When Lael Wilcox needed a vacation from her long-distance bike racing, she…went on a long-distance bike ride. She rode the length of Baja California, mostly on dirt, decided to piece together a new route down the length of the peninsula, felt like she could have done a better job, got on a bus and rode twenty-six hours from San José del Cabo back to the United States border, and then rode it again so she could improve it. Less than a year later, in March 2017, she rode this new Baja Divide route yet again, this time notching a speed record by riding 1,546 miles from the border to Cabo in eleven days, thirteen hours, and two minutes.
Who does this kind of thing?
Wilcox is thirty years old and holds the women’s records for the fiendishly difficult Tour Divide, which runs from Canada to Mexico along the spine of the Rockies, and for the self-supported, east-west, cross-country Trans Am Bike Race. Yet her racing career
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