We meet with Dannil Sadomskij, the fastest cyclist to traverse the Sarn Helen route to learn more about what it takes to ride for 14hrs straight across the beautiful highlands of Wales.

Dani! You’re such a champion for riding this epic route. Before we get in to all of the details around the Sarn Helen effort, Tell me more about yourself, how you got into cycling, and ultra cycling specifically – I imagine this is a lifelong obsession for you?

Yeah, for sure. I think the cycling for me is kind of like a lifelong thing. I think my parents bought me a bike when I was like 8 and funny enough, I just really didn't want to do at the time. I was like, ‘buy me a PlayStation, or I want something like to play with my friends.’

And then in Lithuanians, the cycling is kind of a big thing, but there is a massive gap between amateurs and professional. So there's like nothing between the two. People cycle, but like generally 5 minutes to the off licence shop by beer or whatever.

It was kind of like just us kids, you know, looking for adventure. We’d do one ride maybe once every week when we had the day off. When I moved, I was 17, I moved to England to work as a chef. And then it's obviously a different story here, like in England It's basically like a national sport. And then I just start commuting to work every day and then when COVID happened, I didn't have a job so I finally had time to, like, take my hobbies here more seriously.

Do you enjoy that competitive environment? Do you enjoy racing kind of people, you know, coming from Crit Racing alley, cat fixed gear? Or do you enjoy racing kind of people side by side or do you think that there's this deeper race that's like you versus yourself like your effort, your kind of perception of what you think?

I've been competitive since I was a teenager because I was doing track and field. And yeah, funny enough, I like both [elements] at the same time-- you're racing against the clock because you need to have your standards and then you're also racing against people. And I know I'll have a great time doing both. I still really like just try to push it. I think it's just an element of how far I can, like how far I can really go.

So, talking about the Sarn Helen FKT effort, how did this specific route pop up?

Yeah, I don't know how to describe it. It's just like obviously on the paper, I have no connections to that place, but every single time I go, it's just something there, which just makes me happy. You know, its my happy place.

It's like something special when you're crossing the country, you know, and one day I thought it’s something I can do. Like the time was achievable but don't get me wrong, its hard.

Tell us about the rig. Did you change anything for the effort? Did you obviously include some maybe clip on bars? How did you kind of set your rig up?

So the route is kind of complicated because it's 75% on the road and it’s 25% off road but the off road is proper off road. It's not something what you can do on a gravel bike. So I knew I need a mountain bike with suspension and I want to have time trial extensions. My (previous) lights weren’t bright enough because we start like at 3 O’clock in the morning, so I needed something brighter and thanks to you guys I had that covered.

So good and talking about the length of the effort, so your total elapsed time, can you remind me again what was your final FKT time?

It was 17 hours and 45 minutes. I'm sure somebody can make it faster. The conditions we had were quite far from perfect because we had a heat wave.

And speaking of the elements, you were battling a lot, heat wave, possible rain, etc?

Despite the fact it was wasn't raining on that day when we did it. I mean, it was. It's just that we managed to escape it because everytime time you look up and you just see these dark clouds in front of you. And we had a headwind. So they just kind of like go behind you. You can see it's just hailing down, showering, rain in front of you. But by the time you are on that section, it's already somewhere else. So I somehow managed to ride it, but the soil was always wet, so sometimes you just have no grip, especially off road. And then, yeah, headwind. So I think if somebody is going to do it with a tailwind in the dry conditions, it's like another two hours off easily.

I mean, we said this earlier and it's probably bears repeating that like you're not racing other people. I guess you are in a sense that there were people who did the effort. You're racing yourself and the time, but then you're racing the elements, trying to beat the rain, trying to get out ahead of the rain. Incredible effort all around, and the movie is just stunning!

Yeah. Thank you. I'm glad I did what I did because really for me, I just wanted to really do to show the country rather than actually like the effort [which] is kind of like just a background story to like, oh, why we actually here.

And the place that you know, not many people probably get to see in person, right. And to kind of tell that story of a country like that, you know, that you maybe feel very close to spiritually or, you know emotionally is a great thing. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Daniil, thank you again for taking some time to talk with us. We’re excited to show the world the movie, and we’re stoked to see what 2026 has in store!

Well, thanks so much. I really appreciate your help and support and looking forward to do something next year as well!