Round-the-world record breaker Jenny Graham

Scottish cyclist Jenny Graham tells Hannah Reynolds how she smashed the female round-the-world record by almost three weeks

Arriving in Berlin on October 18, Jenny Graham had ridden 18,000 miles across 16 countries in just 124 days. In doing so, she had smashed the previous female round-the-world record — 144 days, by Italian Paola Gianotti — by almost three weeks. Riding unsupported and carrying all her own kit while averaging 13mph, the 38-year-old Scotswoman clicked off 156 miles per day, setting a stunning new benchmark in circumnavigation.

“Over the last few years, things started falling into place for me,” says Graham, who lives in Inverness. “I had been training, building up my endurance and taking part in mountain bike events. On an Adventure Syndicate [collective of female endurance cyclists] training camp, I met a coach, John Hampshire.”

An offer of free coaching from Hampshire coincided with a sabbatical from work, and then a chance meeting with a former colleague sealed the deal.

“I bumped into a guy I used to work with who is a film maker. He had seen my cycling on social media and told me he would love to work with me, if I had any plans.”

With serendipity on her side, all the signs were pointing Graham in one direction: “Roundthe-world had come on to my radar a while back and, while I was thinking about it, all these amazing things happened. It reached a point where I felt I couldn’t not do it.”

Graham has been riding for 15 years but training seriously for only five. “My son had just started school when I began mountain biking. I’d go for a three-hour ride once a week, if I was lucky.”

Starting work on a cycling outreach programme at Velocity cycle cafe and workshop in Inverness gave Graham the impetus to start racing. “My world was suddenly full of cyclists,” she explains. “I was never interested in conventional racing but things that required real endurance: staying up when you should be sleeping, that always appealed to me. When I did my first bike-packing event, the NCN550, I thought, ‘Oh yeah, this is the way to go.’”

Working with her coach, Graham set about training for long-distance events. “Because I’m a mountain biker, we had to do a lot of work on my technique as a road biker to ensure I was being efficient on my bike. We did a lot of back-to-back rides to get my body used to being tired.”

Riding 156 miles per day is hard on the body, so conditioning and building resilience was a vital part of Graham’s preparation. “I did a lot of swimming, core work and a bit of running to strengthen my joints.”

‘Learn to live fast’ became Graham’s mantra — an expression picked up from ultra-endurance cyclist Mike Hall, who was killed while racing in 2016.

So what does it mean to ‘live faster’ on a long-distance event?

“It is off-the-bike skills that will get you a faster time. I rode exactly as I thought I would in terms of speed but overall it’s the faffing time that makes the difference.”

Eating and sleeping, for instance, had to be rigidly structured, she explains: “I’d try to organise it so that I wouldn’t have more than 50km to ride till somewhere for coffee and breakfast. I’d then try to do a minimum of four hours on the bike until lunch. I’d count in hours rather than distance, keep riding and choose a stop for the night depending on where I was.”

Riding solo, every decision had to be taken unilaterally. “Often it was harder to make myself stop than make myself keep going.” Graham acknowledges that sometimes it became difficult to assess safety. “Whether traffic or bears or needing accommodation because you feel worn down, [priorities] are hard to get a grip on when you are by yourself.”

Her solution was to talk through the options out loud. “I learned to trust myself and know the difference between a tired decision or a good one.”

Regardless of the difficulty, Graham never stopped believing in herself. “When things got hard, I’d say to myself, ‘Yep, you knew it was going to be tough — you are cycling round the world.’”

Those tough times came thick and fast: “In Australia, it was winter, so making yourself stay on your bike when it hasn’t stopped raining for days and trying to sleep at night in temperatures of minusthree with no hope of getting accommodation, that wore me out.”

Graham gained further resilience from the support she received from friends, family and coach. As regards her fitness, she knew she had done the training and had the ability to absorb discomfort. What was her most powerful motivation?

“Proving to myself time and time again that I could do so much more than I’d imagined — you are always so much more capable than you think you are.”