[ARETE] Book Review

[Duncan Jamieson]

Shifting Gears: Coast to Coast on the Trans Am Bike Race (2023, NeWest)

Review by Dave Buchanan, MacEwan University

Meaghan Marie Hackinen is a rarity in the world of sports literature: she’s a legit non-fiction writer (with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and numerous publications, including a well-received debut bike-travel narrative, South Away: The Pacific Coast on Two Wheels (2020) on her resume) and she is also an elite ultra-endurance athlete. Her new book, Shifting Gears: Coast to Coast on the Trans Am Bike Race (2023), is both a compelling race narrative and a classic identity-journey story about embracing her dual status of writer/rider.

The Trans Am is a self-supported ultra-endurance bicycle race that tracks a 4,267-mile route from Astoria, Oregon, to Yorktown, Virginia. Unlike some other very long bike races, like the Tour de France, where the racing is contained within daily, timed stages, the Trans Am is a total-elapsed-time event, meaning the clock never stops. This leads to extreme tactics, including riding all night (sometimes sleeping for a few hours in a ditch beside the road) and subsisting almost exclusively on gas-station cuisine.

Most people have never heard of the Trans Am; it’s not exactly a mainstream event. As race organizer Nathan Jones tells the participants in his starting-line speech: “It’s a race, but really nobody cares.” And the people who take part are a special breed. As one competitor said, it’s “only for the crazies.”

Hackinen is typical of participants who gravitate to such events. An accomplished bike tourer accustomed to putting in big days in the saddle, she wanted to test her limits, so she signed up for the 2017 event. It wasn’t about winning, at least at first, but rather to see if she could do it-–if she could achieve her audacious goal of averaging 180 miles a day for 25 days. (By Day 2 of the race, Hackinen had adjusted her goal: from just finishing to competing. Ultimately, she was the third fastest woman and 23rd overall–not bad for her first race of this length and difficulty.)

Participation in ultra-endurance cycling events like the Trans Am and the better-known Tour Divide tends to skew heavily male. In the 2017 running of Trans Am, only 13 of the 131 entrants were women. But, interestingly, women who partake in these events tend to perform disproportionately well. They sometimes even win. Lael Wilcox, the Alaskan ultra-endurance cyclist, won the Trans Am overall in 2016, and, more recently, in 2024, Hackinen herself won the Arkansas High Country Race; in both cases, these women cyclists beat all competitors, male and female. Hackinen, in fact, credits Wilcox, a legend in the world of bikepacking and ultra-endurance bike racing, who recently broke the women’s ‘round-the-world cycling record, as an inspirational figure. Further back in history, one can see a connection between these contemporary athletes and British female phenom Beryl Burton, who regularly bested male competitors in endurance bike races in the 1950s and 60s.

Hackinen was an absolute newbie at the starting line, almost laughably underprepared for what she was getting into, lacking some essential gear (a fender, a warm jacket for high-mountain temps) and having done little route research. Prior to the Trans Am, she’d done a few long-distance events, but nothing on the scale of the Trans Am and nothing outside of the Canadian Prairies. In the early days of the race, she got lost repeatedly (though she wasn’t the only one) and had to rely on fellow competitors for route info.

But she quickly figured it all out and settled into endurance-race mode. Hackinen neatly captures the way that the life of a Trans Am racer is incredibly narrow, life in a kind of “bubble,” she calls it: “Pedal, eat, and pedal some more,” with the odd nap mixed in. The diet of racers is an astonishing (and horrifying) cascade of gas-station crapola: pepperoni sticks, mini-donuts, Snickers bars, and a “rainbow’s selection of candy.” A ruthless and indiscriminate quest for calories, the Trans Am is “as much an eating contest across America” as a bike race, as one competitor put it.

Like any good race narrative, the story is about more than just the competition. Hackinen deftly weaves in anecdotes from her past--about influential family figures, her schooling and professional life, relationships, and the growth of her love of long-distance cycling--building up the backstory of how she got to this point in her life.

Participants in the Trans Am have to be self-supported and, in most cases, aren’t allowed to draft off each other, but some do strike up alliances and choose to ride together, at least some of the time, and these connections can be intense, if short-lived. Hackinen’s book ends up being as much about relationships as it is about bike racing. She recounts the dissolution of one relationship and the distillation of others. Her homebody boyfriend Tyler, back in Saskatoon, can’t really comprehend what Hackinen is attempting to do; in the competitors she meets in the Trans Am, Hackinen’s restless spirit discovers her true tribe.

At the core of the book is Hackinen’s new friendship with German competitor Matthias Rau. They meet on Day 4 and end up riding together for much of the race, though often in the company of others. The two turn out to be well-suited cycling companions, with complementary skills (in contrast to Hackinen, he’s incredibly well prepared, having done meticulous route research), similar fitness levels and attitudes to competition. Plus, they have fun together, stopping for dips in rivers, sharing junk food, and just generally commiserating over this ludicrous and extraordinary undertaking. Where this relationship will go becomes one of the central questions of the book.

As you’d expect, Hackinen and her new companions encounter plenty of hardship, from injuries to demoralizing winds to sleep deprivation, fatigue, dogs, and general despair. But there’s something even darker in the background. Ultra-endurance events like the Trans Am are inherently dangerous. Some of her descriptions of night riding, fighting off sleep and hallucinations, navigating both poor conditions and surprised motorists, not to mention sleeping by the side of the road, sound downright harrowing. In fact, the event is so dangerous that people have died during it, including in 2017.

On the flip side, of course, are the many pleasures of a long adventure by bicycle–natural splendor, the “strange serenity” of self-propelled motion, the friendships with other cyclists, and the many acts of kindness by strangers encountered en route. Hackinen artfully blends these highs and lows into a satisfying narrative about pushing one’s limits, forging new connections, experiencing a slice of Americana, and re-casting identity.

In the years since the 2017 Trans Am, Hackinen has established herself as one of the top ultra-endurance cyclists in the world, racking up some impressive palmares. Her literary fame is not quite at the same level, but given her obvious talents and determination, I wouldn’t be surprised if she one day breaks through in a big way in the book world as well.
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