Lachlan Morton rode an unofficial singles tour of France and beat Peloton: NPR

Pro cyclist Lachlan Morton wasn’t officially in this year’s Tour de France, but he took the road anyway, alone – and beat everyone to the finish in Paris By five days.

After starting shortly behind the official group on June 26, he crossed the unofficial finish line at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday: 3,424 miles in 18 days, including ascents of some famously brutal mountains in France.

Morton rode about 200 miles each day, usually spending about 12 hours in the saddle before finding a place to camp at night (or simply ride all night).

“Going out and riding your bike really far once is one thing, but then sleeping in a tent and getting up at 5 the next morning to do it again and doing it again for 15 or 16 days, that’s a huge challenge, and it’s really hard,” he says. If not more difficult than I thought.”

For comparison, you can cross the continental US on a bike a little over 3,000 miles, and that can take at least two months for most people.

Morton’s team riding at US-based EF Education-Nippo named it alternate tour. While the EF team riding in the official Tour de France has a mechanic and spare bikes ready, hotels to sleep in, all their meals available and daily massages, Morton is left to his own devices.

A typical day at the Tour de France is about 100 miles. On the official tour, bus ferry passengers depart from where one day’s stage ends and the next day’s stage begins. Morton rode those gaps himself, which added significantly to the total mileage.

There are two rest days in the tour. Morton had nothing.

He carried all his clothes and equipment on his bike, bought his food and repaired his own tires.

There were deep moments, like walking the path to himself, riding through a gorgeous alpine sunrise, when he “felt very lucky to be there doing what I was doing”.

But Morton faced profound challenges, too: rainy days and nights, sleeping hungry, and running out of supplies. So much pain.

“I had knee pain the first day, and that was a pretty big problem and something I didn’t have a lot of experience with,” he told NPR. He had the idea of ​​buying longer, wider pedals (he actually had to buy a whole bike from a supermarket just to get the pedals) that would make his feet move more and ride his sandals.

“It turned out to be the perfect solution to my knee problem, but then it caused another problem,” Morton says: “I’ve had really big blisters from my sandals. “

But he made some adjustments and was able to ride in sandals for most of the trip.

The whole goal was to raise money for World Bicycle Relief, A non-profit organization that provides bicycles For people who need it in developing countries.

It wasn’t his first epic solo journey

It’s just the latest funny idea for Morton, who specializes in off-road riding. He’s done two of the first three-week cycling majors before – the Giro d’Italia in 2020, and the Vuelta a España in 2017 – but he gets the most attention for his solo adventures.

In 2019, he rode from the bottom to the top of Great Britain, more than 1,200 miles, in less than five days. Last year, he roamed the deserts and off-road mountain climbing southern Spain, completing 446 miles in 43 and a half hours, barely stopped at all. He’s made epic tours across Australian Outback, Via BalkansAnd the in Colombia And the Create a record For the fastest known time on the Kokopelli Trail from Moab, Utah to Loma, Colo.

A few months into the pandemic last year, with much pro cycling on hold, Morton briefly held the record for Everesting — that is, cycling multiple times over a single hill to reach a total vertical height equivalent to Mount Everest.

He is far from the only driver to have embraced extreme endurance events recently. Endurance cyclist Jack Thompson has now Overtaking the Tour de France After starting over a week late.

Among the many events that require riders to fend for themselves all the way, there’s the annual Tour Divide, which runs from Banff, Alberta, Canada to the US-Mexico border in New Mexico—about 2,700 miles. Less than 14 days by Mike Hall. The Trans Am bike race from Oregon to Virginia has ended In less than 17 days by Abdullah Zainab. Fiona Kolbinger rode from Bulgaria to France in just over 10 days Win a cross-continental race.

But Morton is known for his pioneering platform some to argue That his kind of adventure, complete with video documentation, live GPS tracking and social media boost, is the future of professional cycling.

There’s always a place for events like the tour, he says.

However, “I think there is definitely room beyond that where you can have top athletes compete in events or challenges or ride their bikes in a way that is still inspiring in terms of distance or speed, but is also more related to the way most people use their bikes,” says Morton. The Tour de France is inaccessible to 99.9% of the athletes. And you know, you can buy a bike and put some bags on it and go on a tour of France and there’s no one who can stop you.”