Where did that number come from? We read the peer-reviewed literature so you don't have to. You're welcome.
When you open BangMiles and see a default of 600 thrusts per session in the Advanced settings, you might reasonably wonder: did someone just make that up?
No. Someone made it up, then other people tested it in a laboratory, published the results in an academic journal, and got paid a salary to do so. This is how science works.
The figure comes primarily from research published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, which is a real journal with a real peer-review process and a very specific editorial focus. The 2008 study in question — along with earlier work by Levin and Wagner (2003) — sought to quantify what the authors diplomatically called "intravaginal ejaculation latency time" and the associated biomechanical activity.
The methodology involved timing sessions and counting thrust frequency. Participants used a counter. The researchers maintained a straight face throughout. The result: somewhere in the range of 500–600 thrusts per average session, depending on how you define "average" and how much you trust people with counters.
Peer-reviewed. Published. Cited by a mileage calculator.
The thrust count is the core multiplier in BangMiles' calculation. The formula is simple:
Change the thrust count and you change everything. At 200 thrusts per session, your annual mileage drops dramatically. At 1,200 — which some researchers have recorded for shorter sessions — the numbers become considerably more boastworthy.
We use 600 as the default because it sits in the middle of the documented range and because "peer-reviewed average" is more defensible at dinner parties than "we guessed."
Like much of human sexuality research, these figures are hard to replicate cleanly. People behave differently when observed. Counters get lost. Participants remember the instructions incorrectly. The lab environment is, by most accounts, not particularly romantic.
This is why BangMiles lets you adjust the thrust count in Advanced settings. If your technique is — as the tooltip diplomatically puts it — "distinctive," you can change it. We're not here to judge your methodology. We're here to calculate your mileage.
For the purposes of a mileage calculator designed to make you snort coffee out of your nose? Absolutely. For clinical or medical decisions? Please do not use BangMiles for that. We say this explicitly in the FAQ and we mean it sincerely.
The 600 figure gives you a result that's in the right ballpark. Whether that ballpark is Wembley or a village green depends entirely on your lifestyle choices, which are none of our business.
References: Levin RJ, Wagner G. Orgasm in women in the laboratory — quantitative studies on duration, intensity, latency, and vaginal blood flow. Arch Sex Behav. 2003. · Waldinger MD et al. A multinational population survey of intravaginal ejaculation latency time. J Sex Med. 2005.