GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Think of a day – any day – when you were in the zone end to end. That feeling is rare.

Sure, it’s easier when there’s a bike ride involved. There’s something special about riding a bike that makes any day better. We all know that, that’s why we’re here, that’s why we do what we do. But the average bike ride might be a few hours. Even then, our minds might wander. Imagine three hours of pure flow. That’s a win in itself. That’s part of a perfect day.

But last December, Samuel Shaw took it a little further. He was in the saddle for 17 hours, 21 minutes and 34 seconds. Clipped in the entire time. No stops. Think about that for a minute. It’s a big shift – or a mission, as Sam calls it.

“I've got a family now,” Sam says when we speak to him in the days before Christmas. If you know, you know. Time is precious. Don’t waste it. Choose wisely and make it count.

“I always compare it to a dog. You open the door for a dog, and they just run out and do circles and shit. When I get to do some kind of stupid ride like this, I'm stoked.”

In this case, that’s a bit of an understatement. Sam wasn’t running in circles. Sam was setting a new fastest known time (FKT) between Auckland and Wellington, a long-standing record popularised by professional rider Lachlan Morton in February of 2025, riding 648km all in one go.

“When the video came out, I was like: fuck yeah, I'm doing that ride.” They say there’s no time like the present – Sam set his sights on going out the very next week. But a second look at Lachlan’s ride revealed a small problem to overcome if he wanted to bring the record back to New Zealand.

“When I saw his average speed, I had to double-take. Thirty-five kilometres per hour over six hundred and forty kilometres? I thought: I'm gonna need to learn how to go fast.”

Sam works full-time and has a one-year-old son. He has things going on in life. But he’s also got a bit of a background, one that lends itself to taking on a ride like this – even if it is on a whim.

“I raced the Enduro World Series for quite a few years, and also had quite a good nudge at the Cross Country World Cup circuit, and I finished up my career trying to push into Marathon.”

The intense efforts of enduro, the sustained power of XC racing, and the longer distances of marathon racing. Operating at your limits at an elite level. Sam has a base, some of the essential ingredients that translate into a performance like this.

“ The fitness was always there, but the speed definitely wasn't. I stepped into a different world. I haven't used power meters until recently. I didn't know much about saving watts on the bike. Even right before the ride, people asked what tyre compound I was going to use. And I was like, fuck sake, I haven't even thought about that.”

“ I really like trying to push myself. I love doing endurance things, but I've never tried to do 'em fast before this point. That definitely lit a fire. I set out a little plan for myself to try to achieve that goal. I've never tried being aero on a road bike or a gravel bike. I just sat up like a mountain biker would. It just got me looking into every possible aspect of how I could get faster.”

Position was part of the equation – a sustained effort like this is about power, sure, but it’s also about saving as much energy as you can in the form of your position. To get used to the position he’d have to adopt, Sam adapted his usual pilates routine to build the kind of core strength required to stay tucked for hours at a time.

From the impulsive first reaction, a more conscious approach bloomed. Sam rides to and from work, where he spends nine hours on his feet. This builds a good base in itself, but also leaves little room for recovery. The benefit of the shorter commute means that the efforts become very specific, all designed around building that power and speed, honing the effort of the ride itself. Sam rides hard one day, and recovers the next, all while spending time on the mat to keep the body in check – prehab, he calls it.

With all that work underway, it pays to extend the attention to a dry run, even if it ends up being anything but that. In September, Sam participated in MAAP’s Equinox Experience, joining riders around the world. Going hard coast to coast between Wānaka and Christchurch for a total of 471km, this would be Sam’s longest ride ever – and a global standout among nearly 440,000km ridden by the MAAP community.

“It was all about just seeing if I could match the speed that I would need over the distance, whether all the techniques I'd been practising were feasible for that amount of time.”

It was anything but a dry run, but perseverance paid off with a positive experience with some equally positive learnings.

