Jenny Graham and Mark Beaumont circumnavigated the globe in record time on their bicycles. One took a little more than 100 days, the other a little less than 80 days around the world. By bike!

Jenny Graham (>>Wikipedia)

>>Story: https://bikepacking.com/news/jenny-grahams-around-world-cycling-route/

Mark Beaumont (>>Wikipedia)

>> Story: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2019/8/mark-beaumont-explains-what-it-takes-to-cycle-around-the-world-in-record-time-585073

Since I was already thinking about speeds here on the blog, and the topic was “Faster than the Concorde“, I thought to myself, because I am so lazy sometimes, how could one circumnavigate the earth on a bicycle and still be faster than the two mentioned above?

Around the world in 24 hours by bicycle

Well, you attach a swivel joint to the North Pole and you don’t even have to oil it tightly, because in this experiment it only turns around itself once, within 24 hours. Then you screw a quarter circle of metal to it that is big enough to reach the equator and stick a bicycle to it. For my experiment, the bicycle also has something like a canoe outrigger, so that it would be easy to get through the oceans and would not drown when circumnavigating the earth by bicycle.

On the internet, you can find speeds of 1,670 kilometres per hour for the rotation of the earth at the equator. This would allow you to cover the 40,000 kilometres of the Earth’s diameter in 24 hours and simply let the Earth spin away from under you without making any great effort!

But why cycle the 40,000 km along the equator when Jenny and Mark didn’t cycle along the equator either?

It would be enough to cycle around the world at the 53rd parallel at the height of Berlin.

That would still be about 24,110 km on the 53rd lines of latitude, instead of the 40,000 km on the equator. The speed would then be 1,005 kilometres per hour, which you would need to cycle around the earth in 24 hours. You would then pass through Liverpool and Dublin on the 53rd lines of latitude. Admittedly, not much time for the spectators to applaud if you were to race through the countryside at 1,000 km/hour.

Ok, the speed of 1,000 km/h – the wind would burn your eyes a bit, but the bicycle rider would certainly have safety goggles and a helmet on his/her head. And I’ve never cycled for 24 hours at a stretch, I can’t even remember cycling 100 km at a stretch. But there are people like that, see Jenny and Mark!

Couldn’t it be even faster to cycle around the world on a bike?

Sure, you could go to the North Pole (if there was ice) and cycle around it 5 or 10 metres distance – but that doesn’t count, does it?