Lachlan Morton has made a career out of racing bikes, but he’s not aiming for the podium in this summer’s Tour de France — instead, he focuses on getting enough to eat and keeping dry. “I’ve made a few mistakes with running out of food, getting everything wet, sleeping in a wet sleeping bag,” the 29-year-old Australian told AFP at a cafe in southern France, a carton of milk and a beer at hand.
Lugging his gear on a carbon-fiber Cannondale, Morton is pursuing what his EF Education-Nippo team calls the Alt Tour, a solo no-support journey along the official route. But unlike the Tour riders — he began an hour after the official start on June 26 — he is also biking the distance between the various stages while the main Tour is transported from one location to the next.
To keep cool during his 12-hour days, he swapped his clipless pedals in favor of open-toe sandals. By the time he rolls into Paris, probably on Tuesday, Morton will have traveled 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles), compared with 3,414 kilometers for this year’s official Tour. “This is by far my favorite bike riding style,” he said. “It’s very peaceful. You get to know yourself, the landscape, and the place you are in.” – ‘Give it a go’ –
Morton’s Tour is a charity ride for World Bicycle Relief, which provides rugged, low-maintenance bikes to poor rural areas for children to get to school, for example, or farmers to transport more to market. “It was my boss’s idea,” he said. “He asked me if I thought it was possible, and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a go’.”
It’s also a chance to complete the Tour in a spirit closer to its roots when riders were supposed to be self-sufficient, and no assistance was allowed. While his teammates get massages, hot meals, and a hotel bed at the end of their days, Morton finds a campground and blows up an inflatable mattress that barely fits into his bivy sack.
He also has to think about charging light or a phone stocked with music — Lou Reed and King Krule are on the playlist — so that people can follow his progress on the Alt Tour website. “Looking after myself, the camping, the cooking, that’s tough, but it’s what makes it so unique,” he said.
“Every day, there’s something that comes out… it might be mechanical, sometimes it might be a mental or a physical thing,” he added. “They are all individual challenges you must take as they come.” – ‘Simple’ –
Morton has also met many well-wishers, including local riders who join him as he travels through their towns or tackles challenging ascents. Having gotten into a rhythm over the past three weeks, he says it has also got easier to get up and get going when the alarm goes off at 5:00 am.
And it’s a nice break from the adrenalin rush of racing. “To be outside, in France, during the Tour de France, riding your bike all day with no other objective than getting as far as you can and then camping — It’s such a nice, simple way to live,” he said.
“It’s really like a dream come true in all the ways. A weird dream to have, I guess.” But it hasn’t stopped him from looking forward to the small luxuries at the end of his ride, like sleeping in a real bed and wearing clean clothes — “in that order.”
