Sachin Prabhakar Shirbavikar, a 49 yrs old athlete and ultra-cyclist, completed Race Across West, a 1528 km (Approx. 83,000ft elevation) cycle ride this, year in 7 days and 3 hrs. He started his fitness training 3½ years ago when Vaibhav Andhare, a two times comrade finisher, introduced him to Dr. Amit Samarth, the legendary athlete and the ultra cyclist. Dr. Samarth is the Director of Miles and Milers and the ProHEALTH foundation. He is the only Asian who has successfully finish both cycle races , RAAM (Race Across America – 5000 km) and Trans Siberian extreme(9100km) competition within the stipulated time.
With Dr. Samarth’s valuable guidance, Sachin started his journey into the fitness world, when he was 86 kgs and was suffering from diabetes for more than a decade. However, after consistent training efforts and a strict diet regime, Sachin lost almost 20 kgs weight and controlled his sugar levels back to normal.
Over a period of 3½ years, Sachin trained hard and completed the following events – 9 half marathons (21 Km), 2 Ironmans in the years 2018 and 2019, 2 cycle rides of 253 km from Nagpur to Pachmarhi, 1 Manali to Leh cycle ride of 600 km. (30,000 ft elevation) completed in six days, 1 Mumbai to Goa cycle ride of 575 km (32,500 ft elevation) completed in 5½ days.
For his next achievement, Sachin desired to participate in RAW – Race Across West, a 1528 km cycle race with elevation of Approx. 83,000 ft ( 3 times hight of Mount Everest) , which needs to be completed in 12 days.
Due to this year’s COVID-19 pandemic, the RAW association created a virtual RAW (always organised in USA) for cyclists worldwide; so that they can still enjoy the ride and experience the race virtually.
The V-RAW competition started on 16th June evening . Sachin was one of the 84 cyclists who participated this year. He puts a tremendous amount of efforts and finished RAW within 7 days 3 hrs as of 23 June 2020. Sachin is one of the only 6 Indians who has completed this year’s RAW under Dr. Amit Samarth’s guidance.
While racing, the following MnM and Sachin’s family members provided their wholehearted support to achieve this monumental success. Their names are as follows Vaibhav and Gayatri Andhare, Bhushan Vaswani, Jyoti Patel, Rishi Sehgal, Ashish Umbarkar, Sachin’s wife Amita and son Shridhar. Specialized medical care was provided by Dr. Rajasi Sengupta , Dr. Shantanu Sengupta and Dr. Abhinav Konher. Apart from physical support, tremendous moral support was provided by his mother Smt. Jyoti , who was reading “Dasbodh” the entire time when Sachin was cycling.
