American cyclist Lael Wilcox is claiming the record for the fastest woman to bike around the world.
The 38-year-old started her journey in Chicago on May 26 and ended it in Chicago on Sept. 11, riding 18,125 miles over the course of 108 days, 12 hours and 12 minutes.
"I've just been on a total high," Wilcox told All Things Considered. "From three days out from the finish, I just got this feeling like, 'I can do this,' and I felt like I was flying. And I'm still kind of riding that wave. I just had so much fun out there, and it meant so much to me. And, you know, it also felt so good to be coming to the end of it."
Her record has yet to be certified by Guinness World Records, but it would beat by more than two weeks the previous record of 124 days and 11 hours set by Scottish cyclist Jenny Graham in 2018.
Wilcox's first leg of the trip was a week riding from Chicago to New York City. Then she flew to Portugal, spending a month riding east through Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia.
Next it was a flight to Australia, where she spent about another month traveling from Perth to Brisbane. Then she spent a week biking through New Zealand, and afterward it was back to North America. She landed in Alaska and rode from Anchorage through western Canada and down the U.S. West Coast, before heading east through the Southwest and back to Chicago.
Riding 18,125 miles over nearly 109 days means averaging over 166 miles a day. Sometimes she rode more than 200.
And the world is not flat. Wilcox climbed a total of 629,880 vertical feet on her bike — equivalent to scaling the height of Mount Everest more than 21 times.
Guinness World Records does not require cyclists to literally ride the complete globe, as oceans would make that difficult (though perhaps not impossible). The requirements call for at least 18,000 miles of bicycling and for riders to cross two antipodal points — in Wilcox's case, Madrid, Spain, and Wellington, New Zealand. Riders also have to take commercial transportation when they cross oceans — no private jets.
Wilcox is used to grueling ultradistance cycling
Wilcox is no stranger to long bike rides. She has been doing ultradistance racing since 2015, when she set the women's record (15 days, 10 hours and 59 minutes) in the Tour Divide race, which runs from Banff, in the Canadian province of Alberta, all the way to the U.S.-Mexico border in Antelope Wells, New Mexico. She holds the women's record in the Trans Am Bike Race across the U.S., and in 2016 she became the first woman and first American to win that grueling race from Oregon to Virginia, finishing in just over 18 days.
This time, she knew it was going to be a "pretty exhausting endeavor," she told NPR. That's why she invited fellow cyclists to ride along with her each day. Well-wishers also camped out along her route, offering drinks and treats.
Thousands of people came out along the way, she said.
"I'd be through a super-remote stretch like British Columbia where, you know, there's maybe a gas station every 150 miles and there's nobody out there. I saw, like, eight bears. And then I get closer to a town, and all of a sudden people start showing up, you know — a family with two kids and another guy that brought me a pastry and a nurse coming out in her full scrubs with the stethoscope just to say hello, or a construction guy that knew I was riding."
Wilcox's wife, photojournalist Rugile Kaladyte, documented the journey with extensive photos and videos and was part of a podcast of nightly updates. Wilcox adds that she's grateful they "got to have this life experience together."
Guinness World Records told NPR that it has received an application for Wilcox's record attempt and that its certification process can take 12 to 15 weeks.
When NPR talked with her shortly after she made it to Chicago, Wilcox was busy — on a bike ride with her family. "There's nothing else I'd rather do," she said.
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