On February 15th of this year, at 3.30pm, Mark Beaumont became the fastest man to cycle solo around the world, covering nearly 18,300 miles in 194 days, moving at an average rate of about 100 miles per day, and taking only 14 rest days (which included trans-ocean travel).  He had to eat the calorific equivalent of more than 20 cheeseburgers a day to ensure he had enough energy to continue.

Mark’s world-record breaking trip took him from the starting point of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, down through central Europe to Istanbul, before making the cross over to Asia.  There he cycled through Iran, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, enduring blistering heat, monsoon rain and near starvation as he hit Pakistan during the Muslim fasting period of Ramadan. 

Next Mark faced the Australian outback, travelling through thousands of miles with nothing or no-one for company except himself, in which he covered the world’s longest straight road, the 90-Mile-Straight.  Then it was through New Zealand, across America from West to East, during which time he was knocked off his bike by a motorist and mugged on the same day!  His final stretch was from Lisbon back to Paris.  All in all, it was a hefty adventure that took guts, spirit, determination, immense fitness and, above all, unwavering mental strength.

In The Winning Zone caught up with record-breaker Mark upon his return to ask him a few questions about his journey.

WZ: Have you always been an adventurous person, always just gone out and done things?

MB: I have always enjoyed challenging myself but never been that guy that likes to push himself to do the silliest things. I have always enjoyed my own company which is very important. Even if you are involved in straight down the line competitive sport, or a team sport, for you to make it to any level you have to have mental endurance.  It takes a level of self acceptance and self commitment.  If you can stand your own company through training, mental challenges and insecurities, then it doesn’t matter what your chosen sport is.

WZ: How important is mental strength when undertaking such a task as cycling round the world?

MB: For any ultra-endurance challenge, it doesn’t matter what the sport, 90% of that is your mental focus. 

What was out of my control was the externalities like the weather and the terrain.  It was through all these things that I was constantly trying to keep myself in a mental zone and think through and realise the long time average was based on each small moment, and short term target setting to get myself through the moment. 

I never ever thought about it as an 18,000 mile race. Everyone saw it in a macro term, they saw the big world whereas I saw it as a micro term, and I split the race into 7 legs.  I had done all of the route setting and all preparations myself so knew every detail of what I was about to do. Then it was simply a case of getting on the road, forgetting about tomorrow, forgetting about yesterday and getting through each moment.  When it was tough it was about shortening your targets and when it was easier you could allow yourself a longer target.

WZ: Did you ever hit a psychological wall?

MB: The whole thing was an emotional rollercoaster.  Unlike racing a traditional race, like the Tour de France, when you have a support group, it wasn’t just riding 100 miles a day, it was about finding the correct input and finding a place to stay every night which wasn’t planned, so it was a constant challenge 24-7. 

Keeping a mental focus and being on your own all the time, your mind is going to let it go at certain points.  It is interesting that my mental dips, the points where I really did crash and hit the wall, quite often had no correlation to specific events that happened. Some of the really challenging events, whether that was srain-torms, climate, deserts or sand-storms, these specific events had nothing to do with my actual mental dips.  I tended to find that every 2 – 2,500 miles I would take a mental slump and it would take 2 -3 days to work through.

WZ: What do you mean by mental slump?

MB: It’s long term mental fatigue.  In 6 ½ months on the road your mind has to release at some point.  Quite often I was suffering from conditioning aches and pains.  I would have specific injuries that I was carrying or I would have numbing, really bad headaches or sores, but when you have a flow going you can think through them and your mental focus is above all the physical aches and pains. When you don’t have that all these aches and pains come to the front and these are things that can stop you.  That is when you have to shorten your focus. 

One time when I really hit the wall was in Australia in the outback.  The roads had got better and things were easier than they had been all the way through Asia with monsoon rains, but for some reason I started losing it in terms of my mental focus.  I started thinking about the big picture, how far I had to go and all these thoughts were too big.  The mind is not particularly good at dealing with huge targets and huge numbers.

What the human mind is fantastic at doing is routine.  It doesn’t matter how hard that routine is, as long as you have structure to your day and you absolutely focus on the next small target. They can be one in the same thing because the success of each small target and day fills up to the big thing, but it is mentally that you can’t quite grasp the big picture.

WZ:  Tell us more about the physical strains you suffered through.

MB: The conditioning sores were much worse than the muscular pains. The training went well last year and I did a lot of cross training to make sure that I wouldn’t develop any repetitive strain injuries like I have done in previous expeditions. I didn’t develop any of the chronic injuries that could have really slowed me down. I was always pushing it, so I had aches and pains but it is only since I have stopped that they have actually manifested themselves.  There are some long terms effects on me physiologically which I am working on over the next couple of months to make sure that they are not permanent. 

When you are actually on the road you don’t notice anything. It is because you are spending 62 days straight on the bike and it’s a huge amount of time to be in un-manageable position. I had numbing in my hands and lost feelings for 3 weeks. The saddles sores got really bad across Australia.  All the way around it was all bruising and that sort of thing but when you are sitting in open winds for 10 hours a day you have to get off the bike every 20 minutes for the excruciating pain, that’s when you have to focus and think of the shorter targets. 

