5 things you may not know about Mark Beaumont's world record attempt
- Published
Mark Beaumont has been cycling across the world. He's travelled over 17,000 miles, riding for 16 hours a day, functioning on around five hours of sleep each night. He is on his way to smashing his around-the-world-in-80-days target. Here are some amazing facts about his attempt.
It's not all been by bike and it hasn't all been smooth sailing. Mark has taken four flights, been a passenger on a ferry and had two crashes while travelling across four continents.
There is a big team behind Mark and they've had to deal with some pretty unusual things. They've been involved in a car crash and had to dig themselves out of sand after getting stuck in it. They even had to try their hand at dentistry after Mark cracked his tooth when he crashed.
The route is always changing. When the team plot the journey on a map, they don't know how good or busy the roads are, so the route has to change to make sure that Mark does not have to ride alongside big lorries or on really busy roads. He has to cover 18,000 miles over the course of the whole journey in order for the record to count.
Wind is a tool and the weather is very important. If Mark is riding against the wind it slows him down a lot, but if he has a good tail wind it can help to carry him a bit so he rides faster.
He's not done it all on his own. At times it's been a really sociable event. Even his friends from his first journey ten years ago have met him at certain points along the way. Mark smashed the world record and even beat his own target of 80 days, finishing a day earlier than planned.
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