Can Conor Dunne burn off the world’s biggest breakfast in a single bike ride?

How do you like to take your breakfast on the morning of a big ride? Something light and nutritious to give you a morning boost, from which you can fuel sensibly later in the day?

Or are you more of a hearty breakfast type, wanting to eat plenty to set you up properly for the day ahead? If your preference is for the latter then just how far are you willing to go?

Imagine for a moment that you were asked to eat not just the monster of all breakfasts, but instead to tackle the apocalyptically named ‘Terminator Armageddon’ breakfast before hopping onto the saddle.

This incredible breakfast actually exists. It’s legendary in the heartlands of Doncaster in the north of England and is touted as the largest breakfast in the world. We’re going to serve it to Conor, to see if he can burn off the whopping 17,000 calories it contains on his ride back to GCN base camp in Bath.

The question is will he eat it all and will he even be able to get on his bike once he’s finished it? Let’s find out.

Read more: How many calories do you burn when cycling?

This is a monster challenge, even by GCN’s standards but if any of our presenters can do it then Conor is the man. He’s ridden some of the hardest three-week long races on the pro calendar so he knows a thing or two about fuelling. Or at least he should. Plus, well, he’s a big guy. The tallest in the team by far so there should be plenty of room to comfortably fit all that breakfast in.

What exactly is in the world’s biggest breakfast?

As a guide most traditional UK fried breakfasts are made up of 6 to 8 items. Maybe 10 if you’re really hungry and willing to spend a bit more cash. This one is made up of 150 items and consists of:

• 15 sausages
• 15 rashers of bacon
• 15 fried eggs
• 15 slices of black pudding (a traditional blood sausage eaten at breakfast in the UK. Yummy!)
• 15 slices of fried bread
• 15 slices of buttered toast
• 15 hash browns
• 15 portions of fried mushrooms
• 15 portions of tomatoes
• 15 portions of baked beans

That’s a lot of food for one, albeit very tall, man. Packed full of 17,000 calories this breakfast would normally cost £32. However, if Conor manages to eat the lot it in under an hour he gets it for free! So we’re all rooting for him.

Once he’s finished his breakfast he’s going to ride from the Shepherd’s Place Farm in Doncaster which serves this incredible feast, all the way back to the GCN office in Bath some 330km away. Will he do it? Will he be able to get on his bike? How long before the ‘meat sweats’ kick in and will all that food actually stay down?

What he needs is some encouragement and who better than our own Ollie Bridgewood who is there to offer some key advice and words of wisdom, especially around strategic toilet breaks that will allow Conor to take on more of the breakfast.

While watching with pleasure as Conor tucks into the food, Ollie has surmised that burning off this quantity of food will be no easy task. An average person burns 300 calories an hour while cycling which means this would take approximately 56 hours.

However Conor is not an average cyclist. he’s an ex-pro and pro cyclists can burn off around 1500 calories per hour. Which means he’d only need around 11.3 hours to do this.

As part of the challenge, any additional fuel Conor may end up consuming once he’s on the bike, will be added to his calories count, so he’ll need to burn those off too.

So these you have the bare facts. All that remains is to see how Conor gets on versus Terminator Armageddon! Watch the video to find out.

For more GCN challenges check out our dedicated section on the GCN website.