It’s almost time to take on the world

First things first, at this point in the preparations I’m feeling great. I can confidently say I’m in the best shape of my life but, given what I’m about to embark on, I need to be. I’m on the precipice of doing something that has never been done before. Physically and mentally, I’m ready to go, but I’d be lying if I said things didn’t feel a little daunting. With that comes all kinds of pressure, but it’s all about ensuring your preparations are on point. And my Around Britain expedition gave the team and I plenty of food for thought.

Around Britain was a massive test and a brutal couple of weeks for us all - the route was hilly and we endured some wild weather. But we’ve learnt from our mistakes there so that we don’t repeat them come 2nd July. By the end of Around Britain we felt we had about 80% of our plan for the Around the World cycle in place and another 20% to finalise. Some team member changes and heavy-duty logistical organisation later, here we are.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been training pretty aggressively but trying to avoid injury – that’s the key. I push myself harder when I’m training than I do when I’m on expedition. We’re fine tuning everything at the moment. I’ve got that incredible endurance pace now which means I know I can do 16 hours on the bike back-to-back. On average, I’ve been doing around 30 hours per week. I’ve also been doing a lot of low intensity work which tends to be made up of a lot of hill reps. It’s all about figuring out the marginal gains that will give me that extra edge such as increase my leg speed and my rolling speed. We’ve even made changes to the wheels and I’ll be wearing a different helmet as well. Everything must be right.

One of the biggest challenges we faced on Around Britain was that I was exhausted at the very beginning. It was a different sort of tired that was borne out of all the running around I was doing. I was talking to the media, making sure everything was sorted and so on, so by the time I got on the bike at 4am on the first morning, I was just totally shattered. That can’t happen when I take on the world. I have to be ready to jump out of my skin.

People often ask me what drives me on and at the heart of it lies one thing – fear of failure. There will be tough times ahead on this expedition, but that’s natural because we’re redefining the boundaries of human endurance. For me that’s part of my nature. Sometimes when I look at the world we live in, where people aspire to a comfortable life, it confuses and baffles me. Life is not meant to be easy. To me that’s unremarkable and undefined. Human nature is about pushing boundaries and trying to find out what you’re capable of, going beyond your limits and sharing that with the community around you. That level of ambition and community is important to what I do. That’s something my sponsors at LDC understand.

I’ve worked with the guys at LDC for 10 years now and I know that they’re a team which is investing in business and growth, but they’re interested in more than just that. They’re about backing people as well and they look for the same things I do - real resilience. You cannot grow a successful business; you cannot become a market player or do anything remarkable if you’re not prepared to do things differently. Most importantly, that’s how you create value.

Think about it this way; I create value by being the first and the fastest, LDC do it by looking for unique opportunities and people. Like me, they’re interested in building the right team, with the right people who have confidence in their ideas.

It’s these qualities in a team that will help push me towards doing something memorable of my own: cycling around the world in 80 days.