The organizer: Mark Herbst
The pitch: Raising $45,000
The cause: Toronto’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
Mark Herbst finished a 30,000-kilometre bike ride around the world to raise money for cancer research in honour of his wife, Jackie, who died of cancer at age 55.Supplied
Mark Herbst rode his bike across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge last summer when he stopped in the same place he’d stood with his wife, Jackie, months before she died of cancer.
The couple had been avid cyclists, and Ms. Herbst had also participated in CrossFit and finished an Ironman event. She died in 2021 at the age of 55.
As he stood near the bridge once again, memories of Jackie came flooding back.
“It really hit me, just remembering it. I started getting some tears, and then I was making a video and I just lost it like a baby,” he recalled.
Mr. Herbst, 69, was passing through San Francisco as part of an around-the-world cycling tour he completed this year in honour of Jackie.
He started the journey in Thailand on Jan. 7, 2025, and finished in Bangkok last month, winding his way through 25 countries and covering 30,000 kilometres. Along the way he raised nearly $50,000 for Toronto’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.
Herbst biked through 25 countries on his charity ride.Supplied
He hopes to have set a Guinness World Record for the oldest person to circle the globe on a bicycle.
“I’ve been a big cyclist my entire life, and from a racing perspective, from a coaching perspective,” he said.
He’d been trying to find purpose in his life after Jackie’s death and he looked up the existing record for circumventing the globe. He discovered that it belonged to a 56-year-old man.
“I was shocked at that. I thought it’d be a lot older. And I thought, ‘Wow, I could do that.’”
Now back home in Bracebridge, Ont., where he runs a coaching business, Mr. Herbst plans to write a book about his journey. It will be based on a daily journal he kept that recorded his highs and lows, and the support he felt from his wife.
“She was out there watching over me,” he said. “There’s no question. I could feel it.”