OK, the new sensation sweeping the nation... Or at least getting half a dozen responses on a thread on road.cc
What is your
Eddington number?
The Eddington number is a measure of your long distance cycling prowess. It is the highest number E such that you have ridden at least E miles on E separate days. So if you've ridden over 50 miles on 50 different days your Eddington number is 50. If you only ever do short rides, so you've only ever ridden more than 20 miles on 20 different days, then your Eddington number is 20. Increasing your number is hard, because while, say, you might have done 60 rides of over 60 miles and have a number of 60, if you want to up it to 65, you'll probably need to more than just another 5 long rides, and so on. As an aside, you can use kilometres, but it will be harder to get a higher number, as the units are smaller.
Eddington, the chap who came up with the system, who did some astrophysics in his spare time when he wasn't cycling, had an Eddington number of 84, so he had ridden at least 84 miles on 84 different days.
One imagines that pro cyclists have Eddington numbers in the 100s...
Anyway. You can find out your number
here. It'll ask you for authorisation to use your Strava data to figure out your number.
Mine has come out at
41, which is a little bit higher than where I expected; I was anticipating high 30s. I need 17 more rides of over 45 to get to 45, so I expect that will happen next year sometime. 34 over 50 to get to 50, so that'll take a bit longer. 48 to get to 60 will take me years, maybe the thick end of a decade.
