Ride - Joshua Kench

How a pretty unfit, very ordinary dude became an ultra-endurance cyclist and undertook one of the great feats of human endurance

At his brother's wedding in 2002, 30-year-old Josh Kench sat with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other and announced that he was going to do the Coast to Coast. His pronouncement was met with derision and laughter, but he's proved his doubters wrong. Josh won the 2010 Ultra-enduro Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge, covering a mind-numbing 8 laps of the 160 kilometer course in 55 hours. That was only the start of it. In June 2011, this 39-year-old Wellington plumber lined up at the start of the Race Across America—a 16-day race stretching from California to Maryland. This is the inspiring story of how an ordinary guy became an ultra-endurance athlete and decided to take on the world.