Around the world on two wheels
Die schottische Ausdauerradlerin Jenny Graham sprach mit Spotlight-autorin DAGMAR TAYLOR über ihre rekordbrechende Radfahrt, die sie einmal rund um die Welt führte.
Jenny Graham is the fastest woman to circumnavigate the world by bike. Find out about her adventure.
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It was a major milestone when the Guinness World Records confirmed last summer that Jenny Graham, from Inverness, Scotland, had become the fastest woman to circumnavigate the world by bike. The endurance cyclist completed the 18,000-mile (about 29,000-km) around-the-world journey in 124 days and 11 hours, smashing the previous record by 20 days. Each day, the 38-year-old cycled for about 13.5 hours, averaging 156 miles (251 km) — and she did so alone, entirely unsupported.
Starting at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate on 16 June 2018, Jenny travelled east across Europe into Russia, then through Mongolia and into China. After cycling across China, she flew to Perth, Australia. She crossed the continent and then flew to New Zealand, riding south to north. Next, she flew to Anchorage, Alaska. From there, she cycled across Canada to Halifax, in Nova Scotia. The final leg of the journey took her through Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and finally, on 18 October, back to where she had started, Berlin.
Before setting off around the world, the furthest Jenny had cycled was from one end of Great Britain to the other. Together with The Adventure Syndicate — a collective of female endurance cyclists who aim to inspire, encourage and enable everyone, especially women and girls, to feel capable of more, by breaking down stereotypes — she cycled the 874 miles (about 1,400 km) from Land’s End in the southwest to John O’groats in the far north in four days. After spending about 20 hours a day on her bike and riding mostly in the dark, she described the experience as “absolutely disgusting”.
“That was the training ride,” Jenny told Spotlight. “It was the furthest I’d ever cycled in one go. I’d raced for 10 or 11 days before, but this was short and sharp. It was over winter, so it was a really good training ride to see what I might be capable of.”
Jenny began cycling as a sport when she was 24. “I was just a once-a-week sort of cyclist. I’d go out for a couple of hours, or for a few hours a day if I was going mountain biking,” explained Jenny.
Six years ago, she was introduced to the Highland Trail 550, a self-supported, 560mile (900-km) mountain bike route with over 16,000 metres of climbing. “That was where I began looking at cycling endurance in miles and times,” remembers Jenny. “Before that, I was doing a lot of hill walking and mountaineering and a lot of endurance hill days and routes.”
The idea of breaking a world record by cycling around the world was born when a “bunch of opportunities” came her way. “The stars aligned for me. I got so lucky,” said Jenny. “I worked hard, obviously, but to get all that together, you have to have a massive bit of luck.”
When Jenny’s son, Lachlan, who is now 21, was leaving school and becoming more independent, she spent her newfound time cycling and “being out on adventures”. In 2017, she applied for and received a bursary place at one of The Adventure Syndicate’s training camps. After a week’s training, coach John Hampshire contacted Jenny to offer her a year’s free coaching.
“The feeling was unbelievable,” Jenny explained. “That was quite a special moment, and I knew then that I was going to go big with it. He came to me at exactly the right time. The ambition was exploding in my mind.”
At the time, Jenny was working for the Highland Council as a children’s service worker, a job she very much enjoyed. When an opportunity for a promotion came up, it gave Jenny pause for thought. “I was like, ‘Actually, all I want is to go part-time so I can cycle more’,” she said, laughing. “Not that I didn’t need the money, but I didn’t want the money. I wanted to cycle.”
Knowing what was most important to her, Jenny decided to pour all her energy into training. While recovering from a race in Arizona, Jenny had time to think about what she wanted to do next. “Around the world seemed so simple — it wasn’t simple — but it was a simple idea,” she explained.
“At first, I was really dubious about it, because I’m so normal. I wasn’t sure that I was the type of person who could go out and break a world record. The record
“The ambition was exploding in my mind”
seemed like a really big deal — a bigger deal than riding around the world. It was weird!”
Jenny realized that she was afraid of failure. “I was like, ‘Well, that’s just not good enough, is it? If that’s the only thing stopping you, it’s not that your ability is stopping you, it’s not that you don’t think you can raise the money, it’s that you’re scared of what will happen if you don’t achieve it.’ But then I was like, ‘Nah, Jen. You have to give this a go!’”
The scope of the project felt overwhelming for Jenny. What helped her a great deal was to break down the skill sets she needed. “I needed to be able to sit on a bike for 15 hours a day, and I knew I could do that,” Jenny explained. “I needed to be comfortable with travelling by myself, on my bike, in countries where I couldn’t speak the language. I needed to be comfortable with sleeping outside and in strange places, and I had done lots of that as well — I simply had to do it for much longer.”
A year later, Jenny had made it to the start line. Off she rode, on her purpose-built, all-road bike (donated by Shand Cycles in Livingston, Scotland), equipped with GPS, two bike computers to clock her miles and only the most essential kit that was both light and durable.
Getting to the start line proved to be Jenny’s biggest mental challenge, for as soon as she had crossed the line, she never once doubted her ability to complete the journey. “I was like, ‘Yes, now I’ve made it. I’m not only talking about it, I’m actually doing it.’ It was amazing.”
The simplicity of being on her bike day after day, knowing where she was going, was extremely liberating. “It was so lovely living like that,” Jenny told Spotlight. “But it was also strange having to adjust back into life and having all these responsibilities and engaging my brain again.”
Apart from always being on the lookout for grizzly bears while crossing Canada, and riding across 1,200 miles (1,931 km) of Russia at night in order to avoid
being run over by lorries on the dangerously busy Trans-siberian Highway, the hardest part of Jenny’s journey was coping with the weather in Australia.
“In Australia and New Zealand, the weather was so bad. It was the middle of winter, freezing cold with hardly any daylight and raining a lot. It was just a bit miserable,” she added with typical understatement. “I’d be shivering myself to sleep every night and then get back on the bike, not even very sure that I’d slept at all. I remember feeling quite down out there. It was really hard. I tried to find accommodation where I could.”
Jenny filmed many parts of her journey, and her clips have been woven together to make a short film called Eastbound. In one of the clips, she talks with wonder and appreciation of the kindness of strangers she met in Mongolia. Finding a way around the language barrier, one woman offered her a bed for the night, while others shared meals or made her coffee. “Everyone was so kind and friendly,”
Jenny said. “People didn’t know that I was cycling around the world. They didn’t know anything about the record. All they saw was a solo cyclist and wanted to help. And people who did know what I was doing would bend over backwards to help.”
After 121 days, the exhausted cyclist was joined by friends Lee Craigie and Alan Goldsmith. Jenny decided to push through and complete the last 500 kilometres of the journey in one go, spurred on by the thought of being reunited with friends and family. After a 36-hour, non-stop stint, she finally arrived at the Brandenburg Gate to the sight of Scottish flags held aloft and the sound of her loved ones cheering. She’d done it!
Jenny is now co-director of The Adventure Syndicate. Aside from organizing training camps and events, they also produce films, podcasts and articles focusing on the human side of adventure. To catch up with Jenny’s current exciting adventures, follow The Adventure Syndicate online: theadventuresyndicate.com