The 15 hours and 21 minutes that it took him to complete the 300-kilometer route through the heart of the Swedish bush is the fastest time that he could find on the internet, but if anyone has ever ridden it faster before him, let us know. Lachy wants to buy you a beer, because he knows how tough the Bergslagleden is.

Lachy first came across the classic route, which has long been popular with hikers, on bikepacking.com and decided then that it was a trail he wanted to do. He had been to Stockholm before, but never had the chance to explore the Swedish wilds. After racing Hills Gravel and The Traka, he was craving some peace and quiet and a different kind of challenge. That’s what he found in Sweden’s north woods.

“It had been raining overnight, so it was really wet in there, and it was slick as hell,” Lachlan said. “It was all rocks and roots with zero traction, a proper hiking trail. So, the first few hours were very challenging and slow going. It was very difficult just to stay on the bike. The trail kicked my arse for the first four or five hours. There was lots of hiking. You were constantly trying to work out where traction was. At that point, I was like, ‘This is going to be a long, long day.’ But then it slowly started to dry out and after the first 120 kilometers or so, there was a bit more flow, and then, I started to enjoy it a lot more. The first half felt like I was just against the trail and it was trying to kill me and I was trying not to die, and in the second half, I felt like I'd made peace with it and worked it out. It is a pretty relentless, but beautiful route.”

That experience was the real reward for Lachlan – far more important to him than a time in any record book. Embracing challenges like the Bergslagleden and accepting hardship out in the wild brings him closer to a kind of zen.

“The whole ride, I saw two hikers and they just looked at me and started laughing because I was on a bike,” Lachlan said. “You just have the whole place to yourself. That definitely puts you in a strange mental state. You are in this forest and it's pretty dense. There are elevation changes, but there are no points of reference. The light was the same from about 5:00 AM until 8:00 PM. So, your sense of time gets really warped. It's very disorienting and made me uneasy for quite a period, like I was working against the terrain. But, that's also the experience. I've been doing it for years now, so I love it. If I didn't love it, I'd stop doing it.”

Lachlan actually recommends that you ride the Bergslagleden a lot slower than him. He had to knock it out in a day, but the real winner would be the cyclist who can complete it in the slowest known time and do the most listening to birds, fall asleep to the chirping of frogs, and watch the wind ruffle through the woods and clouds ripple over the Swedish lakes.

“I wanted to do it for the sake of doing it versus a race,” Lachlan said. “I rode it hard and fast and whatever, because I only had a day, but I was hanging around a bit more than I normally would, because it's not a route I'll probably ever get a chance to ride again. This was my one shot at it. Once I got halfway through, I realized it would be possible to finish in daylight hours, so then that became a bit of a carrot towards the end, but it wasn't an all out assault. If you had more time, I would advise you to take your time on that route. There are so many cool spots you could stop and camp and just enjoy the very peaceful forest riding.”

That is a challenge that every mountain biker could embrace. Here is a link to Lachy’s Bergslagleden route.