The Great Vic typically draws several thousand participants each year, with a record of 8,100 riders in 2004, which makes it one of the world's largest supported bicycle rides.

[1][2][3][4] The Great Victorian Bike Ride is organised as a single annual event usually of eight to nine days duration, taking place during late November and early December, at the start of the Australian summer.

Students are predominantly from the middle years of secondary school, and are accompanied on the ride by supervising teachers and parents.

The cost included meals, luggage transport, provision of campsites, water, toilet and shower facilities, as well as medical and safety support services.

This includes provision of three meals a day, toilets, showers, washing up facilities, and the transport of many tons of luggage and other equipment.

[6] Volunteers provide much of the labour for the ride, which helps keep costs down for Bicycle Network and therefore lowers entry fees for riders.

[19] Due to the ride structure, and its level of organisation and support, The Age newspaper has called The Great Vic "Arguably the world's greatest one-week cycling holiday".

[20] Accommodation is camping style, with riders required to provide, set up, and pull down their own tent and sleeping gear each day.

[3] The designated campsites are usually on a sporting ground in the town being used for the overnight stop, generally the local football and cricket oval.

Breakfast and dinner are served from the 'Café de Canvas', with several hundred seats and tables provided both in the open and under a large under-canvas eating and entertainment area.

[23] Bicycles are expected to be in a roadworthy condition, including having a functioning warning device such as a bell or horn, and front and rear reflectors.

These include riding marshals who head out each day before participants to direct riders safely through pre-determined locations such as intersections and rest stops, and marshals on motorbikes who form the backbone of communications out on the course by monitoring rider progress and resolving issues as they occur (including first response medical support).

[4][6] A number of sag wagons accompany the ride to pick up riders and bikes who are unable to continue due to their bicycle being beyond roadside repair, injury, sickness, or general weariness.

[7] Designated rest areas, including the lunch stop, are provided roughly every 20 to 35 kilometres (12 to 22 mi) of the ride, dependent on site availability.

These are usually set up in a park or sporting ground of a town along the route, but sometimes other smaller off-road sites or even roadside verges have to suffice.

At the rest areas Bicycle Network set up water and toilet provisions, and independent vendors are usually also present selling snacks and drinks.

[28] Anna Lanigan of the small bicycle touring club Crankset suggested to Ron Shepherd that a ride like the American Bikecentennial should be organised for Victoria to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the British settlement of the state.

For the planning on how to run the ride, Rebbeck sought advice from organisers of large events including the Australian Army.

[2][6] Although conditions were quite primitive, the ride nonetheless proved popular and attracted strong demand for a follow-up event the next year.

In the 6th event in 1989, following a not dissimilar route to the first two Great Vics, rider numbers had swelled to close to 5,000.

The 8th ride in 1991 attracted a then record of nearly 6,000 riders for a route that included the full length of the Great Ocean Road for the first time, a number that still stands as the second highest participation rate in the event's history.

The next three years from 1997 to 1999 would see the three lowest participation rates since the origin of the ride, with the 15th event in 1998 drawing less than 2,000 riders for the only time other than the second Great Vic in 1985.

Even another return to ride the full length of the Great Ocean Road for the millennial event in the year 2000 could attract just 2,600 pedallers.

That year, for the first and only time in the ride's history the Great Vic journeyed into Victoria's alpine areas, with a mountaintop start on the state's highest sealed road at the 1,861 metres (6,106 ft) high Mount Hotham.

A free new bike was given to each ride registrant, and this well publicised offering, coupled with a return to the Great Ocean Road, led to a new record of 8,100 riders taking part.

[2] Some other notable firsts, achievements, and occurrences since 2004 have included: The success of the Great Vic ultimately led to Bicycle Network organising other cycling events.

[42] Bicycle Network also organises other popular rides, including the very successful Around the Bay in a Day event, which started in 1993 and now regularly involves over 10,000 riders.

Cycle Queensland runs for about 500 kilometres (310 mi) over eight days in early September, typically attracting about 1,000 participants, with a record of 1,160 riders in 2008.