“It gave me a whole lot of confidence. I didn't have good weather, and I still managed to average 34k an hour on the dot. And that was a self-supported journey.”

The world of ultra cycling is shifting. From the early days when riders would go as long as they could without sleeping, the story now is much more about balancing hard efforts with adequate rest, and the focus has shifted much more toward efficiency – that is, being prepared, and wasting as little time as possible when you’re not riding. This bears less on single-day outings, but it still has its place – for the Auckland to Wellington effort, Sam had learned from his coast-to-coast that he didn’t just want preferential conditions but real peace of mind. If you don’t let that dog out often, it pays to do what you can to make it a good day.

“I actually started calling up people who had been on Lachlan's ride to get the inside scoop because it was still such an unknown for me. I've never had a feed support van before. I didn’t know which roads were busy or where to watch out for traffic. And then one of the most important things was getting someone to pre-ride the course for me to make sure there were no surprises.”

“My driver, Brendan Clark from Wellington – he basically sponsored this whole FKT – drove the track I was taking the day before just to make sure there wasn't some major road works or anything like that. It's such a long distance, you're usually very likely to get something like that.”

There are things you can control, or at least mitigate. And then there are things you have no control over. After the weather on the coast-to-coast, Sam knew the biggest problem would be accounting for the weather.

“We're going south on this ride. If the wind's in your face, you're not beating this time. It's too far and too hard. Combine that with a full-time job, a family, and a support crew that you need to help you. I'm limited on time, so I can't just say, ‘Hey, I'm gonna do this sometime this month. I picked Friday, 12th December, and I kept a close eye on the weather. But it was just shit.” 

“I messaged my crew first, and I was like, ‘Hey, this is just not gonna work on that day. Can we change it to Monday, three days later?’ And that just worked really well, with my job, my wife and the crew. Everyone was happy to change it. They were like, yeah, bro, we’re here for you to get the job done. No stress.”

With the work done and the confidence of the crew, there was one thing to do: get on the bike and turn the pedals. Of course, we already know how that turned out. A historic ride. A new record. Proof that hard work pays off. After Sam had passed his previous limit – 471km – he ran into trouble with cramps. What you eat and drink is a big part of the equation, of course, and something that’s often overlooked when it’s all said and done. As Sam said himself:

 ”It was like feeding a baby, man.” 

A kilo or two of boiled potatoes
30 bananas (which didn't get eaten – a challenge to eat one every hour was abandoned after five)
Lots of plain lollies
Lots of carrots (“I just really like eating fresh food…”)
Ginger nut biscuits dipped in honey (“Texture is key. I was pushing hard enough that I couldn't eat things like muesli bars, they would just like mince around in your mouth…”)
High-carb drink mix
Coca-Cola (for morale)

But when you’re riding into the unknown, from a performance perspective, there’s always something to discover. 

“It was about 165k to go. I started cramping. I told my team, and we were just trying everything. We had table salt, and I just poured some in my mouth. Heaps of water. Some more bananas. Gels. None of it worked. If you've had a bad cramp, you’ll know that you can feel what’s working really quickly.”

“So I thought, all right, it's time to get a mince and cheese pie. The crew went ahead of me and grabbed one, handed it to me, and I had half of it. Within a minute: yep, that's gone.”

“In New Zealand we've gone to paper [wrappers]. Anything plastic is very far from gourmet. It was the shittiest, dustiest, plastic wrap pie. And it was just perfect. It would be interesting to go back and have that same pie. It tasted amazing at the time.”

With the cramps gone, the end was in sight. 

“After that pie, I put down the most mahi [work] at that point, and sent it. For three hours.”

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Or is it? Because there’s always something next. And Sam already knows what that is.

“ I had one day off to travel back home, then I got back into work for three days before the Christmas break. And that was all on purpose. I figured if I could keep biking, return to work, my training's done.”

The Future Self is always out there, up ahead, showing us what’s next.