Meet the World's Toughest Cyclist
May 4, 2015 12:34 PM   Subscribe

On December 22, 2012, Buhring arrived back in Naples. Guinness World Records certified her time of 152 days total, 144 of them on the bike. She had wanted to be the fastest woman to cycle around the world; instead she was the first, or as Guinness defines it, the first to do it alone, traveling continuously and in the same direction .

Juliana Buhring's public story began when she left a notorious cult, Family International, and wrote a bestseller about it, in 2007.

Prior to leaving the cult, Buhring had dated the late South African whitewater kayaker Hendrik Coetzee, before he was consumed by crocs while descending the Lukuga River, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in December 2010.

Then she rode her bike around the world.

But she's just getting started: since traveling 'round the world, Buhring has entered two self-supported cross-continent races: the Transcontinental, from London to Istanbul, and last year's inaugural TransAmerica, from Oregon to Virginia. She finished both races among the top male competitors. She is one of the primary subjects of a new documentary about the TransAmerica, Inspired to Ride, which premiered in April in Denver.

She says she has been hit by cars twice, and merely "knocked over" half a dozen more times, in the past four years, the first after she’d been cycling for only a month (read: she's only been riding for four years!).
posted by Dashy (18 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
How, exactly, did she cross the Atlantic Ocean and the Bering Strait?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:08 PM on May 4, 2015


This sounds like something they'd use do to timeskip "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" in between seasons.
posted by parliboy at 1:11 PM on May 4, 2015


The official world record is 106 days, 10hrs, and 33mins (the rules are quite Byzantine as Lee Fancourt discovered).
posted by fairmettle at 1:18 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


How, exactly, did she cross the Atlantic Ocean and the Bering Strait?

In TFA it says:

When she reached Porto, Portugal, eight days after leaving home, Buhring and Pegasus caught a flight to Boston, where she continued across the U.S.

Personally I am disappointed that it was not some kind of paddle boat.
posted by feral_goldfish at 1:23 PM on May 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


She had wanted to be the fastest woman to cycle around the world; instead she was the first, or as Guinness defines it, the first to do it alone, traveling continuously and in the same direction.

But since she's the first she's also the fastest, so mission accomplished!
posted by Sangermaine at 1:26 PM on May 4, 2015


How, exactly, did she cross the Atlantic Ocean and the Bering Strait?

On preview I see the rules got posted in that Wikipedia link, but basically you're allowed to fly for part of it as long as you travel the minimum distance (40,100km) and cycle at least 29,000km of that.
posted by jackflaps at 1:26 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I love people like this.
posted by beau jackson at 1:33 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


And if you watch Inspired To Ride, you would learn that she didn't know how to fix a bicycle chain. And she fell off her bike on the first day of the race, after hitting a rock in the road.

I wasn't very impressed when she came on stage during the premiere of that movie, or how she was portrayed in that movie. They made a big stink about her "rivalry" with the other Italians racing, and she just seemed - I dunno: rude to people around her.

I was inspired to roll my eyes, but not to ride.
posted by alex_skazat at 1:44 PM on May 4, 2015


Toughest? Maybe. I'd call her unbreakable.
posted by bonehead at 2:22 PM on May 4, 2015


This woman is doing a round the world trip completely under her own power, rowing across the oceans. It's been four years so far, so I think that part adds a bit to the journey.
posted by backseatpilot at 3:10 PM on May 4, 2015


Unless the movie is a self-made documentary I would not hold anything about the "rivalry" aspect against her; that sort of stuff is apparently a necessary part of every post-'reality'-TV-era documentary now.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:22 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


One is tempted to ask "What is the point?" Dr. Samuel Johnson, when considering this question concluded that the value lies in illustrating what a person is capable of.
posted by rankfreudlite at 4:23 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


HxC
posted by oceanjesse at 6:44 PM on May 4, 2015


Thanks for the post--a very readable, condensed and well written feature on her. Much appreciated and all new to me.
posted by rmhsinc at 6:47 PM on May 4, 2015


"She crossed New Zealand and Australia in little more than a month; when a provincial border guard in the outback tried to confiscate her bag of oranges, a rare delicacy in those parts"

Um, no. I'm assuming they are talking about crossing state borders and there is a very good reason why she wasn't allowed to take her oranges. Also, lots and lots of signage warning her that would be the case. The author seems to be implying that the border guard was trying to steal her rare, special oranges (not rare or special sorry) when five seconds of research would have shown that this is not the case. This really has ruined the article for me.
posted by Wantok at 7:32 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


"She crossed New Zealand and Australia in little more than a month; when a provincial border guard in the outback tried to confiscate her bag of oranges, a rare delicacy in those parts"
I think the point in including these extraneous details was to make this more entertaining. When taking this to the opposite extreme one could write "I traveled from point A to point B." Even more extremely, one could write "Things happened." Since we already know that things happen, we could write "The universe continued being the universe." Since this is undoubtably the fact, why write anything?

By the way, I think her mentioning the oranges was to indicate their importance to her, not the border guards.
posted by rankfreudlite at 8:08 PM on May 4, 2015


Buhring had dated the late South African whitewater kayaker Hendrik Coetzee, before he was consumed by crocs while descending the Lukuga River

That article did not make me want to go kayaking in the DRC. The description of the attack was terrifying.

In the main article about Buhring, she directly compares growing up in a cult with her over-the-top immersion in extreme cycling. I suppose the well-adjusted people who are happy with their day jobs almost never take on such monomaniacal pursuits.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:11 PM on May 4, 2015


I wonder what Marianne Vos would think about someone else being called the 'world's toughest cyclist'.
posted by jimmythefish at 9:49 PM on May 4, 2015


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