In the first days of November, Alexis Cartier finally rolled up to his doorstep in Montreal, a little leaner, a little dustier and with ten thousand miles in his legs. He’d been gone since April, spending the last seven months racing, camping and pedalling his way across a continent.
“That was a cool ride,” he says, with the understatement of someone describing a weekend spin. “It was a bit more than I planned: about 10,000 miles, 16,000 kilometres, of bikepacking in seven months.”
Ten thousand miles. That’s about twice what the average cycling enthusiast logs in a year; roughly the distance from Montreal to Buenos Aires; or, in Cartier’s case, the distance from California to Kansas, to Colorado, to Wisconsin, to Arkansas, and finally back to Quebec.
For Cartier, 34, this wasn’t some bucket-list bike tour or sabbatical adventure; it was his commute.
The Canadian racer spent 2025 contesting the Life Time Grand Prix, America’s premier off-road race series, which spans seven months, six events and the width of the United States. He entered as a Wild Card selection, one of a handful of athletes invited to take on the series without guaranteed spots, but rather than amassing air miles between start lines, Cartier chose to ride to every single one.
Canadian cyclist Alexis Cartier rode to every start line of the Life Time Grand Prix
(Image credit: John Gibson / gibsonpictures.com)
Riding with purpose
Cartier’s idea wasn’t born out of wanderlust, but conviction. “I wanted to challenge the environmental impact of bicycle racing,” he says. “That was the plan when I quit road cycling. I felt there was an opportunity to do that in gravel.”
He had tested the concept in 2024, riding between a few smaller events to see if it was even feasible to combine racing with self-supported travel.
“Last year, I got better at bikepacking and tried to train at the same time,” he says. “It was fun, but I realised performance takes a bit of a hit. Still, it was no less fun. In a race, there’s still a race a little further back, even if you’re not all the way in the front.”
When Life Time released its 2025 calendar, Cartier noticed the dates were spaced out in a way that made it possible for him to link them all by bike.
“It was the biggest project I could do,” he says. “But it’s also really simple. You just do those races and link…