Russia – Coast to Coast

Dear Friends,

On the 13th of August at 9.42 pm in St. Petersburg the cycling race “Russia – Coast to Coast” (C2C) was finally complete. Wolfgang Fasching arrived in the northern capital of Russia. He covered the distance of 10 000 km from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg in just 21 day 19 hours 31 minutes thereby setting an unprecedented world record.

Sincerely yours, 
Alexander Schachner 
Chairman of the Board 

THE MISSION

• One man crossing Russia, the largest country in the world
• Coast to Coast (C2C) on bicycle in 24 days

THE VISION

• Achieve the impossible
  
• Cooperation between sport and business
• Build bridges between people and cultures
• Popularize the bicycle sport in Russia

THE CHALLENGE

• To this days there is no experience how a human being will react to such extreme physical & mental challenges
  
• Fight against sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, mental fatigue
• Extreme climatic and environmental conditions
• Permanent high performance needed to compete against time
• Pure adventure dealing with loneliness during the night and heavy traffic during the day
 

PROJECT «RUSSIA – COAST TO COAST» IN QUOTES …

Wolfgang Fasching: „I couldn’t believe that it would be possible to drive across the whole of Russia in 21 days. Had I known from the very beginning about the quality of the roads and about the strong pain I would feel in my knee and my thigh... The fact that we are here is almost a miracle. The old wisdom says: «All what is imaginable is possible, one just needs to dare.» And you need to really want it for yourself. And the key word is patience. To handle every situation in real-time mode, to accept them. It seems to me that people are capable of more when they believe that it’s possible.“ 

Alexander Schachner, the main organizer of the project: „What Wolfgang has done in Russia for the past 3 weeks is incomprehensible. He wrecked all our schedule and the project organization and we arrived in Saint-Petersburg 2 days (!!!) before we had expected. It’s a fantastic and a unique project during which everything that could go wrong went wrong. There was no day when we didn’t have to solve a problem. Wolfgang Fasching is an incredible man and a great sportsman. The world needs such people as Wolfgang, and we all could learn something from him.”

Andreas Sachs, the initiator of the project: „Wolfgang I would say outdid himself at this distance and has opened a new dimension of the extreme sports. And if last year we aspired to prove that one could cross Russia on a bicycle at speed, this year Wolfgang has opened new horizons by this excellent achievement. His body and spirit were tried very hard, and this shows how important are the will and the perseverance and how little is needed to recover in order to maintain a very stable working capacity for several weeks. However I would like to express my gratitude also to the whole team that has proved that despite the individual and cultural differences people can become one team united by joint efforts and goals.” 

Helmut Ocenasek, authorized physician of Fasching (sportmediziner.at): „Unimaginable motion, noise, signals, passing trucks… It was a trial that Wolfgang had to go through. Let alone the main task that no human being had faced before – to overcome the distance of 10 000 km on a bicycle. “Will a human machine endure this or will the running gear fail?” That’s what I was thinking when preparing for the project. Nevertheless, it all went well. The medical department was not overloaded; we just had to mix hundreds of drinks with carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Several salt tablets and potassium in powder and that’s it! We were able immediately to stop the pains in Wolfgang’s knee as well as his light tonsillitis. It was more difficult to deal with the open bruises on his bottom. But we managed it as well.“

... AND IN FIGURES:

• 21 days, 19 hours, 31 minutes of travel 
  
• Total 9991 km 
• A lap of honor 7,4 km long in Moscow 
• Total 85 000 m of vertical drop 
• 110 hours out of bike saddle (physiotherapy, shower, waiting at level crossing gates of the Trans-Siberian railway, hygiene stops, press conference in Kazan and Moscow, official reception in Tatarstan, interviews etc.) 
• out of them 66 hours of sleep (in 36 hours the first stop for sleep, the second stop only after the next 30 hours of travel, and then 3 hours stops for sleep every 24 hours) 
• 192 000 calories burnt (equals to 12 000 pieces of sugar or 2 700 cans of Coca Cola) 
• 19 km/h average speed including all the stops 
• 25 km/h speed on the bike 
• 400 km across the road construction sites 
• 60 times bicycles changed (mountain and speed bikes) 
• 100 km of traffic jam 
• 7 time zones - +35 ° С max. temperature 
• +7 ° С min. temperature 
• 170 000 tracks outran Fasching 
• 75 trucks outrun by him (74 – at the construction sites, and 1 going up the mountain)

Team productivity: 

• drank 1000 l of mineral water – Vittel 
  
• ate 1000 chocolate bars 
• burnt 25 distribution blocks 
• humbly received 800 mosquito bites