'I'll only ride if it ticks the social impact box': Ultra cyclist's new mindset after 1067 kilometre effort

Australian ultra-cyclist Jack Thompson has released a new documentary showcasing his record breaking ride on the Munda Biddi trail in Western Australia last year. 

The Munda Biddi is the longest continuous bike trail in the entire world. It runs from Mundaring to Albany and is a gruelling 1067 kilometres in length. 

Thompson is known for his regular fastest known time (FKT) attempts and he completed the trail in two days, 12 hours and 15 minutes to set the record for yet another FKT. The previous record for completing the Munda Biddi stood at two days, 17 hours and 22 minutes and was set four years ago during the Covid pandemic. 

Titled Munda Biddi Dreaming, Thompson’s new film captures the highs and lows of completing the gargantuan ride which included riding through 40 degree heat and 80kmph headwinds. 

More importantly, as Thompson told Cycling Weekly, the film discusses the wider social impact of completing the ride which was to connect and inspire the community within the remote region, and to encourage local children to dream. 

After completing the trail, Thompson visited schools around the local area and gave talks to more than 5,000 schoolchildren on the importance of dreaming and managing your mental health. 

"It had been this dream of mine to go back to Australia to my hometown and to do this trail," Thompson explained. "So what I did is I ended up building this presentation around the notion of dreaming and the idea was that I wanted to get kids to dream. Not necessarily about riding a bike or about sports but goals and aspirations and sort of getting them to talk about that. 

"Then the teachers at the schools that I planned to visit kind of ran with that as a bit of a project and so there was all this kind of interaction with these kids around these ideas of what they wanted to be when they were older. 

"During one presentation I had one kid say 'I want to be a soccer star' and another saying, 'I want to be a vet' and then there was this one little quieter kid in the front and I said 'so what's your dream?' and he said 'I want to be an ultra cyclist, I want to ride the Munda Biddi' so it was really cool to see that we'd had that sort of impact and inspired kids to actually go and ride the trail as well."

"I don't just want to ride a bike, I want to do it to help somebody else"

Prior to completing the Munda Biddi, some of Thompson’s recent projects included completing an Everesting world record, setting the FKT on a long distance riding route in Japan, and riding the entire 2021 Tour de France route in just ten days. 

A passionate advocate for mental health awareness, Thompson explained that he had come to realise that making an impact on other people’s lives through his work was significantly more important to him than simply ticking off a new world record. 

"The more I do stuff like this, the more I realise that I actually prefer that aspect of it, rather than the personal achievement," he said. "The greater good is always helping somebody else. And as part of trying to plan projects now, I've got a bit of a framework in that it has to have a social impact for it to be one that we consider doing. 

"This one was really special just because of the number of kids that we were able to interact with and the fact that it was back on home soil, and it was a place that I'd grown up in."

He added: "Going forward, all the projects have to tick the social impact box and that just means that I'm not doing it just for me. 

"And the older I get, I think the more important that is. I don't just want to ride a bike, I want to do it to help somebody else or to inspire someone or whatever else it might be."

Munda Biddi Dreaming is out now.