World record application approved!

363 days to verify a Guinness World Record

Two days before the anniversary of my world record attempt, an unassuming email landed in my inbox. I didn’t see it. It’s early in the evening and we’re heading back to camp after paying an exorbitant $8 for a shower at the local pub, three nights deep into my first rock climbing trip. It’s novel for me to be the beginner that doesn’t know how to do an adventure. I’m a passenger princess on this trip, except that I do a lot of the cooking.

The next morning I’m grinding coffee at our campsite, as the sun rises and the fog lowers around Dyurrite. It’s a sacred aboriginal place and a famous climbing area. Soon up to half of the 3,000 climbing routes will be closed to help protect the cultural sites on Wotjobaluk Country. The process has been going on for six years, and we’re using the closure proposal from 2020 to figure out where to climb.

Many people are supportive, but I’ve been warned that some climbers have selfish opinions about the closures, and definitely not to bring it up at the pub.

How could you not see that this is a culturally significant place? It is very old, and very special.

I haven’t checked my record application all year. I submitted it around October last year, after getting temporarily locked out of Guinness’ system. The application automatically locks after a year has passed from your attempt date. I didn’t think about the fact that having taken almost a year my record application would lock itself, and didn’t get any warning. So, after discovering Guinness had automatically locked me out, I had to reapply. Then wait three stressful months to see if they would reopen my application so I could submit my evidence.

Once Guinness reopened my application, I submitted my evidence. Mountains of spreadsheets, gps data, photos, videos. Applications are supposed to take three months to review. The verdict from Guinness would be due in January 2026.

January came and went. I didn’t look at my application, never logged into Guinness’ clunky web portal. I was too scared about what I might find there. I’m on the free tier, rather than paying a minimum of $3,000 USD to get priority treatment with the Guinness team. I just have to hope it’s my application languishing in the too hard basket while they work through the paying customers.

Post record attempt I’ve been tired, sad, stressed, and lonely. The thought that I could also lose the thing I’d worked on for years, and spent a lot of money on, and heck, pinned a lot of my self worth on, was too much for the moment.

I waited, and waited. Sure, missing out on the Guinness world record didn’t invalidate that I made it all happen. Having the world record would give me opportunities that might otherwise evade me. Speaking opportunities, work, sponsorship, a lil pat on the back every now and then. It’d help my eventual book (hopefully) find its’ way out of a publisher’s slush pile.

If I was to lose it on some technicality, it’d be difficult to attempt again. Even harder as global politics continued to change and shift. And by god, I wanted that silly little piece of paper that told me I’ve been a good boy.

I’m first awake at our little campsite, having an espresso by myself in Ellis’s knock off Kmart Helinox chair. The email is buried amongst other junk, my Substack subscriptions, updates from the Yarra Library, and various petitions and protests.

Dear Robbie Webb

We are thrilled to inform you that your application for First openly transgender person to circumnavigate the globe by bicycle has been successful and you are now the Guinness World Records Title Holder!

(followed by a bunch of information about how to pay them for your certificate, which I will spare you all from)

The unbearable lightness of being free from Guinness World Records

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off me. I breathe out an entire year of slight tension.

It wasn’t clear before, how much I’d been carrying around the stress and uncertainty of my unverified record attempt for 363 days. Every receipt, photo, gps and witness signature meticulously tracked then pieced together into my evidence pack. That evidence then checked not just by Guinness, but presumably the world ultra cycling association as well. My fear that I could have accidentally missed one detail or come up 10km short (my total came to over 30,000km with a minimum of 29,000km, but several hundred km I deducted from my total in backtracking.

Or worse, that the world just decides that transgender people in sports aren’t worth the attention at all, and blanket swoops my record out of existence entirely. That might sound a little spicy, but the war for trans inclusion in sports was lost years ago.

Anyways, the handful of “first openly transgender” records are super fun and illogical, it’s shared by myself, a trans soccer referee, and a handful of big name trans showbiz folks like Laverne Cox and Elliot Page.

Since it’s first, not fastest, the record is mine now and for the rest of forever (until people stop caring about cycling or the world burns down). Technically I am the only trans or non-binary person to have completed a world circumnavigation. I spotted people arguing on Reddit about this, and yes, other gender nonconforming people have probably cycled all over the world before. It’s less just about the definition of being openly transgender and more about the definition of a world circumnavigation which is above and beyond cycling around the world for travel (that you must proceed only under your own steam in one easterly or westerly direction, never draft, collect your antipodal points, and you’re subject to disqualification if you stop for more than two weeks).

It took me a while, when I finished cycling, to unlearn the impulse to tell people I can’t get in their car with them. I proposed quite a few 5km walks to the shops before remembering it’s All Good.

One year since I crossed the finish line at Auckland International Airport. It’s been a year of stress, upheaval, and reckoning with the 24 hour news cycle. One year of tracking my every move, and one year of hoping for approval. In total, around 4 years since I first engaged with the Guinness planning and approval process.

(lovely photo above by Sunny Gajadhar, the rest by me)

That same day, we pack up all our gear at Dyurrite and toddle back to Narrm, with a celebratory gas station burger stop on the way.

Now there’s more work to do. I should put on my old corporate content writing hat and throw together a press release. I have to write some social media posts. I need to try again at getting my record covered in the news (gay and otherwise), which mostly failed the first time around.

And beyond all that, I’m moving up to Sydney by the end of the month so I can be around more bike friends. I’ll miss my Melbourne friends, and the Melbourne dumpsters, but I think it’s for the best.

I never quite “got” Melbourne. I never quite felt safe, at home, or in community. A bit of it might be just bad luck. A lot of it is being honest with myself that a lot of folks here don’t have the capacity to give me the time I need right now. Instead of trying to hustle for community like I always do, it’s time to be kind to myself and go chill somewhere community already exists.

C u in Gadigal Country x

Some long awaited admin

Every time I log into my Substack it reminds me that some of you lovely folk have pledged to pay for my writing - and every now and then someone asks me too. I’m so humbled by the offer of support! I’ve shied away from setting anything up here, because I don’t want to contribute financially to Substack.

Anyways, I’ve finally set up a ko.fi account (which is a lot more ethical, and doesn’t mean a % of your donation goes to a company that is cool with platforming nazis…)

so if you’d like to buy me an inner tube or coffee beans, head over to robbiedangerwebb on ko.fi 💕

no pressure though. there are many wonderful pressing causes out there. If you’d prefer, give love to the incarcerated trans and gender diverse community fund instead x

Robbie