Awesome achievement.
Yes, there are healthy options around here. Not everyone in the US is fat and eats poorly. Come on.
Wild experience though.

vsk

"Yes, there are healthy options around here. Not everyone in the US is fat and eats poorly."

Of course there are, but he biked the country from coast to coast, which means that he probably very often ended up in small towns with a McDonalds and a gas station...

most towns of any size, unless extremely(!!) small have grocery stores in the US. buy healthy stuff. there is almost always a choice.

Total BS on the US food comment. Even if he went to McGarbage, he could have eaten their salads and muffins. But let's be real, every town has a diner, almost every gas station at least stocks Power Bars or the like. Every WalMart certainly stocks Power Bars and the like. What about simple grocery stores? What, they only stock junk food??? This guys is a dope with that comment. Dunno about Australia, but my suspicion is that it is similar.

I dunno on the food comment. I ride a lot and you plan your routes to avoid traffic and busy areas. A walmart or decent grocery store is by definition a busy area or they wouldn't be there. I don't know how many times I have grabbed a snickers bar as the healthiest option at a rural gas station. Did a four day trip last labor day in the central part of Michigan. 3rd day was really rural and I didn't see anything but tiny one pump gas stations all day. I ate snacks I had left from the day before and a can of pringles I picked up when I craved something salty. Then when i reached my designated campground for the night everything was closed except the local bar because it was sunday. I had dinner at the bar. So depending on the route I can believe that, not the whole trip but large portions of it. Best bet for me in Rural areas are road side fruit and vegetable stands. Also if he was going for a record he wouldn't have wanted to detour into towns to get fresh provisions unless necessary.

I`m interested in his statement on food options.

People seem to be thinking that he's claiming there isn't healthy food around in the US. He isn't. He is saying that their isn't healthy pre-prepaired food that he can eat when trying to break a record.

I think that is believeable, certainly in parts of the UK you find that. In the big cities you tend to be far better served but if you look at the snack product lines these tend to be very unhealthy indeed. Snacks can be healthy. As for salad as an option, he is trying to consume 6000 calories a day! Plain salad isn't that nutricuous either, its the interesting things that you add to it that can make it better.

176lbs of gear!? that seems to be at least 3-4 times the amount needed. weird.

Maybe he should have carried less gear and stocked up on healthy food when he could.

"176lbs of gear!? that seems to be at least 3-4 times the amount needed. weird. "

I think that includes some electronic gear so he could give updates about his trip on his website.

McSalad with choice of chicken is unhealthy? Deli's seem to be along most main streets in the USA, in the grocery stores. Even when I walked the rails, a slight detour found good stuff. I think he leans into extremely 'political', whattaYa bet?
'DaFlikkers'

Read the article, it points out that he was vegetarian, which really restricts his choice of American food -- at he ate meat out of desperation at times. The 80kg of gear included a television camera and a tent, and probably spares for his bike, tools, etc.

All the previous commenters have missed the point anyway. This guy cycled round the world in just 195 days. That's pretty incredible!

cyclists, like runners, need carbs. healthy carbs on the go are hard to find. and if he's not used to the HFCS, then it can have hypo-glycemic effects on him (even if you are used to it there are still effects).

I am in awe of his accomplishment.

um, has anyone been outside of the us? our food options really are that terrible, especially for someone used to eating european style meals. he didn't just make that up. someone riding around the world is probably rather in tune with his body's needs and thus is a pretty credible source. he needed to be very careful not to eat junk calories, which is what many have suggested. not to mention the fact that he wasn't exactly stopping to cook his meals, so grocery stores probably weren't exactly a great option. being a vegetarian has has nothing to do with it. the diets of most of europe consist of a fair amount of meat. the guy rode his bike around the world in 195 days!

Yep I missed the point, sorry. I never had 195 days to spend riding a bike. I always worked. This shows just how cushy life is in the world today. Records being broken, Extreme sports challenges world wide, Jeting here and there to enter and observe competitions at every level. Not many years past, everyone struggled, just to survive. Life is very good these days. For many people of course, life is a little more difficult. I am happy that a person can do these things and always happy to see records fall. It shows how well conditioned we have become. That is not possible in hard times. Hope we don't start taking it all for granted. 'DaFlikkers'

I'm confused with the amount of gear too. Why would you carry more than your body weight just in gear? Sounds outrageous for a long trip to me. I would think he would just carry the bare minimium to survive and repair the bike.

I believe that, among nations with a full selection of dietary options, America currently has the worst diet of all nations at any point in history. It's known as "junk" food....

Wo !! I am sorry the food thing made it to the forefront.

The achievement is amazing. Every day was probably a wild story, especially in the more 'exotic' (is it still PC to say that?) places.
I will have to read more. 176 pounds is a ton on a bike, wow. I carry 20-25 pounds to work every day and it makes the Manhattan Bridge a bear to get across. He's got like steep climbs that go on for miles at a time. Wild.
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Blogengeezer, you must have some cool stories to tell.
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America with the worst dietary options, bla bla bla...
Yes, there is lousy pre-packaged cr@p out there but come on. I am sure there are other places on earth with 'junk food' as well. Now weaning off the car dependence and sense of entitlement and prima donna mentality drizzled in a foreign oil reduction, that would help out a lot. Less bash, more solutions.
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vsk

Blogengeezer: he may have raised US$35000 for charity... I wouldn't call that cushy and I certainly wouldn't call that not working. You're calling it a free ride? The fact that he has smashed a record serves only to highlight the achievement and create awareness for those he is supporting.

