Thursday Thoughts: Bell Curve

Define a “cyclist” as someone who rides a bike about three times a week.  Note, we didn’t say “rides athletically,”  or “commutes to work,”  or “trains like a demon,”  or “rides for more than an hour.”  We just look at those who get on a bike and make it move, at lest three times a week.  That’s a pretty loose definition, isn’t it?  But that definition includes all of those folk who use the bike for utility purposes, the fitness enthusiasts, tourists, and competitive athletes.  In short, it includes a lot of people.  Right?

Now, let’s consider the USA.  If we use the above definition as a filter, how many “cyclists” are there in the United States?  The answer, to the best of the bicycle industry’s ability to determine it, is about two million.  That’s a lot, right?  Why, if we all got together, and stretched our arms out, touching hands, we’d make a line from Vrignia Beach to somewhere in Colorado.

But hold on.  Consider that two million in terms of our national population.  Turns out that “cyclists” are slightly more than 0.5% of the total population. Right.  For every one of us “cyclists” there are a bit under 200 of them, the “non-cyclists.”

In the words of a good friend,  “We’re badly outnumbered.”

Let’s look at endurance sport.  Cycling, Swimming, Long Distance Running.  (We could throw a few others in there, such as rowing, and mountain climbing, but they wouldn’t change the statistical picture much.)

If we look at the whole gamut of endurance athletics we find something interesting.  There are a lot of people who do this stuff as a recreation.  There are running enthusiasts who do “recreational marathons.”  There are cyclists for whom the organized century (a roughly marathon equivalent effort) is a delightful way to spend a weekend day.  Some of these events (The Boston Marathon, The Hotter Than Hell 100 to name two) draw tens of thousands  of participants each year.  But still, in terms of the population at large, the number is so small as to be a rounding error in the census.

I guess that’s something worth thinking about.