Sarah Ruggins and the Ride of a Lifetime

This week on The Brick Session, Caroline and I sit down with Dr Sarah Ruggins, the ultra-endurance cyclist behind the extraordinary One Way North world record.

In June 2026, Sarah rode from Tarifa at the southern tip of Spain to Nordkapp inside the Arctic Circle, covering 6,050 km in just 13 days and beating the previous record by more than three days.

But the numbers only tell part of the story.

Sarah talks us through what it actually takes to ride across an entire continent while surviving on as little as 90 minutes of sleep a night. We get into the changing sleep strategy, the effect just three hours of sleep had on her power, riding four-hour blocks with only ten-minute stops, and the brutal three days through Finland in freezing rain and headwinds.

We also explore the team behind the record and why Sarah deliberately hands major decisions over to them once sleep deprivation starts affecting her judgement.

As she puts it, in events like this, “you don't rise to your ambitions, you fall to your processes.”

There’s also a much deeper story behind Sarah's ability to suffer. A former Olympic-pipeline runner, serious illness and chronic pain eventually ended her running career. Cycling became part of rebuilding her life, despite ongoing issues with balance, feeling in her hands and feet, and her nervous system.

Perhaps most interestingly, Sarah doesn't define success by the world record. During One Way North she deliberately didn't know whether she was ahead of or behind record pace. The objective was to discover the limits of her own capabilities. The record was simply the consequence.

We talk about discipline versus motivation, compartmentalising enormous distances, the psychology of suffering, why the right support crew matters, the role of her partner Ryan, her previous LEJOG/JOGLE experience and some useful insight for Caroline's planned LEJOG record attempt.

Sarah also explains why she considers perseverance rather than cycling ability her real talent, the unusual role tattooing played in rebuilding her relationship with her body after illness, and why achievement should never become your identity.

Did she think about quitting?

Not once.