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After SBT GRVL, I interviewed Lachlan Morton in the Yampa River, as happy floaters in bright yellow tubes bobbed by in the background.
The riverside interview seemed apropos considering that Morton had just come off eight straight days of racing some of the most challenging off-road events in the United States. First, it was the 105-mile Leadville Trail 100 MTB race, then straight to the six-day Breck Epic backcountry mountain bike stage race, then one “day off” before SBT GRVL, where Morton clawed his way to an impressive fifth place finish.
It’s stuff like this, doing the “LeadBreckBoat” (and winning the Breck Epic, by the way) and then dunking in the river in full kit, helmet, and shoes, that makes Morton one of the most beloved cyclists in the world. But it’s what Morton said as he waded out of the river, shaking the water out his pink EF Education-EasyPost POC helmet that really took me aback.
I had asked him when he was planning to move across the country to his new home in California, and he started shaking is head as if to say, ‘who knows!’
“I have this Divide thing coming up, so I’m not really sure when I’ll have time.”
“Wait, Divide thing? As in the Tour Divide?” It was my turn to shake my head. The man never stops.
Morton cast a sidelong grin.
An ‘alt’ ITT of the Tour Divide
The Tour Divide is perhaps the most famous of all bikepacking ultra races. It traces the spine of the Continental Divide, roughly following most of the American Cycling Association’s Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from Banff, Alberta, Canada to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, some 2,745 miles with nearly 200,000 feet of climbing. Every year in early June there is a grand depart for riders who want to race or just find camaraderie out there on the trail.
This year, Lael Wilcox and Ulrich Bartholmoes won the event, with Wilcox taking 16 days, 20 hours, and 17 minutes and Bartholmoes coming close to the course record in 14 days, 3 hours, and 23 minutes. Morton’s former EF teammate Alex Howes also raced, becoming the first person to have completed both the Tour de France and the Tour Divide. He finished in 19 days, 14 hours, and 46 minutes.
The Tour Divide is also something that is seemingly right up Morton’s alley. The EF Education-EasyPost ‘alt’ rider has done his fair share of bikepacking epics, from winning the GB Duro in 2019 to setting an unofficial course record on the Colorado Trail at this time last year.
The Tour Divide grand depart has never worked out for Morton timing-wise, but this year he’s found a window, post-LeadBreckBoat and pre-Chequamegon, the next race in the Life Time Grand Prix.
Rather than setting out on a straightforward independent time trial of the route when he leaves on Tuesday morning, Morton is putting a few spins on his adventure in an effort to keep things both interesting — and, interestingly enough, healthy as well.
Depriving oneself of sleep deprivation
Perhaps more than any other skillset, sleep deprivation is tantamount to winning bikepacking races. When the clock starts at the beginning of a bikepacking race — or an ITT for that matter — it doesn’t stop. Riders often push through the night on as little as a power naps’ worth of sleep for multiple nights in a row.
Katya Rakhmatulin, who recently set a new women’s record on the Colorado Trail Race, reportedly stopped sleeping after leaving Buena Vista, riding some sleep-deprived 245 miles of mostly technical singletrack to the finish in Denver.
Morton is no stranger to the tactic — “I’ve done a few ultras now and they have all involved a fair bit of sleep deprivation in trying to go fast,” he said — but to keep his Tour Divide experience fresh, he’s imposing some restrictions on himself. He’s decided on a 12:48 ratio, planning to sleep/rest for 12 hours every 48 hours.
When I spoke with him in Steamboat Springs, he was planning on six hours of rest every 24 hours, but he needs the flexibility to be able ride longer to make it to a hotel room or suitable campsite, which don’t come at regular intervals on the route.
Read also: Dot watchin’ the Tour Divide
Morton said that without the sleep rule, he’d be too tempted to power through, and he’s curious about what a new approach might reveal about tackling an ultra race in a more sustainable fashion.
“I want to do this on a pretty good amount of sleep every night for a few reasons,” he said. “The main one: I want to enjoy the riding, and it becomes increasingly difficult to enjoy what you are doing when you are running on minimal sleep, for me anyways, because you are not as present and aware. I don’t want to enter that space. Also just to be safe, I think that your decision-making and general awareness are pretty diminished if you are running on minimal sleep.
“I have never ridden this route before. It is a big undertaking, and to try and do all of that while pushing on minimal sleep, I think would be kind of reckless for me. But I still enjoy pushing big distances and mileage, so I am going to be — while I am riding — trying to cover as much distance as I can and trying to do it in a time that is as fast as I can while still sleeping.”
Morton dabbled with a similar approach earlier this summer when racing Evolution Gravel in Tanzania. Not quite a bikepacking race, Evo is 850k long with 10,000 meters of climbing. This year, organizers imposed a mandatory 12-hour stop after the first 425k. Morton said he felt refreshed and rejuvenated after having time to shower, eat, organize his gear, and sleep for six hours.
He went on to win the race, telling me that he was able to enjoy the middle-of-the night leopard and elephant sightings because he was alert enough to do so.
At this point, while Morton’s main motivation in tackling the Tour Divide this way is curiosity — “I am really interested to see with this approach how fast you can really go and if it would be competitive with people who have really pushed that sleep element” — this is still Morton the racer talking. He’s not going to lollygag.
In fact, on the riverside in Steamboat Springs when I asked him if he thought it was possible to break the current course record of 13 days, 22 hours, and 51 minutes set by the late Mike Hall in 2016, he didn’t say no.
He just said you’d have to ride really, really fast.
Follow Morton’s Tour Divide tracking dot here, and help him raise funds for Adventure for All here.
