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Abdullah needs to finish before 01:41 19th June PDT to get the (upright bicycle) course record.

Current estimated finish is 18:36 18th June. A 7-hour buffer to drop below average speed.

One more hump to get over then quite home straighty.

Yeah! Subway actually released a vegan patty and vegan aioli sauce in the UK in the last couple of weeks. Surprised you haven't seen the advertising campaign. It's pretty good.

Abdullah can eat tons and very quickly. Probably another reason for his success. I remember being at a roadhouse with him at 4am when I was riding Melbourne-Adelaide a couple of weeks before IPWR and he had already eaten like two veggie burgers and going back up to the counter to order more before I was half-way through one of mine lol!

Abdullah is on an absolute ripper. I'm sure Subway is making a killing from this effort. Will be awesome to see him get the course record!

Hello everyone... just a wanted ad!

As you could probably guess, I'm after a Surly ECR, Surly Ogre or Kona Sutra LTD to be used to race the Race to the Rock down unda in September and probably ride a little bit further after too. Cutting it a bit fine with my search but I've been distracted.

Size large or 56cm... would consider medium or 54cm.

If anyone knows of similar frames that could be up for the job (handling lots of dirt and lugging lots of water) then please let me know.

Thanks! :+)

Absolutely EPIC.

Anyone doing it this year? I'm pretty sure I'm going for it. Need to get myself a gravel / adventure bike first though!

Pencilling this in in my brain. Need to break the ice this year and this seems like a good motivation. Not good at early rising and 4okm ride to start though. Maybe a Staines wild camp in order...

I actually ended up doing 98 reps of Kop Hill - which is ~100 metres of vertical gain per ascent.

I think short reps are far easier mentally. 'Reps to go' are a figment of the imagination but a 3+ hour climb up a mountain is a very real thing. It destroys you.

With short reps you get a break every few minutes, you don't get too cold on descents, you don't get too hot on ascents and you get to have a base camp with clothes / food / tools / supplies / shelter so you don't need to do much logistical planning or carry much, or anything, with you.

Anyway, you'll be glad to know that Everesting is far, far easier than a 24-hour TT. At least for me, mentally. You have a set distance so unless you're trying to break a record there's not really much stress, you just chip away at it at your own pace. Whereas with an ultra race or TT you feel like every second spent off the bike is this mad stressful rush.

I've done it on a road bike (Kop Hill in the Chilterns, ~100m reps) and later on a fixed gear (Telegraph Hill, South London, ~40m reps).

Coincidentally, my first ever attempt was in Tenerife on the north side from Puerto de la Cruz. The long reps made it incredibly hard. Got to half-Everest then quit. Differences in temperature, no real breaks whilst climbing, logistics of food/water and storage of clothes/batteries/tools all make long reps very difficult. Short reps are by far superior if you want to successfully complete the challenge.

Hey guys, finally put together a video on the set-up I used. More coming soon... ish!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z7Z1aZnSy0

Has anyone ever done the TABR on a fixed gear?

Simply put, that highway has large sections of sand / dirt. I was sticking to solid ground. There are very few roads in Australia, and even less that are paved the entire way! Sometimes it means adding hundreds of kilometres to your route, as in this case... maybe 1000km+ :'D

Used a range of tyres from 25 to 28.

Started on tubeless 25 Panaracer tyres. Then a 25 Gatorskin on the front at Melbourne. THINK I changed the rear tyre in Sydney to some lightweight tyre a friend gifted me in Adelaide. That lasted to Brisbane. Then on the rear I had a Maxxis Relix in 25. In Darwin, for the last ~4000km, I swapped both front and rear, front was a 28 Maxxis Refuse and rear was 28 Schwalbe Durano Pro.

Probably had about 4-5 punctures throughout the course of the full ride. I also feel like I missed out on remembering a tyre change but whatever lol.

Some dude commented on one of my posts saying this:

"As for the history, Arthur Richardson was the first, travelling 18,506 kilometres. He narrowly beat Alex White and Donald Mackay. Frank White also started with Alex and Donald but had to pull out. Richardsaon took 253 days but Mackay was faster taking 240 days. Both rode similar distances."

I believe this was in 1900, or just before, when pretty much all of it was off-road (apart from the east coast) and on fixed gears too. Absolutely awesome!

You find total elevation stats misleading? That's odd. You know you can find the 'average' gradient by dividing total elevation by total horizontal distance. It would reveal how insanely flat this ride was. That doesn't take away from the fact that I pedalled up every metre (and pretty much down every metre) - and so does everyone else who does a long ride. What's the point in showing elevation stats at all for anything?!?!!?!

Sorry for not really keeping you guys updated. For the last 2000km I was kinda in a deep hole mentally. Not having the best time, then the headwinds kicked in... lmao.

