“I ’m not in pain, which is unusual!” laughs ultra-distance cyclist Lael Wilcox over a patchy WhatsApp call from somewhere in rural Serbia. She is almost a month into an attempt to be the fastest woman to circumnavigate the globe on a bicycle and, despite being able to follow her mile-by-mile progress online, it’s surprisingly hard to track down and actually talk to the 36-year-old Alaskan. When we finally do speak, I expect her to call from a hotel, or between mouthfuls of porridge at a roadside café.
But when she comes on the line, a little out of breath, with the occasional sound of passing cars, she is clearly in-saddle, on the road and heading east. “I’m on my bike!” she laughs gleefully, noting how she aims to cover just under 190 miles by the end of the day. A living legend of endurance racing, Wilcox is planning to complete the 18,020-mile journey in about 110 days, which would beat the current record, held by Scottish cyclist Jenny Graham, by a neat fortnight.
To achieve that, Wilcox will have to cover an average of 164 miles a day for the next 81 days and expects to be in the saddle for between 12 and 14 hours at a stretch. “Every day is like a marathon,” she says, “and then I go to sleep and do it all again.” The phrase, “around the world” is a little misleading.
You don’t need to circumnavigate the globe exactly but, to meet the official Guinness requirements, you must start and finish at the same point, and cycle continuously in the .