Some cyclists ride for fitness. Some ride for fun. Alex McCormack rides to find where his body breaks — and then keeps going anyway.
The 28-year-old from North Yorkshire, England, completed one of the most jaw-dropping feats in ultra-distance cycling history on Thursday 02 April 2026, finishing a seven-day distance record attempt along the Moselle river near Koblenz, Germany, with a staggering total of 3,826.47 km. That beats the entire 2026 Tour de France route — by nearly 500 kilometres.
The previous record had stood at 3,813.81 km. McCormack shattered it by just 12.66 km, a margin that tells you everything about how brutally close this effort came to falling short.
A member of the Canyon x DT Swiss All-Terrain Racing squad, McCormack is no ordinary rider. He bagged the 2025 Atlas and Hellenic Mountain Races, the 2024 Highland Trail 550, and posted a Double Everesting World Record in 2025, climbing 17,732 metres in under 21 hours. The man collects extreme records the way most of us collect coffee loyalty stamps.
Riding his Canyon Speedmax CFR across a flat 150 km out-and-back course, he averaged a punishing 18.5 hours per day in the saddle — leaving fewer than five hours for sleep, eating and recovery. By the final day, his neck muscles had given up entirely, requiring a bungee cord to keep his head upright — that is proper Yorkshire grit.
To fuel the record ride he consumed a massive 14,000 calories daily, including:
- x6 brioche buns with peanut butter/marshmallow spread
- x2 bags of strawberry laces
- x2 bowls of pesto pasta
- x4 chicken & rice burrito wraps
- x1 slice of carrot cake
- x4 carb drinks
- x4 black coffees
- x1 can of coca-cola
- x1 snickers ice cream
The record now heads to the World Ultra Cycling Association for ratification, with a Guinness World Records application to follow. We’d say rest up, Alex — but we suspect he already has his next challenge planned.
Photo Credit: Canyon
© 2026 Copyright Gran Fondo Daily News – All Rights Reserved