On Saturday, the Aussie, who has lived in Colorado off and on for close to a decade, will rock up to the Leadville 100, one of the biggest, baddest races in his home state, if not the whole USA.

Lachlan has twice finished on the podium at Leadville. The 100-mile, high-altitude trek across the Rockies will always be one of his favorite events. Backcountry ATV tracks, fast gravel, and the odd tarmac sector suit him and his road-racing engine, and now he has the skills to bomb the burliest descents with the best. This year, Lachlan wants to do better than ever at Leadville. He’s up against the strongest field that’s ever made the trip up to the mountain mining town to race, so can’t control the outcome, but knows he’s done the work. Once the shotgun goes off and the Leadville 100 starts, he’s going to give it hell.

“I will try to use my experiences that I have had there before to put together the ride that I haven’t quite been able to put together yet,” Lachlan says. “I have a second and a third. Last year, I had some bad luck, but it is definitely a race that suits me and historically has been a good one for me. I am more prepared than I have been in the past.”

To get ready for this year’s race, Lachlan has spent the past couple of weeks up in Leadville with some friends who live in town, scouting the course and getting used to the thin mountain air. Since he returned to the States from Africa, where he won the Evolution Gravel Race in Tanzania and finished second at the Migration Gravel Race in Kenya, Leadville has been his focus. Out in the mountains, during this low-key, high-altitude camp, he has fine tuned his bike.

“I am going to be riding the Cannondale Scalpel hardtail this year,” Lachy says. “I had never ridden a hardtail before on this course, but I feel like the parts of the course where I have been ridden away from for the win the two times I was on the podium, the hardtail would have been nice, because it was on that steep climb, Powerline, near the end. So I took the hardtail to Africa and raced Evolution and Migration on it just to get the time in on the bike with Leadville in the back of my mind. I’ll run 2.35 Vittoria Mezcal tyres with the more durable casing, because it is still quite a gnarly course in some places, especially when you are going fast, so I will run those with some inserts. And then I am also going to run a 43-tooth chainring–a really big gear. It is a risk, because if I run out of legs it is going to be very hard to push, but for me it is kind an all-in strategy. If I can push it, I will be somewhere near the front, so I have got that big puppy on there.”

The front is exactly where Lachlan wants to be. Although his approach to cycling has changed over the past few years, as he has ridden towards new horizons on meaningful adventures like last spring’s OneRideAway effort to raise money for Ukrainian refugees or the AltTour, there is still a lot of bike racer left in Lachlan Morton.

“I just enjoy being at the front of a bike race,” Lachlan says. “It is a feeling that is pretty hard to replicate. I guess I enjoy giving myself that check by having to compete. Racing will definitely humble you. But if you can put it together on a day, there is just nothing like it. Now, I compete because I want to, and I have found a renewed energy in the process of getting ready for a goal. Before I would treat the racing as means to an end in a way, like I would perform and compete so I could still earn a living riding a bike, where now, as much as I love just going and spending all day by myself in the woods, I do enjoy those specific moments through the year when you have have to show up and show yourself that you are ready and try and have a race. The feeling when you commit to a goal and try and go all in is good. It is a more intense focus that I think just keeps you honest a bit. You kind of have to cross your Ts and dot your Is and put it together on one specific day. It is not like I have that feeling of pressure to put it all together, but it is just something that I would like to do for myself.”

Leadville is going to be a very honest race. After 100 miles of racing on rugged alpine trails and ATV tracks, climbing into oxygen-deprived air and barreling down descents, you end up where you deserve to be on the results sheet. Everyone gets a Leadville belt buckle when they return to the finish in the Colorado mountain town, many hours after their start. Lachlan already has a few of those. He does want more, though he knows how hard it is going to be and who he is up against, not least his buddy Keegan Swenson. Still, the bike racer in him has a dream.

“To win Leadville would be amazing,” Lachlan says. “It is one of the bigger races in the States and has got a lot of cool history. It is obviously in Colorado, which has been my home now for ten years. I know it is a much better field than there has ever been, so it would take a special day, but I wouldn’t have invested so much time and energy into it if I didn’t think that special day might come along. Leadville is one of the few really competitive goals that I have left in bike racing. It will just be a matter of trying to have that special day, which, as everyone knows in cycling, don’t come around too often. You just hope it comes around on the right day.”

Saturday is the day: 100 miles across the Rocky Mountains! Go Lachlan!