Pictures: Manuel Hausdorfer/limeART

Perth to Sydney virtually non-stop on a bike. 3,950km in just under 155 hours. More than six days of continuous riding on a liquid diet with just five hours of sleep in total. The stats are simply mind-boggling.

Believe it or not, Austrian superman Christoph Strasser did all of that in January with barely any additional training. The 34-year-old ultra-cyclist knows exactly how to cope with the physical demands of such a gruelling ride having won the infamous 4,800km Race Across America three times in his endurance career.

Strasser has put enough miles in the tank in the past decade that amazingly he only trained for about six hours a day to get himself fully fit ahead of his goal of breaking the record for riding across Australia.

However, despite all his previous experience, the mental battle was perhaps even harder to cope with as he rode through the Outback day and night – grabbing just a handful of 45-minute naps in his entire six-day ride.

Five hours sleep per night might have been painful enough, but five hours in total!

Unsurprisingly, the punishing schedule sent Strasser into a world where his mind started playing tricks on him, even though his body was still working properly. The sleep deprivation caused crazy hallucinations – such as a group of koala bears sitting happily on the bonnet of his support car while it drove at 60km/h along the highway – while his brain struggled to process information to help keep the record-breaking attempt on track.

Luckily, Strasser’s wisdom acquired over 15 years as a long-distance cyclist meant he was well aware the mental struggle would be immense, but it still took a massive effort to overcome.

“Through the race I had just five 45-minute sleeps and pretty much the rest of the time I was constantly on the bike and riding,” the Austrian explains. “Other than that I would only stop for a pee and maybe for a 10 minute rest during the day. Sleep deprivation is probably one of the hardest things to deal with in the whole ride.

“My team had to watch me closely and were playing music and talking to me as we went along to try to keep me alert. In six-and-a-half days of riding with maybe just five hours of total sleep, I actually only went off the road twice after losing concentration or actually nodding off.

“You go onto the verge and you hit some stones or something and the vibration wakes you up again and that snaps you back into focus. With the sleep deprivation also comes hallucinations, although I am well aware of it because I always have them on these long ultra-rides,” Strasser adds.

“On this occasion we were riding through the Outback and we could see some emus out on the plain in the distance, so in my mind I was thinking of them. Next thing my support car went on ahead so the camera guy could get out and take some pictures of me as I was riding past. So I see him up ahead and he’s standing by the side of the road holding this big emu in his arms with the bird’s legs dangling down!

“But of course I was just seeing things. It was just the camera he was holding, with the tripod sticking out!

“Later on, near the end of the ride, my support car came up alongside me to give me water and pass on some information. Normally I would leave one hand on my handlebars and hold onto the car with the other hand and be able to turn my head to talk to the crew.

“But this time, when I looked across, I could see all these koala bears sitting on the bonnet of the car and on the roof. So then I didn’t want to turn my head because I knew I was just seeing things and I didn’t want to confuse my brain any more - which made it quite difficult to keep control of the bike and listen to what my crew was trying to tell me.

“Other times your brain just stops working properly. On the run-in to Sydney I suddenly kept saying that I shouldn’t be riding on the highway - that it wasn’t allowed - and that we should pull off. Or I’d see some people having a picnic on the side of the road and suggest we all stop and join them for something to eat.

“Or my bike would feel like it was made of jelly and I’d think it was wobbling around beneath me. That’s when my support crew are right there telling me to just keep going and that everything is OK. They know me really well and it’s important to have that trust in the whole team.”

Strasser’s support crew was eight-strong – mostly old friends he grew up with in Austria – and they were influential as he completed the 3,950km in a total time of six days, 10 hours and 58 minutes. That was about 20 hours quicker than the previous record set by Gerhard Gulewicz, another Austrian, back in 2007.

The main weapon in Strasser’s armoury, was a Specialized S-Works Shiv fitted with a Syntace Stratos CX + C6 Double Helix Bend aero bar. He was able to use this bike for the majority of the ride, switching to his Specialized S-Works Roubaix just in the last day or so when having to climb through the New South Wales Tablelands.

His hardware stood up to the task superbly, leaving the mechanical experts in his team with very little work to do. In fact, they only had one flat tyre to deal with on the entire trip – much to Strasser’s amazement.

“We had just one puncture and only in the last day or so when I was on the Roubaix - which was kind of funny in itself,” he says. “When we’d arrived in Western Australia ahead of the attempt I went out on my first training ride and I got a puncture within about 20 minutes.

