Last weekend, Perth native Jack Thompson completed the 1,064km Munda Biddi trail in two days, 12 hours and 15 minutes, setting a new Fastest Known Time (FKT). Averaging about 19kph for the duration of the effort, he bested the previous FKT by about five hours, set by Craig Wiggins in 2020. Since then the route has grown by 16km, making the effort even more impressive.
Partnering with Oqea and the Happiness Co Foundation, Thompsons is using this effort as a springboard to shine the spotlight on mental health.
Who is Jack Thompson?
Now based in Girona, Spain, Jack Thompson loves a challenge. Last year he Everested – where you climb the vertical of Mount Everest in one ride — 52 times, on 52 different climbs raising $800,000 for three mental health organisations.
He’s also the owner of the Osaka to Tokyo and Portugal Crossing FKTs, and until March of this year, he was the world record holder for the greatest distance cycled in one week. Thompson rode 3,505km in seven days but was recently beaten by Matthieu Bonne, who managed 3619.72km in a week.
All that is to say, the guy can suffer over a very long period of time and do it at an extremely high pace.
Munda Biddi Dreaming
After his year-long Everesting extravaganza, Thomson tells Flow he was a bit burned out and needed to refocus on ultra-efforts which he was a bit more inspired to do.
“I met a guy in Perth who is running a mental health startup. Oqea is the name, and we were speaking about efforts to raise awareness for mental health stuff. I said I wanted to come back to Perth and ride the Munda Biddi. Why don’t we try to create a project around that?
Over the years, Thompson has been very open about his struggles with mental health and has battled depression since he was a teenager. Obviously a guy with a passion for riding, he tells Flow he wants to use the platform he’s gained through riding to have a purpose beyond just him.
“Everything we’ve done like this has had a second story around giving back and that notion of well-being,” he says. “I love riding and the discipline required to go out and do the training. But the rewarding aspect for me is seeing the little kids, or the adults or whoever it may be, when their faces light up when you’re talking to them and realise that you’ve actually made a difference for them.”
The fastest-known time
Usually ridden over about ten days, the Munda Biddi trail runs from Mundaring to Albany. We caught up with Thompson a few days after he completed the effort, and he was in the midst of a speaking tour through schools around WA. His riding resume is basically a hit list of herculean feats on the bike, and he says the FKT on the Munda Biddi ranks near the top in terms of difficulty.
By his own admission, Thomson is a roadie, and this route being just about entirely off-road added a degree of technicality.
“I am a bit of a newbie on the gravel, but it was also 40ºC for the first two days — we’re on the back end of a record-breaking heat wave here in Perth. If that wasn’t enough, on the final stretch, we had 60kph headwinds. It was the longest day ever,” he says.
With an FKT effort, the clock doesn’t stop when you need to take a nature break, much less sleep. And over the two-and-a-half-day, Thompson slept for less than 20 minutes.
“I’d spoken to my doctor before I came, and he said to me, ‘you know, at 48 hours if you don’t sleep, your body is going to start shutting down.’ I had this idea in my head that once I got to 48, stuff was going to get really dark, and it got really dark,” says Thompson.
“The second night of no sleep, the sun was just starting to rise, and I knew that once the sun was up, it would become a little easier. Then I sort of realised I’d totally forgotten what had happened the last half an hour,” he says. “I just pulled over and decided I would have a quick ten-minute nap.”
“I set an alarm on my Garmin and set a stopwatch as well, and I just laid in the dirt and slept for nine minutes and then cracked on,” he says.
His second nap was only eight minutes, and it came after a difficult sandy hike-a-bike. Again, he says he’d forgotten what was going on, so he laid down in the dirt next to a car park for a quick recharge.
“I remember there were flies buzzing around my mouth, but I just didn’t care and fell asleep. That was for seven or eight minutes, and then I just pushed on and kept trucking to the end,” he says.
Thompson says these short naps weren’t just in the name of saving time, he didn’t want to risk falling into a deep sleep and losing his mojo and drive to keep pushing.
Planning for hardship
There is more to an effort than packing food, water and spares and letting it rip. Thomson planned the effort by taking the previous record holder’s average speed, and working out a pace he thought he could maintain, which was 20kph, and working backwards to build a schedule.
“I made a really detailed plan of what was going to be open (to buy food). But then it was hard because I fell behind on the second day, which then threw out all of the logistics to be able to get to shops and food. It’s pretty remote down in the south, and there is not a lot open, even when it’s open,” he says.
Fortunately, Thompson made it through the entire effort without a mechanical or a crash, and had the emergency supplies to get him through missing business hours. But as you would expect there was no shortage of hardship on this 1000km journey.
He tells Flow that the last half day, the wheels were sort of falling off from the two days of extreme heat, wind, sleep deprivation, and limited food.
“I hit this section of sand going up a hill. My old man had been down there beforehand to check it out, and he said ‘there’s going to be a section down at the bottom that’s going to be pretty tough for you. It’s solid so you aren’t going to have to walk, but you’re going to struggle,’” he says.
“When I arrived there and it was sand, I just thought, ‘oh my god.’ That was probably the darkest period of the ride,” says Thompson.
On the other hand, there were speckles of joy and brilliance along the way. People came out all the way along the route to cheer him on, and there were people with signs cheering his name out in the middle of nowhere at all hours.
The setup
Thompson’s bike of choice for the Munda Biddi FKT attempt was a Specialized Diverge STR gravel bike. While the Mundi Biddi is usually completed on mountain bikes, it is possible on a gravel bike.
“The beauty of the STR is it has a little bit of suspension front and rear. I am accustomed to riding a road bike, so to go from road to gravel isn’t a huge change, and I can get my position pretty much the same — which the same can’t be said for a mountain bike. I am one of those people that feels like a millimetre change in my saddle height and setback. I didn’t want to make a big change at the last minute,” he says.
With 47mm wide bars at the front, he opted for non-flared bars, again in an effort not to make changes to his position ahead of a 50+ hour effort. His saddle of choice was a 155mm wide 3D-printed Specialized Romin, and he ran Garmin’s Rally power pedals. To maintain that 20kph average speed, he was running a SRAM 1x Mullet gravel setup, he had a 52-10T Eagle Cassette paired to a 48T chainring at the front.
Rolling on 47mm wide Specialized Tracer gravel tyres, backed by Rimpact inserts. He tells us he doubled the amount of sealant he normally runs as a bit of an insurance policy. This paid off as the six spare tubes he stuffed into the downtube storage weren’t needed.
On the back of his bike was an Aeroe Spider Rack filled with food and a lightweight jacket.
He was also running a dynamo to power his lights, phone and Garmin Edge 1040.
“I ran the SP (Shutter Precision) dynamo hub with the kLight wiring loom,” he says. “What I actually mucked up was I ran the racing light setup, but I should have run the adventure lighting setup because I didn’t have enough voltage when I was going slow.”
He says this would cause the charging to flip on and off constantly, and he believes he damaged the battery on his phone and Garmin because of all the surges in power.
While very tired, Thomspon tells us he’s hoping to get back and do the Munda Biddi, as it’s intended to be over ten days to look around and enjoy it.
When we spoke to Thomson, he was heading back to Perth to fly back to Europe for some well-deserved rest. There is a documentary coming on the effort just after the new year, we’ll update this story when it comes out.
Photos: Zac Williams / @z_w_photography