Kurt Searvogel is spending a year trying to break an obscure world record in cycling, though he doesn't really seem to have a compelling reason.

It won't bring him fortune or fame. In fact, it will cost him about $75,000. Even ardent cyclists might not be paying attention.

"Somebody asked me why I'm doing this and I said, 'I don't know,' " says Searvogel. He paused to think about it, then laughed. "I guess because I have to. I don't know why I have to. I just have to do this."

"This" is the record for most cycling miles pedaled in a year.

In 1939, Britons Tommy Godwin and Bernard Bennett set out separately to top the mark of 62,657 miles, ridden by Australia's Ossie Nicholson in 1937. Bennett went more that 65,000 miles, Godwin did 75,065. Godwin's record -- officially known as the Highest Annual Mileage Record (HAMR) by the UltraMarathon Cycling Association (UMCA) -- has stood all the years since.

Now, Searvogel, a 52-year-old entrepreneur, endurance athlete and junk food aficionado from Sheridan, Arkansas, is halfway through his mission and on pace to break Godwin's mark.

He went in needing to average 206 miles per day. Since starting Jan. 10 in Florida, he's averaging 208, and he set off Wednesday morning with 41,323 miles ridden.

Barring injury or problems with weather and equipment, he's confident the record will be his on or before Jan. 9, the day of his 365th and final ride.

"I'm holding up pretty good," he says. "I don't have anything broken, busted or sore, so we're doing OK."

Which brings us back to his reason for chasing this 76-year-old record: Basically, Searvogel is an extremely confident athlete (his nickname is Tarzan) who simply can't resist a challenge.

When he first learned about Godwin's record four years ago, he thought it was impossible. It's more than three times the Earth's circumference. But the more he thought about it, and after the UMCA set up rules late in 2014 governing attempts at it, his competitiveness kicked in.

"Somebody said I'm the most competitive person they've ever met," he says. "It's like, 'OK, that might be true.' If you throw a challenge down, that's usually what gets my interest."

Once, a 272-mile day

That challenge first came in 2011, after Searvogel had cycled more than 27,000 miles to break the one-year record for his Big Dogs Ultra Cycling club.

"I thought that was a tremendous amount of miles," he says. That's when another cyclist approached him to tell him about Godwin's record.

"I was like, 'That's not real. Nobody could do that,' " he says. "It was just impossible to fathom that somebody could do 75,000 miles in a year, because that's all you could do. You couldn't do anything else but ride for that whole year."

The topic kept coming up during the next three years, but Searvogel kept dismissing it. It wasn't until the UMCA set up rules making it seem doable that Searvogel believed it was worth a shot.

Alicia Snyder is Kurt Searvogel's girlfriend and one-woman crew, driving the van and handling logistics while he pedals. Courtesy Alicia Snyder

Plus, his girlfriend, Alicia Snyder, convinced him it would be an adventure they could share. Snyder and Searvogel had talked about doing a long cycling expedition of some kind in 2015, but then she broke an ankle. Instead, she urged him to go after the record. She would be his support crew.

"This came up and I knew," she says. "I knew he had to do it and I knew I had to do it with him. I told him. 'You have to do this and I know I'm the one who's going to get you there.' "

She says he resisted, because he'd be losing a year of his life.

"I said, 'No, you wouldn't, you would be doing it with me. This is what we would be doing.' This is all we do, we kind of live in our own little bubble."

Together, they planned a 365-day course of action. Searvogel would ride routes in Florida in the winter. As the weather warmed, he'd move west along the Gulf Coast, then up into Mississippi and over to Arkansas. Once the weather started to heat up in Arkansas, they would move north through Missouri and Illinois and up into Wisconsin. Eventually they'll reverse course and finish in Florida.

The route is fluid, depending especially on the wind. It might be a long point-to-point ride one day, taking advantage of conditions -- Searvogel has done a high of 272 miles, thanks to a strong tailwind --- or a series of loops on country roads.

All the while, Alicia drives their van, which carries equipment (three bikes, including a recumbent). She brings Searvogel food and water and arranges lodging. He takes advantage of the long summer days by riding later and piling up more miles than he can in winter, pedaling from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. For safety reasons, he refuses to ride when it's dark.

Searvogel says one of the reasons he has avoided a major injury so far is that "I don't do stupid things."

