Lael Wilcox: around the World faster ..

[Sea of vapours]

That's 'faster than Mark Beaumont' as well as 'faster than she did it two years ago'.

Lael Wilcox set off at 0400 on 7th June 2026, from Chicago, aiming to beat Beamount's 78d 14h 40m record. This attempt is fully supported, like Beaumont's.

The tracker is here: https://www.followmychallenge.com/live/lael-rides-around-the-world-faster/
This Follow My Challenge tracker has a countdown running, and some other useful metrics such as 'distance in the last 24 hours' and 'distance to go'.

She'll be passing Kyle and Amy in the US somewhere, though her route is to the west of theirs, meaning the chances of passing them on the actual road are very slim.

Her project web site, including Komoot routes and high level description of the overall plan and approach is here: https://www.laelwilcox.net/2026-around-the-world-faster

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Brilliant, looking forward to seeing this. Did not think anyone would challenge Mark’s record for a while. Brilliant that she is.

Think it works out to require an average of at least 228 miles per day.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

The slide deck on that Komoot web page is also interesting.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/in6e...ey=e858gj6gaicgg3h8ewumn4rvv&st=mfx83key&dl=0

 

[presta]

Who gets to decide what constitutes 'around the world'? Without researching all the political ins and outs, her route seems very arbitrary, with some large and puzzling flights. Why fly from Istanbul to Aktau rather than ride through Turkey? Why sweep so far north through Europe? Why loop so far south in the USA? Is it Beaumont's route? With timing down to the minute, I'd expect the route to be predefined down to the last roundabout and T-junction.

 

[Sea of vapours]

it's not so much arbitrary as driven by expediency based on conditions in various places (meaning weather and geopolitical realities). It's certainly true that Mark Beamont's route and Jenny Graham's route look much better (Europe, Russia, Mongolia, China ...), but at least Lael has the Kazakhstan section in there, making her Asia chunk about 6,000km, which is not trifling. The routes are also designed to minimise elevation gain and make what there is very gradual. i.e. crossing great plains, like Kazakhstan, Australia and the flat, middle bits of the US where possible.

Wider than that she's doing it to Guinness' current rules, which everyone, not surprisingly, tends to, and they don't stipulate anything about number of countries or continents, so in theory one could largely zig-zag up and down the US, provided that two antipodal points were included elsewhere (Spain and New Zealand in virtually all cases, and that 18,000 miles / 29,200km was covered. I liked the route of the current 'couples' record holders, who not only included South America, but their antipodal points were Botswana and Hawaii, which is at least novel :-)

This is pure speculation, but apart from any other considerations, it may be that Lael wanted a really long section on one land mass to finish, so that, if she is behind when arriving in Anchorage, she can increase her daily distance by a finely-tuned amount, to arrive 'just in time', since she won't have flight contingency to factor in.