{"id":156309,"date":"2025-11-27T12:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T12:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/156309\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T12:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T12:30:08","slug":"meaghan-hackinen-on-winning-the-silk-road-mountain-race-moroccan-adventures-sketchy-river-crossings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/156309\/","title":{"rendered":"Meaghan Hackinen on Winning the Silk Road Mountain Race, Moroccan Adventures, &#038; Sketchy River Crossings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2024 Tour Divide winner talks about riding bikes through border crossings, dangerous rivers, and more on the Velo Podcast.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"velo-podcast-meaghan-hackinen-interview-112825-1\" src=\"https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/velo-podcast-meaghan-hackinen-interview-112825-1.jpg\" data-loaded=\"true\" fetchpriority=\"high\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\"  bad-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/velo-podcast-meaghan-hackinen-interview-112825-1.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"fp-leadCaption py-tight text-left font-utility text-utility3-size leading-utility3-line-height text-secondary\"> (Photo: Meaghan Hackinen)<\/p>\n<p>Published November 27, 2025 05:13AM<\/p>\n<p>After winning the 2024 Tour Divide, Salsa Cycles\u2019 Meaghan Hackinen set her sights on the three-part Mountain Race Series that spans Africa, Europe, and Asia. Meaghan not only became the first female finisher of the wildest race series on the planet, but she also won both the Hellenic in Greece and arguably the most remote and challenging event of all, the Silk Road Mountain Race that travels through the isolated mountains of Kyrgyzstan.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s episode sees Meaghan explain the challenges of tackling the most difficult ultra series out there, from logistical concerns to trouble at armed border crossings, from sleeping at elevation to wading through dangerous rivers, and how her bike setup evolved from being rigid with a drop handlebar to using a suspension fork and taking a more mountain bike-esqe approach.<\/p>\n<p>See the latest from Meaghan Hackinen: <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"text-brand-primary underline hover:text-brand-primary\/85 break-words overflow-wrap-anywhere underline-offset-[3px]\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-afl-p=\"0\" href=\"https:\/\/meaghanhackinen.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>See the latest from Velo <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"text-brand-primary underline hover:text-brand-primary\/85 break-words overflow-wrap-anywhere underline-offset-[3px]\" data-afl-p=\"0\" href=\"http:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/featured\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>See prior episodes of the Velo Podcast <a target=\"_blank\" class=\"text-brand-primary underline hover:text-brand-primary\/85 break-words overflow-wrap-anywhere underline-offset-[3px]\" data-afl-p=\"0\" href=\"http:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/tag\/velo-podcast\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2024 Tour Divide winner talks about riding bikes through border crossings, dangerous rivers, and more on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,92693,147,103493,103494,71008,2359],"class_list":["post-156309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-parent_category-gravel","tag-science","tag-tag-meaghan-hackinen","tag-tag-tour-divide","tag-tag-velo-podcast","tag-type-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}