Here are his apparently pointless causes:

Country Holidays for Inner City Kids
http://www.chicks.org.uk/
Speaks for itself

Edinburgh Cyrenians Trust
http://www.cyrenians.org.uk/
Helping the homeless in Edinburgh

Tusk Trust
http://www.tusk.org/
Protecting Wildlife, Supporting Communities and Promoting Education

Community Action Nepal
http://www.canepal.org.uk/
Raising living standards for the mountain people of Nepal

I think you should be mindful of this before you mouth off. Whilst I actually enjoyed your latest blog, mindful that I should read about you prior to writing this comment, I reckoned that you're living in the past! Thanks for winning WW2 for us, but move on!

The comment about it being hard to find nutritious food in the US is definitely accurate, at least while cycling. Just last summer I did a couple hundred mile ride in the rural midwest over a few days. About half the towns I passed through had absolutely nothing - no gas station, no grocery store - just the crumbling, shuttered remains of the main street.

Of course it's possible to eat healthy food in the United States, but getting 6,000 healthy calories a day out of a couple of rural gas stations is tough. Try it.

For more information about Mark's trip, including gear that he carried and the areas through which he travelled (he carried a GPS tracker), check out www.pedallingaround.com. You will also learn more about the impact that this young man has had on the world as a result of his amazing journey. One has to admire anybody who has the mental and physical stamina to accomplish such a feat.

I can believe the comment about food. I eat ultra-healthy so I can stay active and when I travel away from the west coast it is difficult to find some good food. Much of what is considered to be health food is not healthy food. "Healthy" sports bars and drinks are often just refined carbs and other garbage.

Way to go on the bike trip though. Astounding. My applause for the feat. Now get some rest.

Man, I know the food thing has been commented on ad nauseum, but it is also hard for me to believe that someone could cycle in hundreds of countries around the world and not be able to find a grocery store in Anytown, US. I can't speak for Australia, because I've never been, but if he had a computer of all things to blog his progress... I mean I can find VEGAN food in Anytown, US. I don't have a ton of experience in other countries, but even in Honduras there was pretty much the option of eating at a sit-down restaurant or eating gas-station crap. So I don't see how he could find healthy, substantial food everywhere but the US [and Aus.]. That just seems... not right. I mean it doesn't seem like he's talking about health bars or anything, but I don't see how the food he would find in many other countries in the same situation would be much different? Maybe I'm just not well-traveled enough...

Healthy food on a bike is not the same as healthy food for daily activity. Salad would be a great choice if you want excessive diarrhea and extremely few calories. Even most US sports drinks are too sugary to digest quickly enough while exercising and can cause major stomach trouble- they're intended for use after exercise. There's a million other reasons why it's hard to find healthy food on a bike tour. Most obviously, it's difficult to find that perfect spot (yes, most small towns have at least one place that a vegan can find a feast) while trying to travel at world-record pace. You try one or two places and make do. He never claimed that the US and Australia are filled with idiots who are terrible people, he just said it was easier elsewhere. And I think the weight on his bike included water and those cans of beans. It's easy to say he could have made it with less but who broke the world record by 81 days?

Scotland... Hmmm... Traditionally guys wore skirts without underpants, dyed tartan with berries and dirt, and the feast of the country is Haggis.

There are many recipes for haggis, most of which have in common the following ingredients: sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally boiled in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours.

Ummm, I will have a subway chicken sandwich or one of their new pizzas.

This guy was probably hit too many times in the head with a caman while playing shinty.

Caber or sheaf tossing anyone?

Please, do some homework next time...

wow, i'm impressed. biking around the world, whoohoo!

he probably also carried lots of tools and spare parts as well.... rubber and metal are pretty heavy.

but about the food comments, i wonder if he depended on finding ready-to-eat foods or prepared it himself? preparing foods takes extra time but expands options (though adding time and requiring additional equipment).

6000 calories is a lot of food and is difficult to consume no matter what your diet is composed of.... but neither 6000 calories of salad nor hamburger would be healthy.

gas station food is notoriously bad: overprocessed overpackaged preservative-laden junk.... finding a banana or an apple is an anomaly. healthy, portable, consumed out-of-hand foods (vegetarian or not) aren't always available, even staying relatively close to major cities.

and even our beloved "juice beverages" and "energy bars" aren't particularly healthy. have you ever shopped in a small-town grocery store? you can't always depend on being able to find seemingly ubiquitous foods such as fresh produce or tofu, even in the suburbs.

Fantastic achievement, I wonder if he's planning to break any other world records.

There is healthy food available here in America, if you go to the grocery store and cook it yourself, or in cities at foreign restaurants. But generally most American food sold everywhere comes with extra cheese, butter, salt, sugar, with little nutritional value which is the wrong food for an endurance athlete.

thats really cool dude

thats really cool dude

just watched the bbc program showing the film of this epic voyage so i can answer a few of the questions here. the reason his bag was so heavy was because it contained a gps tracker, video camera, supplies, tent, sleeping bag, laptop, log, changes of clothes, spare parts and other equipment. it was not on his back, but attached to his bike. he needed most of the heavy stuff to be able to verify his record with guinness.
it's fair to say that he struggled more with food in asia than the us, so these comments are taken out of context. it was a problem for him everywhere, but less so in most of continental europe. he didn't prepare any of his food, but sat down at cafes and restaurants where he could and stocked up on energy bars, bananas, water and chocolate where he could.
he survived unscathed through the whole of europe and asia (bar mental & physical fatigue, plus punctures and other bike problems), faced extremes in australia, but the only place he was mugged was the us (in louisiana)! and that's pretty shocking considering he went through iran, lawless areas of pakistan and within miles of the fighting in afghanistan!
discussions of his diet problems in america shouldn't take away from his phenomenal achievement. his mental strength is just incredible - cycling 100 miles plus relentlessly every day... respect!!