"One man on his bike, and he's close to fulfilling his dream." "Mark Beaumont wants to smash the record for cycling around the world." "He's already covered 14,000 miles across Europe, Asia and Australia." "Now he must cross his last continent" " America." "He came close to collapse in Australia, pushing himself to the limit of endurance." "I feel incredibly weak." "I don't know what to do." "But he's yet to face the most dangerous moment of the trip." "Getting hit by a car and mugged in the same day." "Can he still find the strength to make his dream come true?" "50 days in the saddle lie between him and his target for the world record." "For five months now, like, I've been physically tired." "And the pain, you know, every single day..." "San Francisco to Paris." "So near... and yet so far." "This is a pretty spectacular start to the US leg." "Really hilly, just south of San Francisco." "And cold." "I'm not used to this at all." "It's still early morning." "I'm going to have to be on the road at 7am, at daybreak, and it's really cold." "It was freezing this morning." "It's spectacular." "Just wish it was a bit warmer." "Mentally, it's going to be tough to get back into it again." "It always is at the start, to the legs." "But it's exciting." "It's the last big challenge." "Mark is already exhausted after five months on the road." "Now he must travel coast to coast across America, then Lisbon to Paris if he wants to achieve his dream - one of the world's greatest endurance records." "To make the finish, he must achieve a complex balance of pacing versus pressure." "Well, this is day two in the US, and it's as beautiful as I'd hoped, but it's not nearly as easy cycling." "I'm having a tough time." "It is frustrating." "I need to bring it back and start focusing on the day." "There is still a long way to go." "There's still 4,000... 4,500 miles left." "If I start hurting myself over these days to try and keep up an unrealistic average then I won't get to the end in one piece." "So..." "Yeah, I just need to start focusing on the moment again." "The flight from New Zealand has taken him into winter and the problem of short daylight hours." "Normally, he's on the road for 11 hours a day." "I've come up with this solution." "I'm going to switch my lights on and ride into the night." "The night riding is risky and demanding, but it has an unexpected bonus." "He's got the wrong sleeping bag for winter, so the longer" "Less time lying in a cold tent." "I did over two hours of night riding and it was just so hairy." "When you've got your lights on, all you're following is the white line, and it disappears." "There's quite often not these nice crash barriers, like that, so there's the ocean, and these massive cliffs, going straight down." "The start from Paris was on August the 5th." "It's now New Year's Eve, and Mark's bagged another great city" " Los Angeles." "It's 4.50 in the afternoon." "That makes it 12.50 in Scotland." "So it's already New Year's Day in Scotland, and that means it's my birthday." "That means I'm 25." "A pretty good way to celebrate." "On my own, but I'm riding into LA at sunset." "Five months on the road and a year older." "The only celebration - he's still on target." "But the months of isolation, racing against himself, are taking their toll." "It's the 2nd of January and this is day 150 of getting up early, getting on the bike, doing 100 miles." "Finding my food, finding my rest." "And it's all possibly..." "I'm finding it quite mentally..." "tiring." "Yesterday, on the bike, I completely lost it." "I wasn't in the zone at all." "I wasn't sitting comfortably on the bike, I wasn't getting the miles done." "I wasn't just zoning out and just spinning the legs and getting on with it." "I need to forget about the world and just get the miles done for the next month." "I really have found that I've had a mental slump every 1,500, 2,000 miles." "And it came yesterday." "I don't think it was helped by getting through LA, and all the stop-starting there, but time to go inland." "Time to say goodbye to the Pacific." "The Pacific's been amazing." "What a beautiful ride." "Struggling to shake off his mental slump, he's about to be physically tested as he heads inland over the 6,000ft coastal mountains." "I'm now in the middle of absolutely nowhere and I've got a huge climb ahead of me." "Unfortunately, the forecast is snow for ahead, for the high land." "I'm going for a 4,800ft pass ahead." "It's going to be a couple of hours in the dark." "I really hope it doesn't snow, because I'm going to be camping in my one-season sleeping bag." "So if it snows, I'm going to be cool." "Then, when the going is already tough, it gets tougher still." "Look at this for great timing." "I've punctured." "What a terrible place to puncture." "It's been raining all the way up the hill." "It's stopped momentarily." "So I'm going to try and pump it up and get to the top." "Um..." "I don't think I should fix it here." "Cancel that, I've got to change it." "I've got to change the puncture." "It's a terrible, terrible place to do it." "I'm in a little lay-by, in a steep gorge, in the middle of the night." "At least it's stopped raining." "Always think of the positive - it's not raining." "That was one of the worst nights in the tent I've ever had." "It didn't snow, but the wind picked up a lot in the night and my tent collapsed again." "And it was just miserable." "to stabilise it in the night." "I'll tell you about it later." "I've got to keep going, it's too cold." "Keep going, keep going." "Mark's only had eight days off in five months on the road." "He's not been beaten by desert heat or monsoon rain." "Now winter puts him to the test." "The weather forecast is to get worse today, and snow on the high ground." "The road was shut two or three times yesterday between here and Phoenix because of mudslides." "And they're threatening the same for the road ahead, which is hilly." "So, if I got stuck out in that 90-mile stretch... .. in conditions like that..." "I really would be stuck." "I'd be in a lot of trouble." "This time, sanity prevails." "He seeks shelter in a motel." "Everything, from clothes to sleeping bag, is soaked." "I stopped today, which was a bit disappointing after just 30 kilometres." "Definitely feel sort of pangs of guilt about it, because, um, all I've done, day after day, for 155 days, is push, push, push." "See, the rain is just getting worse and worse." "I'm going to see if there's a Laundromat in town so I can clean some of my clothes." "I've not managed to clean any clothes since LA." "If it hadn't been for the fact that..." "No, I don't need to justify it any further." "I've done the right thing." "But it's a hard decision to make." "All I want to do is get the miles done." "He may beat himself up, but the rest pays off." "We've arranged to meet up with Mark for the last time." "We find him late in the day on a Texas interstate." "Hey, how are you?" "We've been searching for hours!" "You found me!" "You're looking good." "I spend days at a time, almost weeks, without speaking to people, and it's months since I've really seen anyone I actually know, so my banter might be a wee bit limited." "I'll get into it, don't worry." "Need supplies." "Going to be camping tonight and get off this interstate." "There's not many places to hide on the big plains here, but hopefully when I cut south, it'll be nice and sheltered, find somewhere." "And we've got another 30, 40 km to do tonight." "The challenge every evening is finding... .. finding somewhere by headlight, by head torch, that you can camp." "To claim the Guinness World Record, Mark must cycle 18,000 miles." "Tired or not, he must log every detail." "To finish a few miles short would be disastrous." "He's no intention of going round again." "I'm doing it because it's there to be done." "I truly believe I'm capable of doing it." "And it hasn't been done to a competitive level before." "The underlying goal has always been the Guinness World Record." "That might be the goal, but I think my interest is truly in the adventure of it." "There's proof of how cold it was last night - my icy bottle." "BOTTLE CONTENTS RATTLE" "Despite discomfort and sub-zero temperatures, he's no problem motivating himself each morning." "Absolutely amazing sunrise." "Makes it all worth it." "If my nose wasn't freezing off." "For five months now, like, I have been physically tired." "The thing which makes it possible is the way I compute that fatigue." "Like all top athletes, his secret lies in an ability to get into a mental zone day after day." "There's days where I've really been hurting," "I've had aches and pains and there's things been seriously wrong, but you don't notice it, because if you're in the..." "If you're focusing and you're..." "Once you're there, once you're in the zone, you don't have to focus." "It is getting there." "Physical pain can distract him from entering the zone." "For over two months, he's been suffering from desperate saddle sores, at times, open, seeping wounds." "To let them heal, he'd have to stop." "If something's sore enough for long enough, then the nerves stop reporting." "So the saddle sores don't go away whilst you sit on the bike for eight, ten hours a day without a break." "But, you know, the first few hours always hurt on the bike." "But normally by lunch time, early afternoon, the backside stops reporting the pain to the head." "It's hard to describe." "But saddle sores are one of the most uncomfortable things I've ever experienced." "He may ignore the signals from his backside, but his stomach demands attention." "Mark needs to eat the calorie equivalent of 24 cheeseburgers a day so, to prevent loss of power, his route must try and include good meal breaks." "Thank you very much." "You're welcome." "I don't normally get anything quite as swanky as this." "I almost never sit in a restaurant, but there's some good calories here." "Chicken and steak." "We've got some good protein with some beans there." "'Some good carbs and stuff. '" "Oh, thank you very much." "You're very welcome." "Next course!" "It's good to get some eggs in." "So this is the second main course." "One good thing in the States is that most food types, packaged foods, have the calories on the back, so you can tell." "It was a lot harder in Croatia, where you just got dal and rice, and you were saying, "What is this?"" "# Chug along, chug along Like