The newly christened 1,500-mile route from Southern California into Mexico has a champion: Her name, Lael Wilcox.
Few people pedal as hard as Lael Wilcox. And the 30-year-old Anchorage-native has a growing number of records to prove it.
Wilcox already owns the women’s Fastest Known Time (FKT) title for the 2,800-mile Tour Divide MTB ride from Alberta to the Mexican border. But last week she blazed 1,546 miles down Baja California in 11 days, 13 hours, and 2 minutes on a 29er Specialized Fuse. Her mark is the first FKT for the new Baja Divide route from Tecate to La Paz, Mexico.
The Baja Divide
The full 1,700-mile route (extra miles for touring cyclists) opened to the public in January after Wilcox and her partner Nicholas Carman spent a year developing it.
The route is about 95 percent unpaved, with the paved remainder comprising mostly low-traffic roads. Wilcox and Carman’s impetus for creating the route was to help backcountry riders avoid federal highway Mex 1.