Jenny Graham left Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate on 16 June 2018 and returned there on 18 October. Her roughly 29,000-kilometre ride without a support crew took 124 days, 10 hours and 50 minutes. The European section also took her through Latvia.
A year of preparation preceded the start: up to 20 hours of cycling each week, other fitness training and visa applications. She fitted it all around a full-time job. Guinness World Records formally recognised the women’s record from that ride in June 2019.
The film Eastbound explores what sits behind the finish time: long hours in the saddle, Southern Hemisphere cold and stressful traffic. Alongside the difficulties, it makes room for the people she met and friendships formed with strangers.
In her 2023 book Coffee First, Then the World, Graham revisits the daily work of the journey, from roadside repairs and sleeping beside roads to constraints on time and money. It offers a way to see an endurance achievement as a succession of practical decisions, as well as a time on a clock.