Tim 'Bacon' Searle becomes latest rider to be first past the 5,000 miles barrier

There are some riders that rack up such huge mileage that the rest of us are left asking whether or not we’re doing enough riding. Tim Searle is one of those. The Aussie based Brit tops the Zwift mileage leaderboard with a whopping 216,302km (as of June 30) and signed up to the CW5000 back in May. 

Tim was an early adopter of Zwift in 2015 when a nasty crash resulted in an injury and forced him to train indoors more. He now leads one of the biggest group rides on the platform - the AHDR or Aussie Hump Day Ride. (Wednesday is hump day in Australia, as once you’re over the hump of the week you’re on your way to the weekend.)

>>>>CW5000 finishers list

At the time there were very few group rides that suited riders in Australia, and Tim’s Wednesday rides started gaining riders. Now he regularly has 300-400 riders on his well organised rides that take place through the week, he’s a Zwift ambassador and is sponsored by Giant Bicycles.

Like many of the riders who clock up big miles on Zwift, Tim is an early starter, regularly knocking out 100km before the rest of his family are even out of bed. These are supplemented by rides with club mates around Coffs Harbour on Australia’s east coast between Sydney and Brisbane. 

When we caught up with him he was two weeks out from riding 1,000km a week for 52 weeks and ahead of his mileage from 2020. He usually takes a week off in January to go and watch the Tour Down Under but with the event run off as an Australian rather than WorldTour event he missed it this year. 

This meant he hit 5,000 miles on February 24th as his Veloviewer profile below shows.

Many will know Tim as Tim Bacon (or BacOn!) Searle. A nickname we needed to know a little more about. This comes from his on-the-go prompts to fellow riders to follow the beacon, the yellow symbol that appears in front of a ride leader on Zwift. Each time he typed ‘beacon’, his tablet’s autocorrect would change it to bacon.

You can read more about the AHDR rides on Zwift.com