to ride a 100K, but using the least amount of road to do it. So basically riding 3-4 hours in a roundabout is the best. Challenge is finding something with the appropriate radius. Too small and it's hard to keep up the speed.

Another one I'm doing is using wandrer.earth to track the amount of unique roads I've traveled (so opposite of 100k challenge). Trying to cover every street in my city.

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Have you heard of this race? https://3100.srichinmoyraces.org/

Participants spend months every year racing around the same city block in queens, NY to see who can go 3100 miles first.

Is this the same Sri Chinmoy who was John McLaughlin Mahavishnu's guru?

no idea, I'm only familiar with the race

> Personally I'm now trying to figure out how to ride a 100K, but using the least amount of road to do it.

Maybe you could join this guy: https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/cyclist-rides-100-miles-a...

Some college guys I know rode 200 miles around essentially a big roundabout (the loop length was probably less than 300 meters) at 20mph. When asked why they did it, they basically just shrugged and said they thought it would be a cool challenge. And I guess it was.

Funny i have no problem doing a 100k, but i tried what you mentioned, i found a nice 1K loop but at 25km i couldn't handle it mentally anymore and never got do it it despite multiple tries.

I have a 1K loop near me and I had the same idea. The most I've done is about 20KM before the boredom became too much. I'm starting to think that dealing with the monotony may be the challenge itself.

I did try with a ~145m loop here, but it was hard to keep up the speed. Turns so tight I couldn't do them much faster than ~27km/h, and then I would be stuck there all night. So did 100 laps out of ~700 before I caved in haha. Found another one here that's ~700m, but it's actually quite hilly and had bad luck with the wind being against me going up the hill, so caved in after 33 rounds. Will try this round again with a faster bike and better weather, though ideally I'd like a shorter and flatter one.

But yeah, combating the boredom is somehow the alluring part for me. Just zone out and do it. I've biked 300km races and similar, so the distance isn't the problem.

> but it's actually quite hilly and had bad luck with the wind being against me going up the hill, so caved in after 33 rounds

I don’t think it would be against the rules or spirit of this challenge if you changed direction whenever you wanted to.

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