In 1911, the weekly magazine Cycling began a competition for the highest number of 100-mile (160 km) rides or "centuries" in a single year.

Menzies, in the European winter, had fallen on icy roads, broken a bone and missed 24 days.

The writer Jock Wadley recalled: That first day of January 1937, soaked to the skin, he came running excitedly to the office about teatime with the news: 'One hundred and feefty miles.'

Nicholson often rode in the dark to keep up his distance but Menzies had daylight and the two men were level by the start of October.

[20][21] Cycling reported: A year's race had commenced between two widely separated contestants, Ossie Nicholson from Down Under who had already tasted success, and a newcomer, René Menzies, a 48-year-old Frenchman of Scottish descent.

She said: He asked my mother if he could put a hut up in the garden with a single bed and a chair so that is he did a night ride he could pop in there and not disturb anybody.

'[18][n 2] At the end of the year, Nicholson is reported to have said "Will you cable Rene Menzies, and tell him I want to be numbered among his greatest admirers.

That tough little Frenchman made me ride every mile, and nobody can appreciate his pluck and pedalling ability, and his capacity to take punishment better than I can.

[n 3] Menzies decided in 1952 to beat Nicholson's distance regardless, to set an unofficial veterans' record, and to ride 63,000 mi (101,000 km) to mark his 63rd birthday.

Each one was signed at the start of a day's ride, at the 'turn', and again at the finish by anybody who happened to be around (postmen, policemen and pull-up-for-carmen-café workers were the chief witnesses), the mileage at each point being logged according to the speedometer reading.

He started with a circuit of Parliament Square and rode to Oxford Circus, then Marble Arch to end his first day at Wolverhampton after 121 miles.

Menzies died whilst pedalling around Hyde Park Corner, one of the busiest junctions in London.