Making your mark

How global adventurer Mark Beaumont is finding new challenges closer to home

My 'around the world in 80 days' record in 2017 was my Everest. I cycled 18,000 miles in 78 days, 14 hours and 40 minutes. Nothing can ever be bigger than the world. It's the world! So, in many ways, the pressure was off. Having first broken that record in 2008 (in 194 days and 17 hours), I've now been around planet Earth twice on a bicycle. So more recently I felt keen to explore challenges closer to home.

A big project I've pioneered with Markus Stitz (a. filmmaker and the first person to ride around the world on a singlespeed) is 'Explore Your Boundaries'. I do still like to make progress physically and psychologically, so this is about seeing familiar places in new ways, trying new rides and having new experiences.

As with everybody, the pandemic years inevitably got me exploring closer to home. I stopped riding by numbers, got into gravel, and went out locally, getting muddy and having fun. During the lockdown we weren't allowed to leave our local council areas so we downloaded the GPX boundary lines, plugged them into Komoot and tried to find tracks and trails for big adventures closer to home. If you join these trails together it's like a straight-lining expedition: you are forcing yourself to build new routes. We did it around Edinburgh initially but, as our freedoms increased, we explored other areas of Scotland too.