I got a lot of tension headaches, nose bleeds and upper back stress, but I am sure it is the same with anything.  If you do things day-in, day-out for half a year then that will happen. Internally my red blood count has been raised to levels which if you stop, it could theoretically be very dangerous because I have gone from 10 hours of exercise a day to a lot less. Even at 1 -2 hours training downwards you are at a higher risk of blood clotting.  My upper back has rounded and my shoulders have come in.

I might be super-fit to sit on my bike but I’m having pains just walking down the street because my back is not used to walking. That is when you get into the argument of defining fitness.  I’m absolutely fit for a purpose.  It is interesting to see what it does to you.

WZ: How was your general tiredness and fatigue?

MB: I was exhausted all the way around.  I was cycling 100 miles every day unless I had to take a day off.  It is very hard to relate to normal tiredness because if you run a race or marathon you will be tired but you will have a good night’s sleep, if you cycle 100 miles every single day it becomes a deep fatigue mentally and physically which is very hard to describe if you haven’t been there.

I needed to make sure I knew what I was doing was absolutely sustainable for half of the year.  It’s a long time to be kept going mentally and physically.  Whilst I was tired, you get to a stage where you are really aware of living off your last meal and your last sleep.  A couple of stages where I was transferring from continent to continent and I would lose a night’s sleep, that hit you for a week afterwards because you are so in tune with what you are living off.

Once you’re fit enough and have had all the training, all you can do each day is focus on the input to get the correct seat patterns and the right calorific input, then I could watch the outputs.  I could see what my heart rate over the day was doing and I could see what calories I was burning. I always tried to keep that equation the same. As long as I was putting the same amount in and expending the same amount of energy each day, I knew that what I was doing was sustainable. I could only influence those set factors.  

WZ: Even though it was hard, did you enjoy it and have fun?

MB:  Yes I did.  You don’t leave Paris just to get back to Paris.  If you just did it for the world record it would be a pretty empty cause.  That wouldn’t motivate me.  You have to be in it for the journey.  That’s the thing which I find is quite often missing with ambition of any sort.  I was speaking to a lot of people who have a lot of ideas but they don’t realise it is the work that has to be put into it.

It is the same with the preparation stage, you have to enjoy the journey and what you are doing. That is something which is slightly missed by our society.  People go into careers based on a lifestyle they want as opposed to the job they do. That means that they see where they want to be but hate the journey which allows them to get to that place.

WZ:  Did you receive coaching to prepare for it?

MB: No.  I had advice for every single part of it, like a nutritionist or physio.  Then I had my diary taken care of and I was getting constant care and attention. I was out at the club last year picking up some advice and techniques.  As I say I knew how to ride a bike and knew how to avoid injuries through correct techniques.  Apart from that it was just getting out there and doing the miles.  The important thing for me before I left was to make sure that I did a lot of cross training and to make sure I didn’t become too specifically trained. Quite a lot of sportsmen pick their sport, pick their target and then just train for it.  But unless you have a balanced body you are far more likely to injure yourself. I had different training partners, but there was no actual coach.

WZ: How would you define winning when you think about what you have done, compared to medallists, cup winners?

MB:  I think other people see this in very different ways than I do. I always called this a race and people always asked me why because there was no one else out there on the road. The other reality is that I broke the other record by 81 days.  It was such a margin that it was just me against me therefore is it a race or is it winning, what are you winning? I don’t know.

WZ:  How did you feel after you completed the race?

MB:  I have to admit, that after something of this duration, that feeling is kind of ongoing.  I am only now just having space and time to reflect on what I have done.  If you are talking specifically on the finish then the final morning I woke up I have never ever felt worse. The other reality is the final outcome and the final goal will always be different from what you imagine it to be.  It is important to balance out your expectations with the realities.

I always imagined a nice sunny last day, riding in easy! When actually I woke up 5.30am on the road, freezing, fog, covered in ice and it was only about 40km from the line that I really picked up any sense of climax.  It was when the BBC swapped from a car onto an out-rider so they could get filming through the city.  We went through Paris and we picked up a police escort.  They gave us the royal treatment, stopping all the reds lights through to the Arc de Triumph which was incredible.

Those last few miles I had lots of thoughts going through my head.  After 6 ½ months of this routine, it was about to be over and I was about to see my family and friends again and at that point that was all that mattered. It wasn’t about the world record, it was about finishing and being back after such a long time on my own. I was pretty emotional those last couple of miles.  There was an incredible sense of climax. 

The reality is that when I crossed the finishing line I had to immediately pull myself together to tell my story.  I haven’t really stopped telling my story.  It was incredible that natural sense of finale. I have never experienced anything like it and it felt wonderful. It was kind of snatched away at the line because I had to immediately start talking to the media and tell the story.  I stepped out and cycled around the world in 195 days.  For Guinness just to be safe I said I would cycle 18,300 miles and I cycled 18,297 that is very close.  If you are on the outside then you just see the world in 18,000 miles and it just seems so big but if you knew every part that went in to put that on the road then it’s not really jumping up and down with excitement, it is a deep sense of satisfaction.

RO
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