Lachy called the Catalan cycling capital home for years when he was a road racer and has an atlas of every rocky singletrack, gravel trail, and wild boar path through the local hills ingrained in his memory from all of the exploring he did when he lived in town. On Friday morning at 05:50, he’ll set off for 358.5 kilometers around that map, looping north around Figueres and then back down the coast for a hilly finale in the Gavarres mountains around Girona.

Since his Croatian adventure, racing the 4islands Epic with his mate Tsgabu Grmay from Team AMANI, Lachy has been relaxing in his old hometown, riding his favorite trails with old friends. He is sticking to his own laid-back approach to the race, though the Traka has fast become the blue riband gravel competition in Europe.

“It feels a bit like going to a national championship as an under 19,” Lachlan says. “Everyone is a bit on edge, but I'm having fun the way I'm going about doing it. For me, this year is equally as much about the experience around the race and the times we've been able to spend here, getting out on the bike and just enjoying what it means to ride bikes here. That is really important. I feel like I've been finding a nice balance for myself.”

What Lachlan loves about Girona is the diversity of terrain you can ride right out the backdoor. Meet your mates for a coffee and roll out of town, and you can just let your imagination go wild.

“The options in terms of routes are basically unlimited,” Lachy says. “There are so many different surfaces and zones that you can connect. You can go towards the coast, where it's pretty smooth and fast on all these flowy gravel roads. Or you can go into the hills where it's more chunky and you can make it as gnarly or as adventurous as you'd like. It is motivating to get out and explore it and see it. The more willing you are to dive into it and start exploring a bit, the more you find and the more you get out of it. And obviously, there's a huge cycling community here now and the infrastructure around it makes life very easy for someone visiting. It is definitely a pretty idyllic destination to come and ride.”

That is especially true this week. Girona is buzzing with freehubs at the moment. Lachy is excited to see how far gravel racing has come since he got in the game. At the front end of the race, it’s a full-on pro sport now, just with thousands of athletes racing behind them for pure fun. That’s always been the heart of racing gravel for Lachy. When the going gets tough 300-plus kilometers deep into the Traka, he’s going to ride for the party peloton.

“Everyone can approach the race how they want,” Lachy says. “The last time I was here, four or five years ago, it was very new. There wasn’t a right approach in terms of what training you should do. You could largely make it up yourself. Now, people have sort of cracked the code and realized that you just have to train like a pro road rider and then ride the gravel bike a little bit. With that narrow focus, there is definitely the potential to miss a lot and miss some of the more rewarding aspects of riding gravel bikes on the whole. What is really is cool about the Traka is that it brings people from different disciplines together at an elite level though. You've got mountain bikers and road riders and gravel racers, all showing up in one place and racing hard. And once I'm in the race, I just race. I love the simplicity of gravel racing.”

Lachy’s game plan for Friday is straightforward: go hard out of the gate and keep pushing right to the end. He didn’t train for the Traka like he did when he was a WorldTour racer. He had a couple of glasses of prosecco when he was DJing at Hills Gravel the other week. A bikepacking race in Colombia was as close as he got to an altitude camp, and he decided to help his buddy Tsgabu get better on the mountain bike in Croatia instead of doing VO2 max tests to fine tune his form, but he still thinks he can give the best gravel racers in the world a run for the prizes on Friday on his favorite red Catalan dirt.

“For anyone who's just trying to get around the 360 course, maybe at a pace that is faster than last time or at a pace that's sustainable, you have to be pretty conservative in the beginning,” Lachlan says, “but if you're trying to race to win, the pace is dictated by everyone who's racing. So, you have to buy into it and just keep the hand in the fire for as long as you can. That's the way these races generally go. Whoever can hold the hand in for the longest wins. That is the plan for the Traka. It's a big day out, and so many things are going to happen in the course of the race that it is sure to be fun and interesting and we’ll have good stories to tell by the end.”

Follow Lachy’s Traka adventure on our social channels this week and watch out for the film on our Far Beyond YouTube channel.

The Traka 360 is tomorrow and Lachlan Morton is going full send.

The reigning Unbound champion will race his brand new Cannondale LAB71 SuperX over Girona’s toughest dirt. Lachy’s Traka 360 bike is built to thrash around corners at the front of the peloton, attack steep, gnarly climbs and shred white-knuckle descents. Lachy is laid back about just about everything except his bike set up. He’s been pushing the sport of gravel racing forward for years and this is his favorite bike yet.

“I’ll be riding my SuperX, the new, fast gravel bike,” Lachlan says. “It handles better than the old ones. It is a bit lighter and faster and more aero. I rock a stock set-up.”

For the Traka 360, Lachlan will ride 54/40 FSA chainrings with an 11-34 cassette. Never one to follow trends, he rides 175mm FSA cranks for extra torque and uses a 40cm wide Cannondale System R-One Carbon cockpit.

He’ll stick with his trusty Vision Metron 45SL wheels for the Traka. For tires, Lachlan’s strategy is as simple as it gets.

“The general idea is to try and squeeze in as big of tires as possible,” he says. “I’m riding 44mm Vittoria Mezcals that basically max out the capacity of the frame. Those are my go-tos in normal race conditions, basically anywhere. It's nice to just run something you know and that you're comfortable with. I think that goes a long way.”

Lachlan is going one heck of a long way tomorrow. With 360 kilometers of Catalonian dirt ahead of him, he is ready to throw himself into the fray, knowing he has the best gravel bike in the game.

Watch for his Knog Frog Strobe Front Bike Light to emerge from the predawn darkness at the front of the pack and stay there as the sun rises over the Gavarres. It’s going to be a hot, dusty, full-gas gravel race. And Lachy will always be a racer at heart.

Check out the full specs of his Traka 360 bike.