the old Virginia creeper" "# Down among the mountain laurel I'm a-gonna meet ya" "# Baby stoke my fire so we can make it home tonight. #" "It's not just the food that lifts his morale." "He's now halfway across America." "Up until 15,000 miles, really, I was counting up." "Now I'm counting down." "I've cycled 3,000 miles before, this trip, and so I'm within the distance which I've cycled before, and there's something quite comforting about that." "I'm counting down a distance which I find, mentally, easier to compute." "I think that change in mindset at this point has actually been quite important, because I think, mentally, I am quite burnt out at this point." "I have been finding it harder in the second half of the race to keep that mental focus, which was so important to get through the really tricky parts of the world." "The tricky parts of the world were never considered to include America." "But alone again as he crosses from Texas into Louisiana, his record bid is nearly wrecked." "Yesterday, which is Tuesday the 22nd of January, was going well until about 3.30 in the afternoon." "An elderly lady jumped a red light at a crossroads, and I had no option but to stop and went straight into the front left wing and over the bonnet and onto the ground." "I was really shaken up." "The bike took the worst of the blow." "I'm just amazed that not more is damaged." "It's such a strong bike." "With a crash like that, I'm just amazed that bike and body came off the way they did." "So I checked myself into the nearest motel, which was about a mile away." "Didn't realise it was completely the wrong part of town, and, basically, I was in bed at 10 o'clock at night and a huge fight kicked off outside." "A massive fight." "And I went to the door to find out what was happening and a guy who I'd said hello to earlier on," "I asked him what was going on, if we needed to call the police." "He said, "No, no, just leave them. "" "His friend nipped into my room and they both ran off." "And they took my wallet and video camera." "It all happened so quickly." "I had no time to do anything." "I went to speak to the owner of the motel and, on the way back, another guy, who was blatantly on drugs, completely cracked out, just got out this car and, right in front of me, smacked this guy in the side of the head," "knocked him to the ground and then turned to me and threatened me." "I didn't really say anything at that point." "He turned and started talking to his friends, and I was just in the background." "I just turned and got into my room as quickly as possible." "Basically, the police came and got me out there this morning, got the bike fixed and I'm back on the road." "I only got 30km done this afternoon, but I'm just pretty shaken up by at all." "The accident and mugging have shaken him badly, destroying his mental focus." "I had a specifically tough time, relating to the events in Louisiana, getting hit by a car and getting mugged in the same day, and it wasn't just the mugging, but when I was threatened afterwards," "when they were looking for protection money, because they were all drugged out." "I think that definitely affected me mentally." "Um..." "The harsh realities of life have pricked the bubble of his world." "He just wants to put America behind him." "So, this is day 182, and 17,000 miles on the road." "The last day of the coast to coast, the last day of the US, which is really exciting." "Ready to get up, get the tent away, get some breakfast and get on the road by 8 o'clock." "And then tomorrow I get a day off." "I'm flying all day, flying to Europe." "Well, that is camp away." "I think I've just got about 70 miles to go until I hit the Atlantic." "Another massive milestone, to get the coast to coast across the US done." "I can start thinking about the finish line after that." "Well, there's the first sign for the end of America." "I wish it was all as easy as this." "The last 30 miles in the US look to be a breeze." "I have half an hour left of cycling in the United States." "That's a pretty good feeling." "Can't wait." "That's the Atlantic!" "38 days from San Francisco." "I didn't think it'd take quite so long." "It's also 17,000 miles to here." "So, we've got a short hop across the Atlantic and about 1,200 miles from home, I think." "Well, the finish line at least." "Back to Paris." "Ocean to ocean, the psychological boost of reaching the Atlantic helps him prepare for the final leg." "Mark has always talked of these last 1,200 miles as a sprint to the finish - a tall order after 17,000 miles on the road." "Back to Europe." "Quite a relief, that." "That was my rest day and I'm shattered." "Every time I have a rest day, I'm twice as tired." "I just want to get back on the bike." "It's taken three flights from Florida to Lisbon." "Quickly re-building his bike, he's keen to be on the road for the last leg." "To encourage him on the road to Paris he's joined by one of his support team from Scotland." "Back in Continental Europe." "I've been looking forward to this for so long." "It's hard to explain." "Right, we're off. 10 o'clock, landed a few hours ago." "That's not gonna work." "No?" "No, cos otherwise, on the TV, it'll be sideways." "It's taken a