He sets his time window for riding and sticks to it. He avoids riding in the rain. He won't push beyond his limits to make up for lost time.

Some days, he admits waking up and feeling uninspired. That's when Alicia says: "Get out there."

It hasn't all been smooth. In April, he had an intestinal illness and had to receive IV fluids. It set him back about 600 miles. He has been stung by wasps and bees. Twice, bike frames have broken. He has had flat tires (on both the van and the bikes).

At one point in Arkansas, floods shut down roads and he was forced for a week to do a monotonous 5-mile loop over and over. Some days, he wondered what the heck he was doing. But he has tried to stay positive.

"Everything that goes wrong is funny," he says. "Everything. If you play it like it's a game, then you can keep your sanity."

Another way he keeps his sanity is by eating what he wants. He doesn't worry about eating only healthy food. So he scarfs Pop-Tarts, Little Debbie Swiss Rolls, fast-food breakfast sandwiches and burgers, plus pizza for dinner.

"He doesn't eat anything you would think normal cyclists would," Snyder says. Yet he's incredibly fit.

"The guy has an enormous amount of energy," she says. "You need that. And he doesn't require much sleep, about the maximum is six hours. He's just built this way. He's [predisposed] for this."

'The perfect person'

It wasn't that long ago -- about 2003 -- that Searvogel was what he calls "a very large person."

After immersing himself in his business ventures, he weighed 260 pounds.

Cycling helped Kurt Searvogel get back in shape, but his sweet tooth still helps fuel his rides. Courtesy Alicia Snyder

"I'm a very intense person and very intense at what I'm working on, and when I was focused on my business, 80 hours a week went into my business," he says.

But the former college wrestler was lured back into sports through his three children, and soon he was running, swimming and cycling.

Since then, he has focused on becoming an Ironman triathlete and has competed in a variety of ultra-distance bike events, including the cross-country Race Across America twice. In 2014, he and a partner set a RAAM record in the over-50 two-man class by completing the 3,020-mile route in 6 days, 10 hours, 8 minutes.

It's Searvogel's base of long, fast miles that Douglas Hoffman, executive director of the UMCA, believes makes him so formidable.

Hoffman says that in 12-hour ultra races, Searvogel has cycled between 250 and 280 miles. Many other cyclists can ride that many miles, but not in that time frame. So over the course of a year on this record attempt, he can be very efficient.

"He's the perfect person to go after this record for a number of reasons," Hoffman says, starting with the fact that "[Searvogel]'s one of the most competitive human beings I know."

Also, says Hoffman, Searvogel's training the past few years has become more holistic, incorporating yoga and other ways to stay more fit and loose. The other factor is that Searvogel can afford to do it.

As the owner of Applied Computer Solutions, Inc., Searvogel has the income and flexibility to train and compete in endurance cycling races. Searvogel's former wife, with whom he owns the business, is running it in his absence.

"If somebody was going to do [the year-long record attempt], I was the person who was going to do it," says Searvogel. "I mean, everybody knows that I'm crazy enough and I have the ability, I have the mindset and I have the money to do it. Those are the things you have to have in place. I mean, there's other people that have the ability to do it and the mindset to do it, they just don't have the money in place."

What Hoffman wants people to understand is how difficult it is to cycle 200 or more miles in a day.

"A top ultra cyclist who's racing might go 20,000 miles a year," he says. "Your average, very serious recreational cyclist is going somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 miles a year. This guy's doing that every month. Think about how many crashes that means. Think about how many mechanical issues. This person is putting in essentially 12 years of cycling into 12 months with no room for error."

If Searvogel breaks Godwin's record, the question is how long that mark will stand.

Perhaps not very long.

A handful of cyclists planned to make a run at Godwin's record this year, but only Searvogel is on pace. One pulled out before starting and two suffered injuries or health problems, including Great Britain's Steven Abraham, who started on Jan. 1, but was hit by a moped in March and suffered a broken ankle. After losing time, he came back -- even pedaling a recumbent with one leg for a while -- but is about 8,000 miles behind Searvogel.

However, Abraham is continuing to ride and has filed for a concurrent record attempt, beginning this summer and ending in summer 2016. So it's possible he could surpass the record in about a year.

But that's hypothetical. Searvogel remains focused on his own attempt.

"If you believe you can do it, you can do it," he says. "That's pretty much what it boils down to."