Breaking the Cycle

Sean Conway holds the world record for the fastest unaided crossing of Europe by bicycle, but it took a decade of falling off and getting back on his bike to achieve it.

Sean Conway isn’t a name you associate with failure. The endurance adventurer’s feats include several world firsts, such as the longest-ever triathlon in 2016 – an 85-day, 6,760km circumnavigation of mainland Britain, cycling a coastal route from Lulworth Cove to Scarborough, then running to Brighton, before completing the circuit in the waters of the English Channel. But when the 37-year-old Zimbabwean rolled into the Russian city of Ufa on May 11 of this year, exhausted after cycling almost 6,300km across Europe, he was breaking a curse that had haunted him for nearly half a decade.

“I’ve had three failed cycling world-record attempts and it took six years and 96,500km to eventually do the one where everything went right,” Conway says of his new world record for the fastest cycle across Europe: 24 days, 18 hours and 39 minutes. Last year, he had to abandon his first European cycling record attempt after just four days when he tore a quad muscle. Before that, he’d failed to get a round- Australia attempt off the ground; and while cycling in America in 2012 – 6,400km into a round-the-world record attempt – he was hit by a truck, fracturing his spine.

The ‘Hiccups’ section of Conway’s website is headed by the statement: “It’s in our failures where we become stronger.” This is a motto he lives by. “You have to,” says Conway. “You can’t focus on the negative, otherwise you’d rip your life to bits. It’s not that I was born exceptionally resilient; you just learn a coping mechanism.”

Conway cycled across nine countries in pursuit of the world record. This May, he finally clinched it

For this year’s European speed attempt, which started in Cabo de Roca on the west coast of Portugal and took him across nine countries, Conway paid attention to the tiniest details. These included ensuring his seat post was set at the perfect height, to within half a millimetre – “because on a big ride, the small things quickly become the big things” – and swapping his carbon bike for an ‘old-school’ steel frame for added comfort.

Days began in darkness at 3.58am, stepping into a damp cycling kit still heavy with yesterday’s perspiration. “I sweat about a litre an hour, so my kit was sticky all the time,” Conway recalls. “I slept naked, but you’re in your sleeping bag with a day’s worth of sweat.” Nights were spent in roadside storm drains with rats and spiders for company (he eschewed the 380g weight of a tent for a bivvy bag). He wore earplugs, and a Buff over his face, “because, inevitably, something crawls over you.”

The punishing schedule saw Conway ride for as many as 18 hours a day. “The food and the adrenalin numb things a little,” he says, “but even sleeping is painful as your body seizes up.” Low points of the journey included waking beside fresh wolf roadkill, cycling for 1,600km into a 32kph headwind, and close shaves with kamikaze drivers. “In Russia, I started cycling into oncoming traffic so I could see the drivers coming, rather than them driving up behind me,” he recalls. “Stressful.”

But the ghosts of these failed record attempts fuelled Conway’s motivation. “That fear of failure, of giving up and going home to nothing, is the fuel,” he says. Letting down friends, online supporters, and sponsors such as cycling insurers Yellow Jersey and Twisted Automotive – the Yorkshirebased vehicle-engineering company that made Conway its ambassador and built him his own custom Land Rover Defender, which he named Colonel Mustard – played heavily on his mind.

In the end, Conway beat the record by nine hours. “That’s the equivalent of 21 minutes a day. Which, on a bad day, could easily have been down to traffic lights,” he says, reflecting that success isn’t so much about winning as about staying the course. “Ultimately, you work out what you did wrong, then you go back and have another crack.”

seanconway.com