Basque cyclist Julián Sanz spent five days in the saddle last week riding 2,800 kilometres to set a new Guinness World Record – but didn’t move an inch, covering a distance equivalent to three-quarters of the route of this year’s Tour de France while cycling using a turbo trainer.
The ultracyclist completed his successful attempt on the record at the BIBE 2014 trade show in Bilbao, averaging around 34 kilometres an hour as he began his ride on Monday afternoon.
Sanz’s average speed fell throughout the week, and by Saturday afternoon when he surpassed the distance of 2,738 kilometres set by the Frenchman Pierre-Michaël Micaletti last January, he was pedalling at 22 kilometres an hour.
On his personal website, Sanz said that Friday was the key day for the record attempt and that his efforts over the opening three days had paid off by giving him a cushion that allowed him to build some recovery time into the schedule in the later stages.
He added that his big target for 2015 will be the Race Across America.
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.