Claire Stevens

G’day! The bike has been the centre of so many adventures throughout my life and has always proven ideal for recalibrating my mindset, seeing the sights and daily commuting. I have been through many incarnations as a rider, raced on the road and track and competed in multiple endurance, stage and 24hour solo races on the mountain bike.

While I have ‘bikepacked’ in some form since the early 00s, my preparation and subsequent participation in the 2017 Indian Pacific Wheel Race, really transformed my riding. I love to get out and ride to see things from a perspective not possible by any other means. While loving a good descent like any ‘normal’ cyclist, highlights of my rides are usually the landscapes I travel through, making incidental bird and wildlife sightings and appreciating the trees and flowers. My ‘why’ in bikepacking races is not necessarily the competition, but the influence of urgency and the experiences that are unlocked as a part of the immersion in the landscape through long hours in the saddle and distance covered in a short time.

My solo bikepacking adventures had mostly been on road or “Commodore” gravel until I trialled a few rough off-road routes on an entirely inappropriate bike between 2020 lockdowns in Victoria. Wanting more, I ordered a Curve GMX+ and far out, it is the most fun bike I have ever ridden. Gerty, as my GMX+ is known, has taken me on various UK bikepacking routes including England’s King Alfred Way and Scotland’s Highland Trail 550. Most recently I raced the GBDURO covering 2000km from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

I am temporarily living in the UK to gain some extra special training in my work as a surgeon specialising in the liver and pancreas. I will be coming home to (R)Adelaide in December 2021.