Video: Blind Bikepacking in Arizona on a Route Designed by Lael Wilcox
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The importance of having a sporting hero in her life became clear to Miranda Miller when she first met Lael Wilcox. She’d had a hero once before, Canadian downhill cyclist Stevie Smith, but hadn’t realized that’s what he was until after he passed away. Once she acknowledged this hole in her life, she began to look for a new source of inspiration.
After her initial admiration over Lael’s physical feats, Miranda came to the realization that what she found most important about Lael is the way her personality and attitude outshine everything else. Lael, always with a laugh or looking as if she’s about to crack a joke, showcased the adventure and beauty of the experience rather than the physical beat-down and challenge.
Inspired by Lael, Miranda has taken on increasingly demanding bikepacking challenges over the last three years. She’s hallucinated in the middle of the night, fallen asleep while riding, thrown up, and been trapped on a mountainside. Planning distances, meals, water locations, and bivvy stops is hard for someone who’s focus used to be on a 3–10-minute efforts but Miranda loves a challenge.
That brought on the idea to ask Lael if she would build Miranda a route she could ride ‘blind’ – a route where she knew nothing about in advance. She’d only ridden planned routes before, so by removing any control in designing the route the challenge would be much greater. The beautiful thing about bikepacking is that any distance is a good distance. Could Miranda embrace that tenet and have a similar experience to Lael? She didn’t need to ride to her capacity for the same distance or speed – she just had to try.
Miranda never had the opportunity to tell Stevie that he was her hero and to thank him for being such an inspiration. So, here and now, Miranda wants to say “Thank you, Lael. Thank you for being a hero to me and many more around the world. You’ve opened an entire new world of cycling to me and shown that we’re all so much more capable than we believe. What an honor and privilege to have had this experience.”
