'The idea was to show we can all do more than we thought we could': pioneer Marcia Roberts on breaking belief barriers and world records

Pioneering ultra-distance rider and event organiser Marcia Roberts has revealed how pushing past the mental endurance barrier while holidaying as a novice rider ultimately gave her the self-belief to take on a world record and become a successful event organiser.

She spent 11 days riding in mountainous territory in Vietnam as a rider who was still very much a newbie. The experience proved formative, she told Cycling Weekly's Going Long podcast.

Riding 50-80 miles (80-129km) daily in the South-East Asian country, Roberts says she managed OK until she got to day four.

"I got to lunch time, and I was like, I can't go any further. I really can't go any further," she recalls.

With little prior training and no experience of how fuelling works, Roberts had hit the wall head-on. But she forced herself onwards, with a little help from a few super-concentrated Red Bulls, and managed to finish the trip. It proved a formative experience.

"Because I made it, I still had that little seed in my brain that said, Well, if I can do that, what can I do next, what else can I do?" says Roberts. "And that 'what else can I do?' is what drove me to everything."

Following her Vietnam breakthrough, Roberts spent a number of years riding Audax events, in which she says it was often her sheer audacity that enabled her to finish, even if it was regularly last.

But then, during Covid, she set out to established a record in what is one of Britain's most iconic ultra-distance rides – LEJOGLE, or Land's End to John o' Groats and back.

She improved her condition by doing hill repeats on the hill she hated most, and trained herself to view long rides simply in blocks of 50 miles (80km). It was a strategy that led her to finish the 1,752-mile ride in 11-and-a-half days.

She tells Going Long that the record ride, which she undertook during the Covid lockdowns, was at points, "grim" and "amazing", and reveals how she took a power nap in every single layby on the A30, and the wonders of bidons full of rice pudding.

For Roberts, a self-proclaimed 'slow-coach' who always "just made up the numbers", it was an astonishing feat.

"The whole idea of doing the world record was to show that actually we're all able to do more than we thought we could if we have the right motivation. My motivation was simply to find out what my limits were."

Having satisfied herself as to the whereabouts of her own physical limits, she set about organising what has already become one of Britain's top-line ultra-distance bikepacking events, the Southern Divide.

Across the entire south of the country from Land's End to Rochester in Kent, it takes riders on a 670km off-road journey through continually changing landscapes, from the sharp and rugged hills of the south-west, the wilds of Dartmoor, the challenging Jurassic Coast, the bucolic New Forest and the North Downs.

She talks more about the event, and offers her best tips for aspiring ultra-riding event organisers in the Going Long podcast, which is out now on all the usual platforms.