The Women’s top finisher in this year’s 2024 Great Divide Race is visiting Cranbrook this week.
The route is off road and goes from Banff through a section of the East Kootenay to Antelope Wells New Mexico on the U.S. Mexican border.
Meaghan Hakinen from Kelowna peddled over 4,343 kilometers – 27 hundred plus miles.
She’s says she felt safe most of the time.
“Most of the time I felt pretty safe. I rode a lot in the early morning and late at night.”
“I carried bear spray and a whistle and I didn’t see too many other people or too much wildlife except some moose and a porcupine, scorpions and tarantulas in New Mexico, but in general it’s just me and the sun.”
“I’ve done a lot of bike tours and a lot of them have been with other people, so I was visiting friends in Southern California And I I did a couple trips by myself into the desert just to practice being alone without cell reception to make sure I didn’t go crazy or hate myself.”
The route took her over 50 mountain passes.
Meaghan Hakinen is in Cranbrook this week. She’s recovering after peddling over 50 mountain passes and rough terrain in completing the 2024 Great Divide race.
Hakinen not only completed the race but was 7th overall and the top Female finished.
After peddling well over 43 hundred kilometers/27 hundred miles, she felt tired after long ride.
“You never know how your body will react to this kind of strain and I had a demon in my feet so they they swelled up pretty big. I couldn’t put my bike shoes on the day after. ”
“I had constant bloody noses and congestion so that didn’t stop right away and I just needed to sleep a lot and the thought of going up a staircase was fatiguing so it was incredible how I could go from doing almost 300 kilometers a day on rough gravel roads to not wanting to walk up like a stair flight.”
The ultra-endurance cyclist is also an author. She’s written South Away: The Pacific Coast on Two Wheels and Shifting Gears: Coast to Coast on the Trans Am Bike Race.
Among some of her adventures, she’s ridden Haida Gwaii to Mexico’s plateaus, across Canada, the United States, and Europe’s toughest climbs from North Cape to Tarifa.
You can purchase her books at Huckleberry Books here in Cranbrook.
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