Ashleigh Myles is not fazed by long hours in the bicycle saddle. The Halifax-based bike technician co-created the Tip 2 Tip Nova Scotia endurance race, a 1,000-kilometre haul from The Hawk Beach on Cape Sable Island to Cape Breton’s Meat Cove, in 2020. And then she went out and set the record for its time-trial variant—a 750-kilometre straight shot without any support vehicles, food drops or resupplies—taking just 44 hours and 22 minutes to cycle from Nova Scotia’s southernmost point to its northernmost one. This laid-back rider considers a 250-kilometre day a “comfortable” and repeatable distance—which is good news, because her next bicycle trek is longer than anything she’s done before: This fall, Myles plans to become the world’s fastest woman to travel the entire Pan-American Highway by bicycle, alone and without any support. It’s a record she’s been eyeing for some time. And if Myles has her way, the mark she sets will stand for years to come.
On most days, you would be hard-pressed not to find Myles with a bicycle. Pop into Quinpool Road’s Long Alley Bicycles on a weekday, and you’ll find her tinkering away on bike frames, truing wheels and fixing chains, derailleurs and all manner of two-wheeled troubles. On weekdays—at least until the roads are consistently ice-free—she’s on the training bike or dreaming up the next version of the LOCOmotion 600, another annual endurance ride she co-founded in 2021. (Cyclists are given 2.5 days to pedal from Halifax’s Citadel Hill to Moncton and back—about 650 kilometres in total.) Two weekends ago, Myles and her partner rode the Cabot Trail.
“It was a little snowy,” she admits.
Snow will be the least of the challenges Myles will face on the near-23,000-kilometre journey from the tundras of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to the snow-capped mountains of Ushuaia, Argentina. Known as the “Ice-to-Ice Route” in long-distance cycling circles, the Pan-American Highway takes its travellers through bitter cold and sweltering tropical heat as it passes through 14 countries and roughly 183,000 metres of mountain climbs—the equivalent of riding from Earth’s surface to the beginning of outer space and most of the way back. It’s a trek she aims to complete in 95 days, starting Aug 20.
To reach the finish line, Myles plans to ride 250 kilometres “basically every” day.
“It’s long, but it’s not too long,” she says, speaking with The Coast. “It’s definitely doable day after day… I know it’s weird.”
To qualify for the record, she’ll need to forgo almost any offers of assistance along the route: No pre-planned hosts or food drops, no support van, no team massage therapist, nutritionist or mechanic to smooth the bumps of a long and arduous trek. Everything Myles needs for her trip, she’ll carry. That includes a bivy sack to sleep in most nights, along with all of her clothes and bike repair tools. (She’ll carry her water and food, too, but she can replenish those along the way—as long as she buys her food and drink from a store, restaurant or any other publicly accessible place where another cyclist could find the same thing.)
“Because it’s a solo, self-supported effort, I have to be careful with what I do along the way in order to verify it when I submit all my documentation,” Myles says. “Because if there’s any sort of like, ‘Oh, well, this person rode with you. Did you draft behind them?’ That would suck.”
One long trek
There are many ways to travel the Pan-American Highway. The longest continuous road network in the world, its various routes run vein-like across North, Central and South America, but there are two commonly agreed-upon endpoints: Prudhoe Bay and Ushuaia. The former, a sparsely populated tundra region known for its oil reserves, is located at the end of an 800-kilometre highway mostly made of dirt and gravel and frequented by long-haul trucks. The latter is the world’s southernmost city—a mild, mountainside resort town and tourist hub for the cruise ships that sail for Antarctica. Between the two lie tens of thousands of kilometres marked by frostbitten mountains, sun-baked desert and near-impassable jungle. (The 96-kilometre-long Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia—considered one of the most dangerous routes in the world—has no roads at all and is marked by swamps, mountain ridges and densely forested valleys. Myles will fly from Panama City to Cartagena to bypass it.)
In travelling from one end of the Pan-American Highway to the other, Myles will pass through Alaska, the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Alberta, then south through the western US before crossing into Mexico at the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez. The route will take her through the lush and hilly highways of Central America and the Andes mountains of South America.
Through it all, Myles expects to be hauling roughly 40 pounds of gear, between the bike itself and all the bags to carry her clothes, food and water. When it’s safe enough, she expects she’ll sleep in the bivy sack she plans to pack with her. Other nights, she’ll spring for a motel or hotel room.
“If I can camp, I’ll camp, because I would prefer just to pull off on the side of the road, sleep and then get going instead of checking in [somewhere],” she tells The Coast. “And honestly, trying to leave a hotel after riding for X amount of days and then being like, ‘Hey, this is comfortable, but you have to leave,’ is harder than just staying in a bivy.”
Eyes on the prize
It was in the midst of another record-setting ride that Myles started dreaming of an Alaska-to-Argentina trek. In September 2023, the Dalhousie graduate from Delta, BC, was well on her way to setting the speed record for crossing Nova Scotia by bicycle when she wondered to herself, “Is there something bigger than this I could do?” Myles had already cycled across Canada in 2018 and raced 2,500 kilometres across Ireland the following year. The thought arrived: How about the Pan-American Highway?
Cyclists seemed to be setting new speed records for the route almost every year, but they were all men. And half of them were supported by teams. Could Myles become the fastest woman to complete the trek—and do it without support? She didn’t see why not.
“I checked the Guinness World Records. There was nothing. I checked the World Ultra Cycling Association website. There was nothing,” she says. “I spent a couple days researching. I wanted to make sure nobody’s done this—and nobody, as far as I know, has.”
Myles figures she can complete the 23,000 kilometres in 95 days. She plans to arrive in Ushuaia on Nov 25—cycling through North and Central America after the hottest days of summer have passed and reaching the finish line as Argentina enters late spring.
“I was talking to my family, and they’re like, ‘Well, why would you do 95 days? You could do 120,’” Myles tells The Coast. She gets the appeal. But even if she could set a world record with less struggle involved, she remains fixed on her target. “If you’re trying to set a record, you might as well set something that’s a little bit harder to break,” she explains.
Between plane tickets, bike repairs, food and lodging, Myles estimates it’ll cost her around $25,000 to complete the trek. She’s been actively seeking corporate sponsors to help bring those costs down—but she’s been pleasantly surprised by the number of Nova Scotians who have already pitched in to help as well. On her GoFundMe page, Myles credits the “stories of other women doing out-of-their-comfort-zone things” that motivate her to go for the history books and “help fuel the excitement for women continuing to excel in sports.”
The adventure of it all has its own appeal.
“I’m just doing it because I honestly think it’s fun. And I really enjoy the challenge.”
This article appears in Feb 1-28, 2025.