No-one particularly wants to have a medical condition named after him, but Michael Shermer has that dubious distinction. It was during the first Race Across America, riding through Harvard, Illinois, that Shermer’s neck muscles failed him. “My physical distress caused mental agony” Shermer recalls, finally withdrawing with less than 500 miles left to go. “It might as well have been 5,000 miles to the finish” he recalls. Since that time,

many riders in the Race Across America have suffered from what has been dubbed Shermerneck. One in three cyclists will have neck problems during the race, their necks straining from the fatigue of constantly supporting their heads - essentially ten pounds of dead weight. Crews are forced to fashion elaborate devices at the roadside from Pringles cans, duct tape, wooden dowels and whatever other materials are at hand.