Bicyclist Breaks Guinness World Record With Huge GPS Drawing

A British bicycle enthusiast pedaling to raise awareness on men’s health broke the Guinness World Records for the largest continuous GPS drawing by bicycle in 12 hours (individual).

Anthony Hoyte, popularly known as "Pedaling Picasso," drew an image of a man with a mustache by using a GPS tracking app while cycling.

The record-breaking expedition occurred on Nov. 13 and took Hoyte 8 hours and 27 minutes to complete. He pedaled a distance of 66.48 miles on the streets of London and tracked his movement via the exercise tracker, Strava.

For Hoyte, the endeavor came with challenges. "There were quite a few road closures near the start (the shoulders and neck), so I had to find workarounds 'on the hoof,'" he said.

"Luckily, the key bits - the eyes, nose, mouth and tache - went to plan. There were a few more issues towards the end - including the crowds of Portobello Road Market - but I was less concerned about that as the shape of the hair isn't critical," he added.

Hoyte created the record-breaking drawing to raise awareness about men’s health for the Movember movement, that's observed in the month of November every year. Movember encourages men to grow a mustache to raise awareness and show support for men’s issues, such as mental health and suicide prevention.

"I'm blown away by the way the drawing's been received, especially in the form of donations from people I don't even know. So a huge thank you to them!"

When planning a new picture, Hoyte studies several papers and online maps to look for shapes. The mustache man, named "Mr. Movember," was Hoyte’s 19th GPS drawing. He has previously created large images of Santa, Rudolph the reindeer and a snowman.

"For this one, I knew I was trying to find a face, and two things jumped out at me: Park Lane for the nose, and the curve of the Thames for the neckline," Hoyte said, adding: "Once I'd figured the whole thing out, I used Google to check that various roads and junctions were actually navigable."

While creating "Mr. Movember,” Hoyte had to cut through several parks and busy streets to virtually create the piece of art.

"I find I always have to do quite a bit of doubling back, and traversing some roads more than once, so it's quite a puzzle," he said.

"Some of the people that do these things use a method whereby they pause their recording, cycle to another spot and resume it; this creates a straight line between the two points, but it can look like they've cycled through buildings," Hoyte told Movember UK. For me, it's important that my images reflect the street patterns and are continuous line drawings."

Despite all the difficulties on the road, Hoyte is quite happy with his record-breaking art.