Ultra-distance cycling

The distance needed for a cycling event to be considered ultra-distance cycling or an endurance race is far more vague than in ultra running (any race longer than a marathon) or in ultra-triathlon (any race longer than an Ironman Triathlon). Any bike race longer than a century ride, which is 100 miles (160 km), is sometimes considered to be ultra-distance cycling; however, such events are relatively common, so using a longer distance to define the category is more useful, such as any race that is longer than 200 kilometres (120 mi), 300 kilometres (190 mi) or even a double century, 200 miles (320 km).

Bike races that cover these distances but which are split into stages do not fit most definitions of ultra-distance races - the clock needs to run continuously from start to finish; even so, extra-long stages within a longer race may be long enough to be an ultra-distance race by themselves. In addition, any team events in which individual cyclists do not complete the full distance are not considered to be in the same category.

Bike races that can be described as ultra-distance are organized below according to the type or format of the race. This is not an exhaustive list of such races, but the longest, most important (as measured by the level of media interest), or most popular (as measured by the number of participants) races within each category are mentioned.

In the early days of bicycle racing in the late 1800s, six-day racing on velodromes was popular. Only the original race format is a true ultra-distance cycling race as defined here because it was a simple test of how far an individual cyclist could ride during the six day-long event. The format evolved away from this to involve teams of two riding in a relay format and later the non-stop nature of the race was changed to only race during part of each day.

In the early days of professional road bicycle racing there were many one-day road races and stages in grand tours that were much longer than those of today. Bordeaux-Paris in France was the longest one-day, annual professional bike race; it had a route of about 560 kilometres (350 mi) and was run almost every year between 1891 and 1988. After 1988, the longest one-day professional bike race became Porto–Lisboa in Portugal, which was about 330 kilometres (210 mi) long. Porto-Lisboa was last held in 2004, and Milan-San Remo in Italy has since then been the longest race at 298 kilometres (185 mi).

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