Ultra-endurance cyclist Dr Sarah Ruggins has announced a bid to complete a bicycle circumnavigation of the globe in 75 days, a target that would better the current outright Guinness World Record held by British adventurer Mark Beaumont.
Ruggins’ proposed Project Atlas expedition is scheduled to start from Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia on 4 May 2027. She intends to cover about 29,000km, with an average requirement of roughly 400km a day, according to Cycling Weekly.
The scale of the proposed ride is defined by Beaumont’s benchmark. He completed a Greenwich-to-Greenwich global journey in 2017 in 78 days, 14 hours and 40 minutes, over 18,032 miles. Cycling Weekly reported that he remains the only rider to have finished the challenge in fewer than 80 days.
Ruggins is therefore not merely seeking to set a women’s mark. Her stated objective is the overall record, and a 75-day finish would cut more than three days from Beaumont’s time. That makes daily consistency as important as isolated very long rides: the intended average distance must be maintained across an expedition expected to last more than 10 weeks.
A record attempt with a route still to be settled
Ruggins told Cycling Weekly that the route has not yet been finalised. She said the expedition would be run under the same rules as Beaumont’s attempt, but that the geography could not simply replicate his course.
She explained that travel through Russia was not an option and said the team could not travel east across Europe through Ukraine or Iran to reach Central Asia. The different route is significant because flights would add to the distance she needs to cover each day, Ruggins said. Her team expects to publish the route and further details in the coming months.
That uncertainty matters when comparing a proposed 2027 effort with a record set in 2017. The target time is clear, but the exact roads, transfers and daily demands have not been announced. Any assessment of whether the planned course is quicker or harder than Beaumont’s would therefore be premature.
Ruggins presented the project as the final stage of a longer progression in ultra-endurance cycling. She said her team had developed the idea over three years, moving from a country-scale challenge to a continental one before turning to a global circumnavigation.
Previous rides provide the competitive foundation
The Canadian-born rider already holds two outright records, according to Cycling Weekly. In 2025, she completed LEJOGLE — Land’s End–John O’Groats–Land’s End — in five days, 11 hours and 14 minutes. Earlier in 2026, she rode 6,042km from south to north across the European continent in 13 days, 20 hours and 27 minutes.
Those performances are directly relevant to Project Atlas because they show experience of sustained multi-day riding rather than a single-day endurance event. They do not, however, remove the step up involved in a global attempt: the proposed distance is almost five times her European crossing, while the required 400km daily average would need to be sustained for 75 days.
Ruggins said she only got her first bike in 2023 and had built both her riding skills and support team through the previous challenges. Cycling Weekly also reported that she spent a decade recovering from a rare autoimmune condition during her teens.
Beaumont has encouraged the proposed attempt, Ruggins said, describing him as a mentor and friend who had helped her believe the objective was possible. Ruggins nevertheless said she did not frame the project as an attack on him personally, but as an effort to establish whether anyone could travel around the world by bicycle in 75 days.
Another recent attempt illustrates the difficulty of the standard Ruggins is pursuing. Alaskan rider Lael Wilcox ended an effort to beat Beaumont’s time earlier in 2026 after 14 days because of heat exhaustion during a heatwave, Cycling Weekly reported. Wilcox retains the women’s round-the-world record of 108 days, 12 hours and 12 minutes, set in 2024.
For now, Project Atlas is an announced future record attempt; its full route has not yet been published. But its numerical target is unambiguous: Ruggins is aiming beyond the women’s record and at the fastest recognised global bicycle circumnavigation on record.