Lachlan Morton is doing the Tour de France on his own- the 1903 way, without support, including riding his way between stage starting points.
The Wall Street Journal had an article about him (it is behind a paywall):
The article did have some great comments:
“After 11 or 12 hours, he’s noticed that his morale tends to dip. With his body screaming at him to stop, his mind joins the chorus. Morton is experienced enough to know that if he can push through that moment, he can find a few more hours in his legs. The real signal to call it a day is when the hallucinations begin. Big rocks turn into fluffy dogs. Morton’s brain turns to mush.”
The early Tour years “were so strict that the French champion Eugene Christophe was famously disqualified while repairing the front fork of his bike in a blacksmith’s shop while leading the 1913 Tour. Despite doing his own welding, Christophe was still booted off the race once he was found to have received illegal assistance — the blacksmith’s son had operated the bellows.”
@Heretic I have watching his progress. It is an incredible undertaking and it would be huge if he could do this - especially after the mountains and then the long transition to Paris to finish before the TDF.
This would definitely be a great SUF inspirational video. Rapha really does a great job with their videos and so I am looking forward to what comes out of this.
I follow Lachlan on Strava but unfortunately he isn’t posting his journey there for some reason. Correction - he is posting. There was just a delay in the upload.
@JSampson You may well be aware of it already but Mitch Docker of EF Pro Cycling does a podcast called Life in The Peloton where he interviews various pro riders adn other cycling related folk. He recently spoke to Rapha founder Simon Mottram who explained why Rapha moved away from sponsoring Sky and moved to EF. He also did a good interview with Lachlan Morton which is worth a listen:
@Grm Excellent - thanks. I had not seen that and will check it out. Frankly after watching three days of crashes in the TdF I think Lachlan’s route is the way I would prefer to go.
@Heretic Hypothetically yes if had what it took to ride the entire TdF in 21 days. I don’t really train for that distance and definitely haven’t trained for those mountains. Riding self supported must be an incredible mental challenge.
@Heretic Nope - but I will check that out. I have done a century before and did a metric century earlier this month just to try it but in general my races are between 10 and 20 miles - all on a mountain bike. I have a 50 mile MTB race in September that I have done a few times so I have a good sense of handling that distance and the associated climbing. However, doing 150+ miles daily for 3 weeks is just a whole different realm and it is incredible that he is getting it done in like 10 hours per day - so far. I am very interested to see how things go in the mountains.
@Heretic … and rode 350 miles on his last day. That is definitely mental toughness. I was watching the pink dot all day yesterday and then did Thereabouts 2 as my evening workout in the spirit of the adventure. Can’t wait to see the movie on this latest ride.
