You’ve set a host of records in ultra-distance races. How did you get into cycling?
I only really started cycling when I was 20 to get to work. Before that I walked or ran everywhere – I’ve never driven. I got a bike because my job was about 6km away and it was too far to walk, so I borrowed a bike that was so big I could barely get on it. It was fine, but then there was a huge hill to get home and I was like, ‘Oh, this is terrible! Why would anybody do this? It’s just so hard.’
Pretty quickly I realised I could really get places with the bike. I started riding all over town and rode to the next city over to visit my sisters – it was something like 80km. I couldn’t believe I could go so far, and then I realised I could ride across the US. I could see the whole country, just bring a tent and camp out.
It was such an opportunity to travel on a student budget. I mostly road-toured for the first couple of years. I rode from Seattle, Washington down to Mexico and then to the Baja Peninsula. It was over 2,000km.
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My plan was to go on this trip across the US and then go to medical school. I wanted to be a surgeon. I was going to come back and get serious. And then for the next five years my mum would ask me when I was going to medical school. After a bit she stopped asking.
You’ve been doing these races for years now. Does it ever get boring?
Bikepacking is opening up so much. There are all these people in all these countries around the world making routes, hosting races and events. It’s such a motivating way to learn about a place. People invite me to come over and I get to see a place through their eyes. I never get sick of that. I’m just so happy to be out there seeing what the land looks like.
The thing that has become a little bit mentally hard, however, is the sleep deprivation. I’ve done it so many times, and sometimes I just don’t want to do it again, I just want to sleep. At first it’s exciting riding through the night, but after a while it’s like, ‘Oh no, not again.’
Have you ever had to quit a race?
I’ve twice had to stop because of breathing problems. First on the Arizona Trail and then the Tour Divide last summer. It’s just so depressing. I hate quitting. As much as this stuff hurts, especially if I’m already five days into a ride, I’m thinking, ‘If I quit I have to redo those five days and I don’t want to do it again.’ You work so hard just to get to that point, so quitting is crushing.
Otherwise, oh my, sometimes there’s terrible pain but you know it won’t last forever, at some point you will finish this thing. Sometimes it’s hard to look back on a race and feel satisfied. I’m often just happy that it’s over.
What do you eat during a race?
A lot of crazy gas station food. Once I ordered the only hot thing they had left. It came in a brown paper bag, stapled shut, and I was like, ‘OK, who knows what’s in there, but I need to eat.’ It was a hamburger patty with fried cheese in it. I took a bite and it was gross and all greasy but there was nothing coming up and I was self-supported so I just ate the whole thing.
It depends on the country too. Racing in Europe is great because there are bakeries everywhere, but riding in Kyrgyzstan is pretty bleak when it comes to food.
How do your male counterparts feel when you beat their records? Do you get any backlash?
When I first started out, people were supportive or they just didn’t care. But now it is more polarised.
As a woman winning overall, often people can’t wrap their minds around how that’s possible so they want to figure out a way to say you’re cheating or take it away from you. I mean, that was part of the reason I even started racing. I was working as a bartender, I would go out for the two days I had off and ride 300km and then go back to work. Somebody would ask me about it and then they would say to my face, ‘No, you didn’t do that.’ But when I’m in a race there is proof I did it.
I think there are people that just can’t accept a woman could be capable of doing this stuff. So that’s part of my motivation, because I want to prove it’s possible, then I also want other women to think they could do it too. I’m not the best athlete, so there are other people that should attempt this stuff too.
You now live in Tucson, Arizona, and run a cycling programme called GRIT…
Tucson is great. It’s almost like the town where I grew up [Anchorage, Alaska], as in it’s very spread out and there are mountains all around, but it is the desert version. I can ride my bike in a T-shirt in winter.
GRIT originally stood for ‘girls riding into tomorrow’ but now I don’t know if I even care about the acronym anymore. I just like the name. Tucson has an awesome kids’ riding group, but it’s focussed on them becoming racers. There are so many kids who wouldn’t want to do that but still want to ride bikes, and there are those who have never thought about riding a bike.
I want to give them the opportunity to ride in a social way and build up to an adventure, instead of being focussed on becoming the most skilled or fastest rider, especially when some of these kids are really out of shape. Kids nowadays are just always on their phones, so I want to give them a handlebar to hold instead of their phone, and help them connect to the outside again, to look up and see birds and coyotes and roadrunners.
<b>Lael Wilcox</b>
Age: 35; Born: Alaska, USA
Notable records Trans Am (6,800km)
1st overall, 2016
Arizona Trail (1,189km)
Fastest known time
Baja Divide (2,735km)
Fastest known time
Tour Divide (4,418km)
Women’s course record
Photo: Rugile Kaladyte