“I just thought, ‘Oh no, this is going to be terrible’, and I got on the phone straight away to people back home suggesting that we needed about 20 sets of tyres to do this race in Australia.

“But then during the ride there was nothing until right near the end. I had specifically chosen the Specialized Roubaix Pro tyres because they were a bit stronger - even though that meant sacrificing a bit of speed. And it proves just how good tyres are getting now.”

Australian cyclists who were following Strasser’s attempt in real-time via a special tracking website expressed disbelief that he had chosen to ride across the country in the middle of summer, when temperatures in the Outback can often nudge 50 degrees.

Strasser admits it probably wasn’t the ideal time to launch his bid for glory – and confesses that he was pretty scared about the high temperatures before setting off – but says there was only a small window of opportunity for him to come Down Under with such a big crew.

And, as it turned out, it wasn’t the heat that gave him the biggest problems during the six-day slog.

“In some ways doing the ride all the way across Australia was easier than I imagined, but in other ways it was harder,” he says. “We had come here worried about the heat and we thought it would be high temperatures all the way. But after about a day we actually had to deal with heavy rain and we were not prepared for that.

“I only had one rain jacket and so I ended up borrowing jackets from my crew team. Of course, the rain was not nice to ride in, but perhaps it was better than it being super hot.

“People might ask why we decided to come to Australia to do this in January if we were so worried about the heat, but it’s difficult to just pick another time because all my crew have jobs to do and need to take time off work to come and do this.

“Plus my biggest event of the year is always the Race Across America which is in June, so I need time to train and prepare for that - so the schedule is not so easy,” he explains.

Another factor in the decision was fate! Strasser smashed up his shoulder in a crash back in September 2015 and wasn’t able to get back to fitness in time to compete in the Race Across America in 2016. But that gave him enough time to plan a new adventure and Australia was calling ever since he had heard about Gulewicz’s week-long ride across the country nearly a decade ago.

Strasser, who will once again attempt to win the RAAM this year, says he usually loves the long open roads in America that allow him to get his head down, slip into a steady rhythm and really pound out the kilometres.

Other long-distance riders often find those monotonous stretches of road boring and prefer more interesting roads – if nothing else to keep them alert and stop them from literally falling asleep on the bike. But even Strasser was not prepared for the virtually endless straight spells of tarmac in some of the remotest regions of Australia.

“I thought the ride would be easier in one way than the Race Across America because the amount of climbing is much, much less in Australia. Over in the USA we have to climb up through the Rocky Mountains, whereas in Australia the route is really very flat.

“But the long straight roads in Australia also mean the winds are harder to deal with. Usually I like the long open roads as you can just get into a rhythm and focus only on riding - whereas others prefer a few twists and turns to keep them alert and interested.

“But in Australia those roads were just amazingly long and straight and with the wind as well it was something I had not expected. It also meant I was not able to use the disc wheel as much I thought I would because it was just not as stable in those conditions.”

Just a couple of days after his jaw-dropping achievement, Strasser was chilling out in a rented house near Bondi beach showing virtually no signs that he had just completed such a gruelling ride – save for palms like sandpaper and a weakened grip in one of his hands.

You'd imagine a full day of sleep would have been the order of the day after being deprived to the point of hallucinating. But even when he was finally able to crash out in a comfy bed, Strasser's body woke him up after only four hours due to an effect much like jet-lag.
Unsurprisingly – after a surviving on a pure liquid diet for around nine days (six during the race and three days previously to prepare his body) – the Austrian had already satisfied his craving for solid food with a juicy burger from the barbie! 

With the rigours of his Australian adventure behind him, thoughts turned to what epic ride might be in the future. But the 34-year-old insists he’s not desperately seeking some new insane challenge to take on and master – even though many might feel he’s slightly off-the-scale already.

“In terms of what’s next on the list, I’m not sure, because I’m not an explorer or adventurer looking for new things to do,” he says. “I only want to do things that I know have been done before, but just do them quicker.

“All the infrastructure has to be in place and it has to be possible. I’m not just going to come up with some totally new route across another continent - I’m not crazy! There are some long stage races out there - for example there’s a Red Bull Trans-Siberian event that goes more than 9,000km across Russia in 14 stages. But I’m not interested in that sort of racing, it’s not what I want to do.

“In terms of how long I can carry on with ultra-events, I look at other people who are doing this and have done it and they’re a lot older than me. I’m 34 now and cycling does not really put a lot of stress on your joints, so I feel quite good physically and I think five more years or so is possible for sure.”