When Jenny Graham told her son Lachlan that she intended to break the world record for cycling around the world on her own, he wasn’t surprised. “Of course you are, mum,” he shrugged.
Since taking part in the Arizona Trail Race and the Highland Trail 550 in Scotland in 2017, endurance cyclist Graham had been looking for something a little more challenging.
In “Coffee First, Then The World — One Woman’s Record-Breaking Pedal Around the Planet” (Bloomsbury), Graham details her extraordinary journey, from the start in Berlin on June 16, 2018, across 16 countries, four continents and back to the German capital 124 days and 18,000 miles later.
“I’ve been a mum my whole adult life and I really have only been away from home for maybe a month at a time as Lachlan got older, maybe in the Alps or in Spain,” says Graham, who had her son when she was just 18.
“So I’ve never had a huge amount of time in my own head so that was really new for me.
Her cycling journey wasn’t all smooth sailing, so to speak.
From extreme saddle soreness and embarrassing toileting troubles to battling a body clock gone haywire, Graham’s epic journey saw her dicing with death on Russia’s dangerous Trans-Siberian Highway and, in Australia, navigating a 90-mile stretch of road using only the moon to guide her.
On the 5,900 miles of the North American leg of her ride, from Anchorage AL. in the west to Halifax Nova Scotia in Canada in the easy, she peddled by day and slept in a tiny tent at night with a bear spray and bear bell to scare off any grizzlies.
Graham averaged over 150 miles each day and often exceeded 200 miles. In order to make the target she set herself, she rode the final stretch of her route, back to Berlin, for 32 hours straight.
Her final time of 124 days, 10 hours and 50 minutes, meanwhile, smashed the previous world record by 20 days.
“When I was writing the book, I kept asking myself ‘who is that woman?’ because I was so so focused,” she adds.
“But that’s not me anymore. I think I might have chilled out a bit.”