Russ Nankervis does a practice run for HPV 'World Tour' (2010)

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2010 must be the year for doing crazy things in human powered vehicles.
One month after Jeff Nielson's amazing 24 hour solo world record, Russ Nankervis from Bendigo has begun his preparations for a world solo tour - set to commence in 2012.

Most 17 year old guys are content to simply get through school, meeting pretty girls and playing a bit of footy. But not Russell Nankervis - he's not your average 17 year old guy.

Russ has a dream to ride a human powered vehicle around the world after he completes his VCE. As he steps towards this dream, he's begun planning and preparation by hitting the open road.

On April 16, Russ rode 'Big Red' (formerly Bendigo Secondary College's 'Gus') from Kangaroo Flat on the outskirts of Bendigo to Calder Park. The 130km journey took just 3 hours and 6 minutes with two 20 minute stops. That's at an average speed of 40 km/h with a max speed of 95 km/h.

Setting off in Kangaroo Flat	Belting up! Ready to go!
On the road...	... and on the road again!
He'd just missed the Brekky menu, but had definitely earnt a meal at Calder Park Maccas!	Cooling down with dad watching on.

"It was a pretty clean run - the windscreen was fogged the whole way but I could still see the white line. I lost a vent and a side window was torn apart. At one stage, doing around 70kph I hit one of the many lips for the bridges and the windscreen fell completly off!" Russ told us on the afternoon after his ride.

"I had a support vehicle following me through the full 130kms, filled with spares, and with a sign and hazard lights on full time."

World Tour

His feat even made it into the Bendigo Advertiser, who reported on his world tour plans:

"For my World Tour I will be riding through 23 countries covering over 41,000kms in around 400 days with my mate Ben Sloane."

"I’ll go up the coast to Brisbane, cross to Darwin, fly to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, up through Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia (and) up to Russia.” From there Russell would fly to Alaska and ride through Canada to the US before flying to Senegal and riding to Morocco before a final European leg.

”I’m pretty ambitious.”

"We will do the trip in order to raise money for a worthy charity, and to forfill a child hood dream. Unfortunately this trip involves alot of money to be raised and we would appreciate any funding we can get."

Russell has also been in action at the first round of this year's Australian HPV Super Series in Adelaide with Strathdale Racing.

As I said at the start, Russ is not your average 16 year old. In 2008, he set the new RACV Track lap record as part of a blistering first stint which set up his team - Furious George (right) - for overall line honours. His record lap time of 1 minute 42.3 seconds will take something special to surpass. He might even have a go at lower the mark again himself as he lines up for Bendigo Senior this November.

Russ' family race and prepare speed boats and his introduction to the sport of human powered vehicles came through his older brother Rowan, who was a star at Bendigo Youth Racing.

We wish Russ all the best.

How can you get involved?

• If you'd like to get behind Russ, drop him an email at Russ.35[at]hotmail.com
  
  

Words by Nigel Preston, 2010
Images from Russ Nankervis