No matter which way you look at it Juliana Buhring is an amazing woman. Arguably the world’s strongest female ultra-endurance cyclist, she had never really ridden a bike until the age of 30.

Not one to do things by half measures, Buhring decided she would not only take up cycling but take on a challenge no other woman had tackled before – the Guinness world record for the fastest circumnavigation by bicycle. The same year she set off the ‘wrong way around’ the world, into a headwind, unsupported and without a sponsor, to cycle a gruelling 29,070km (18,063.22 miles) in just 152 days – a record which still stands unbeaten.

Read the whole story about Buhring’s beginnings in a Christian Cult on how her inner strength has seen her deal with indescribable pain while cycling across some of the world’s most unforgiving terrain here.