After riding 14,200 kilometers in 30 days, 9 hours, and 59 minutes – or almost 470 kilometers per day through the bushlands and highway traffic of the Australian coast – his legs still hurt, but he is stoked to go race Big Sugar this weekend and get back on the sweet Bentonville dirt. Although Lachlan missed out on two races on the Life Time Grand Prix circuit when he was in Oz, the competitor in him still wants to hold on to his top-five spot in the overall rankings. More than anything, he is excited to see his bike racing friends, as they all get together for the last big race of the year in Arkansas.

“I've loved racing the whole Life Time series,” Lachlan says. “It has done a lot for me and for the racing scene in the USA. I think it has breathed some fresh life into the sport. It is especially cool and exciting to see everything going on in Bentonville. It is a real cycling hub, I would say, probably the cycling hub in the U.S. right now. I'm always happy and excited to go and ride there. They have all the trails and cool bike related businesses and people who are excited about bike riding, so it is a cool event to go to."

Lachlan is not quite sure how his body will handle 100 miles of elbow-to-elbow, tire-to-tire racing with the fastest riders in the U.S. on chunky Ozark gravel after spending a month in the aerobars, riding solo down Aussie highways.

“I did the damage and now I just have to live with the consequences,” he says. “I'm excited to go race off-road again and get back into the kind of riding I really enjoy. Big Sugar has got a lot of loose, rocky gravel. It’s definitely pretty taxing on tires, equipment, and your body. There are no major climbs, but there's not a lot of flat road. It is a course that is always throwing something at you. If you're going downhill, you're not really recovering; you’re white knuckling, dodging rocks and trying to see through the dust. The climbs are punchy, so they're raced really hard. It’s a nice race because there is always a deserving winner. I had some good results earlier in the year, especially with the Unbound win, so there's still a part of me that would love to stay in the top five. There are a lot of people that I'm going to enjoy catching up with and racing against, but I'll be fighting as hard as I can to do that.”

Good luck, Lachy! One thing is for sure; you have got enough kilometers in your legs.