Riding 2,179 miles in a week: Josh Quigley interviewed, plus the new Cervélo R5 on episode 8 of the road.cc Podcast

This week on the road.cc Podcast in association with Cervélo, we're joined by the new 7 day cycling distance world record holder Josh Quigley, who explains how he went from suicidal to world record holder in just seven years. We're also talking the new R5 and those pesky UCI rules with Cervélo! 

> How can road violence against cyclists be stopped? road.cc Podcast episode 7

You may have read all about Josh Quigley's 7 day cycling world record recently - at the second time of asking after a knee injury scuppered his first attempt, Josh finished in the small hours on 20th September after riding 2,179 miles, topping the previous mark by two miles. 

It wasn't always tales of triumph for Josh; a mental health campaigner who tried to take his own life in 2015, he started cycling as part of his recovery and discovered his extraordinary talents during his attempts at cycling around the world: 

"Basically in 2015 I was going through a really sh**ty time in my life, depressed, drinking a lot. And basically tried to kill myself," Josh says.  

"...I happened to be at an event through work in Edinburgh where Chris Hoy was giving a talk, I was inspired by him... I thought f*ck it, I'm going to cycle around the world." 

As Josh explains, there were quite a few mishaps along the way including a serious incident when he was hit by a truck in Texas during one of his recent round-the-world rides. He now has ambitions to ride with a professional team within the next year: 

"My ultimate ambition is to race and go pro. I know I can get there, it's a process.

"In two and a half years I went from being a total amateur to one of the best endurance cyclists in the world, and now I want to do the same in road racing. 

"There aren't any guys in the pro peloton who have ridden 2,179 miles in a week, so I have that in my locker as well." 

After Mike tells us why he gave Silca's Synergetic Lube a hallowed 10/10 score, Mat and George talk to Maria Benson and Scott Roy of Cervélo about how you go about building a new bike, the new R5 and bike design. What would road racing bikes be like if the UCI rules weren't so stringent? 

"A lot lighter", says Scott. 

"There's a lot of exciting prospects that can be achieved without following UCI rules... I think where the tricky bit is and where the differentiation between brands would come in is that ride feel, a lot of brands can be sub 6.8[kg] consistently, but you'd get a lot of different ride characteristics out of frames. 

"I'd like to think when this topic gets picked up again, I hope that we can push a little bit more." 

> Read all about the new Cervélo R5 here 

On the new R5, Maria and Scott recap on all the tech specs and tell us how they went about revamping it: 

"One of the big criticisms of that bike was front end stiffness... Tom [Dumoulin] was one of the vocal ones about the front end beating him up on longer rides. 

"Two thirds of it comes from the fork. Even though we reduced headtube inertia of the frame, a lot of the compliance comes from the fork. We really focussed on refining the fork shape the fork legs and trying to keep lateral stiffness as high as we could, which is a bit of an art." 

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