21 August 2017

A ride with Mr Mark Beaumont

I have been following Mark Beaumont for a number of years ever since I heard about his first record breaking trip around the world by bike.
A full list of adventures can be found on his wiki page here or on his website here.
He is currently attempting to set a new world record for riding around the world supported. His target is 80 days including travel which is an amazing feat and means he needs to average 240miles per day.



Mark has a fantastic team helping him achieve this goal and he arrived in Anchorage on the 19th August 2017 to start leg three of the challenge on the 20th August 2017.
Through a friend (Thomas) in Anchorage, he got me in touch with Mike who is in charge of this leg. It was all a little last minute but on the 19th during the day, before Mark arrived. I had a face to face discussion with Mike and we worked out a route to get Mark out of town and on down the road for leg three.

Where does the riding come into this?

Well, I was given the opportunity to ride with Mark out of town and guide him on the correct way. So at 03:00 on the 20th August I left my house and headed to the airport for the 04:00 start. Mark and the team arrived and finished setting up, he did his usual talk to the camera, they took a couple of pictures and Mark, David and I set off out of town.



David, Mark and I before the rollout -PC Mark's media team
The ride went well and we were treated to mostly dry roads until we hit the Highway at around mile 36 of the ride. David, Mark and I were joined by another rider Donovan as we rolled along the Glenn Highway bike path. Once we reached Eagle River we followed the old Glenn until we reached Settlers Dr.
Rolling the Old Glenn

This is where our party split with Mark and I continuing on along the highway and David and Donovan heading back to Anchorage.

I got to ride with Mark until we reached Palmer where I made the decision to turn around and retrace my route back to Anchorage.

Quick gas station stop

After a short (not by Mark's standards) stop at Vaga Bond blues it was a 20 min stop. Mark rides in 4 hour ish stints with a 10 min break every 4 hours. He does 4 stints a day and aims to average 15mph to achieve 240miles a day. I headed back into town.

coffee and cake

When riding into Palmer we had a pretty stiff headwind and it was raining pretty consistently, so much so there were no views. After my extended break the rain stopped, the views improved and I didn't need to put my rain jacket back on until I reached Eagle River.

Highway views

Mirror Lake

All in all it was a great day out on the bike. I managed a meager 109miles albeit at a moving speed of 15mph. Mark went on to put in 235miles. see strava
Mark's strava data can be found here
And there is a live tracker here (although at the time of writing this its not working.)

I want to take this time to thank Mark and his team for allowing people to ride with him, they are a very professional outfit and I had a lot of fun tagging along for almost 4 hours.  Good luck for the rest of your ride Mark. 

My Strava data



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