Stone cyclist, Dan Bigham, has beaten Bradley Wiggin’s British Hour Record that had stood for over 6 years.
Dan, 29, cycled an incredible 54.723km within the hour, going nearly 200m further than Wiggins’ did in June 2015 when he clocked up 54.526km.
The record-breaking run took place at the velodrome in Grenchen, Switzerland, a few days before the European Track Championships take place at the same venue.
The Cycling Dane YouTube channel live-streamed the event and interviewed Dan about how he found the run:
“Actually really enjoyable!
“I’m sure I had a few people scared early on because of the pacing but that was the plan. It’s quite scary when you’ve got to ride it because you know you’ve got to pick it up.
“I felt I was on a good one on the warm-up on the track. I knew exactly the time gaps I needed, actually in my target I was supposed to be 27 seconds back at halfway but I was only 18/19. Then I was chipping away and it was really good and I thought this is going to bite me. Then the last few minutes it started to hurt.”
Dan’s had his eye on this record for a while, however, the pandemic delayed an attempt but allowed him to focus on his training for the event.
“I had a good mental strategy, chunking it out in time gaps and splits I need to be doing,” he explained of the mind games deployed to aid the physical effort. “I’m good at holding my position naturally, it was more taking a good line and staying in control of my breathing, because we found when that goes, my head goes.
“I didn’t think about it too much, in practice hours I’ve had music on seeing if distraction would be a good thing, but to be honest I kept mentally aware for a good 45 minutes, I knew where I was, what was going on, knew what was happening, and that’s a really good thing, keeping control of your head.”
