Multiple Guinness World Record holder Eamon Keaveney achieved a new accolade this week after completing the fastest unicycle ride across Ireland.
The unicyclist crossed the Emerald Isle’s 300 miles in just five days, five hours and 23 minutes last year, but was only officially awarded world record title this week.
“It’s taken sweat and blood to achieve this but it feels great to be able to say to myself that I actually did it,” Keaveney said. Finally, his name is in the history books.
And the award was well deserved: Keaveney was unable to walk for two weeks after the gruelling journey due to numerous injuries sustained during the ride.
He expected his bottom would be the most painful part of the unicycle ride, but he didn’t expect that by the end of the trip, his left ankle would swell to the size of a grapefruit and every pedal stroke would feel “like torture.”
“At the end of the day, it was sometimes tough to get on the unicycle and ride those last few miles,” he recalled.
Keaveney spent around 12 hours each day sitting on a hard seat, starting from Mizen Head, the southernmost point of Ireland, and travelling to Malin Head, the northernmost point.
There was no previous record to break, but to achieve it the ride had to be completed in six days, a daunting task for someone who had never ridden a unicycle before.
Keaveney said the award caught his eye when he heard about the Unexplored category, saying it “seemed like the perfect mix of terrifying and ridiculous.”
It took him a few weeks to learn how to ride a unicycle and several more years to hone his technique, until traveling 62 miles a day became an easy task.
The feat marks Keaveney’s third Guinness World Record – he completed the world’s longest barefoot journey, 1,292 miles, in 2016, according to the record-keeping agency, and two years later summited 10 mountains barefoot in 10 days.
“It’s really important not to box yourself in or assume you’ll never be able to do something before you try,” Keaveney said.