I’m finally back in London so I’ve been crunching the numbers of the fixed gear Australian loop and here’s the results...

Total distance of the loop: 15,867km (9,859 miles) which is actually farther than the flight from London to Perth.

Total climbing: 79,366m (260,387ft) which is almost exactly 9 times the height of Mount Everest. Although this was recorded with an iPhone so elevation probably ain’t the most spot on and considering the distance it’s absolutely minuscule. Australia is the flattest continent on the planet.

This is where it gets messy... 142.5 days total elapsed from start to finish, of which 63 days were actually riding, 4 single rest days and three separate periods of a week or more sightseeing, hanging out or back home in London. Total elapsed time still means I break the unofficial fixed gear Australian loop time by about 100 days. Yes, some absolute legend apparently did it over 100 years ago with far, far less infrastructure than I had. Kingpin. I’m now the second person to have ever done it. Also bear in mind that I never actually set out to do this, just the IPWR, but it kinda just... happened.

251.9km (156.5 miles) per day average not including rest periods. 226.7km (140.9 miles) per day average if you include single rest days and count longer rest periods as one day.

You’ll ‘only’ have to beat 111.4km (69.2 miles) average per day (for 143 days) if you want to face-off with a dude who was going through bad heartbreak and want the Australian fixed gear loop record for yourself. If you do, I’ll probably scramble a bike and get myself to Australia to chase you down. Just sayin’...

I’ll jot down all the miscellaneous stats (such as punctures, number of tyres I used, motels stayed at, times I changed gears, the amount of crocodiles I saw and anything else you can think of?) and put them in another post.

Follow me on Strava and Instagram for more content...

@josephxkendrick on Instagram
Search 'Vegan Joseph Kendrick' on Strava

Update: Made it back into Western Australia! I have about 3000km to go to Perth. I’ve kinda gone a bit cray recently. I did a 340km ride to Darwin, napped (terribly) then did a 350km ride back (the highway is an out & back for Darwin). Then I took a rest day followed by a 535km 30-hour ride (20 minute nap) across into Western Australia.

Not sure if the big days / big rest structure is better for me. Either way, I found it too comfy to head out again from the place I found to stay just across the border and now I’m gonna try and crush the 1000km to Broome (where I have a WarmShowers host) in 3 days. Apparently it’s even flatter than before and tailwinds so should be ‘easy’.

I’ve been riding 48/16 for the last ~3500km 😂

I’ve done over 13,000km now and probably had about 4 punctures in that time. The roads out here are pretty great condition tbh. Maybe I’m just lucky! I’m carrying a bunch of tubes and patch kit too. I’ve used various different brands and models of tyres, sometimes you don’t have much choice at the bike shops here!

Ran a 25mm Gatorskin on the front for about 8,000km with no issues apart from a very very slow puncture (held pressure all day). Recently put on a 28mm Maxxis Refuse and a Schwalbe Durano Plus 28mm on the rear.

Savannah Way west of Cairns was DEAD. Some caravans during the day but I got into the flow of stuffing my face at roadhouses / servos in the evening then heading out for a few more hours of riding between 9pm and midnight. Some nights I saw maybe 1 or 2 vehicles in that time... and on my last ride I saw precisely ZERO vehicles between 11pm and 7am on the Victoria Highway heading towards the NT/WA border.

During the day there are a lot of caravans and stuff like that, there’s a lot lot less road trains up here. I remember the Nullarbor having them very often, even through the night, although they are much longer up here.

Obviously, the east coast highways were super busy and a lot more just normal cars out there. Very rare to see a ‘car’ on these desert highways!

To be honest, I don’t feel like I’m out here on my own. Got all the Strava and Insta love. Makes me feel great sharing the journey with everyone. Really helps keep me going! Thanks!

Just arrived in Katherine. 2520km in 10 days. Got a place to crash here and managed to make it to the supermarket with 3 minutes to spare after a 105km TT effort lmao. Got two tubs of vegan Ben & Jerry’s and ate them in one sitting. Will have a quick sleep then I guess make a break for Darwin which is an annoying ~320km. Long enough to be an annoying slog but too short to validate breaking it into 2 days. Will see how I feel in the morning lol!

The precise reason 👌

Sorry, been trying to update but signal was very bad. Finally got to the Stuart Highway (the main north-south highway across the middle of Australia). Had a corker of a day. Must’ve been a tailwind or excitement to have made it to a junction or the lure of warmer sleeping temperatures but we ended up clocking 362km by 4am. Now, I’ve found a supermarket with bananas (spotty!!!) and watermelon. Trying to fuel my body healthily lol! I ate peanuts and crisps as fuel for almost 500km. Here’s a photo from yesterday towards the end of the Barkly Highway...

I believe there’s an out & back dirt track to the cape. It’s a no from me lol

Making a dash for the NT border today from Mount Isa.