At 07:00 (CET) last Saturday morning, Mark Kowalski cycled across the border from Bulgaria into Greece, came to a stop, pulled out his phone and dialled his fianceé. He had news. With that final border crossing, the London-based Canadian ultracyclist and bikepacker had just broken a bike-riding world record.
Kowalski’s tracker showed that he had just cycled exactly 2798.59km, averaging 404.25km per day for the last week. But the record he’d just stamped his name on had nothing directly to do with distance. Since setting off at 09:00 (CET) on the previous Saturday, from a border town in The Netherlands, Kowalski had pedalled through 21 different countries in seven days, beating the previous tally of 20 nations.