few hours to build the bike up and get breakfast and on the road." "My body doesn't know what time of day it is, but 1,200 miles to Paris, let's go." "1,200 miles." "The danger is, so close to the end, he'll lose focus." "The scale of his achievement is awesome." "If he reaches Paris, he'll have ridden, unsupported, the equivalent of eight Tour de France races back to back." "Mark set out with a personal target of 195 days, smashing the current record by over 80 days." "He's right on schedule, but only just." "Madrid could delay him." "The local police rise to the challenge and whisk him through the city." "Utterly ridiculous." "I'll need to check it, but it's about 225 kilometres." "I've just come over a top, which is 1,444." "Unbelievable." "I'm absolutely spent, but I got 80 kilometres an hour coming down the hill there." "What a buzz." "10 minutes and I'm going to crash." "His reserves already low, the dash past Madrid takes its toll." "I'm feeling absolutely rubbish." "Yesterday, I pushed out a huge 225 kilometres on the bike, which felt great at the time, I was on an absolute high when I finished." "I felt OK this morning, but it caught up with me, like all big days do." "Just completely hit the wall this afternoon." "Mark is in need of anything to help lift him." "Crossing the final frontier does the trick." "This is officially France, though I'm in the Basque country, so it's a bit of a France-y..." "Spain-y bit here, and it feels fantastic." "Just to walk into the little boulangerie there and get some breakfast." "Sit out, just as the sun comes up, and get a cafe au lait." "That's what it's all about." "With every last exhausting mile, the dream is coming closer and closer." "Well, I'm just about to finish day 192 on the road." "I think, like when I landed in Australia, I had false impressions." "You know, head down, race on." "I thought the same after America." "I thought, "Right, the worst is behind me." "Back to Europe, I've cycled Europe all over." ""You know, 12 days, pedal up to Paris." ""Job done!"" "Not to be." "I'm struggling to focus on the bike." "My mind's just going mad." "After living in this world of my own for six months," "I'm now just counting down the hours to the end in Paris." "Three years ago, I set myself the challenge of getting round the world in 195 days." "Tomorrow is day 195." "Mark continues to pile pressure on himself." "He's announced the date and arrival time, and doesn't want to disappoint." "Pushing hard in his final week on the road, he averages 122 miles a day." "I don't care if it takes all night to get to Chartres." "I need to get there to got an easy run-in tomorrow." "I'm not willing to make the last day a huge mileage day." "There's going to be enough going on tomorrow." "And it always gets slow going into town." "And Paris is one big town." "So the last big push, this feels like." "Get some food in, layer up and get these miles done." "Don't get me wrong, I'm ready to stop." "I was ready to stop any time in the last 9,000 miles, but it'd not..." "it doesn't seem real at all." "All this messaging which is coming to me, all this news about people coming to Paris and this big finale, it just seems so abstract." "I guess I just feel very removed from it." "It'll hit home when I turn up and there's..." "I don't know." "I don't know how many people are going to be there." "The last day, the last miles." "But there's a cold, cruel northerly wind." "This headwind I've got this morning in Paris is the last thing I needed." "There's nothing left, absolutely nothing." "I was expecting to feel excited at this point." "It's not a fairy-tale ending." "I'm sure the sense of achievement and stuff will come later, but at the moment, I just want to cross that line." "Nearly there." "Surely nothing else can get in the way." "You've got to be kidding!" "In the heart of Paris, family and friends gather for the finish." "They've not seen Mark for seven months." "But Mark isn't yet ready to join the party." "HE GASPS" "Well, the last 18 days and 400 miles will be good training for that hill, at least." "The police are happy." "They've got their whistles." "The Paris police clear the way, across the Seine and on to the finishing line - the Arc de Triomphe." "Even the British Ambassador has turned out with the press to witness the climax." "It's the Arc." "I'm back." "195 days from Paris to Paris." "18,400 miles on the road." "Over 1,500 hours in the saddle." "He's climbed the equivalent of 15 Mount Everests, burnt 1.2 million calories," "10 million pedal turns, 27 million heartbeats for one new world record..." "Oh, look!" "Look, look!" "How are you doing?" "How are you doing?" "Amazing." "So good." "Job done." "Job done." "Job done." "Five days later, the new Guinness World Record is confirmed." "Three years in the making, Mark's dream has finally come true." "It's been an incredible adventure." "Adventures like this are definitely pretty addictive." "There's moments on the road when you wonder, "What am I doing?"" "You kid yourself that you're going to come back and just fit back into normal life, but the seeds of other ideas are already there." "You can't really stop that, and I'm already dreaming of other things."