Lachlan McKillop
We spotted Lachlan McKillop in the field, who used to do a lot of our bike testing here at AMB. As Lachy loves to race, we weren’t that surprised to see him racing the EWS.
“I wanted to do the EWS when it first came up and there was the Conti series. I just wanted to tick it off the list really. I did some downhill World Cups, I never went well, so I just wanted to tick this off the list as well. And why not? I just like racing. I think enduro is not all about racing weirdly enough. You hang out with your mates between the stages, and you push it, but it’s no different to what you’d do on the weekends on a ride to be honest. You have your Strava segments and go and smash those.
“I think racing is an integral part of all sports and that pushes technology. It’s not the be all and end all, but I think enduro is the best race to do if you’re going to do a race.” And was it what he expected? “It was really hard! I wouldn’t say harder than I thought. I could have eaten better and had better nutrition through the day, and a bit more caffeine at the end of the day. Everything else was pretty good. I can’t fault my bike or anything.” In fact Lachy really only thought he could have changed his training to suit the enduro format.
“I didn’t do any sprint stuff, you have to work on your sprints. So I’d sprint, go lactic and then pretty much die – but it was good!”
The time against the clock was just one part of his day though, it was really about the time on the bike and with other riders.
“Everyone is rad on the liaison stages. In downhill, everyone is head down, no one really chats. But here, everyone chats the whole way up, it’s pretty cool. I did a downhill race a couple of weeks ago leading up to this. My ride time for the weekend was 24 minutes. It’s fun, downhill is sweet, don’t get me wrong. But I just want to ride my bike all day, it’s stress relief. I prefer this format. It definitely pushes your limits. A couple of stages I tried to go into survival mode, but then I cut loose and pushed it a bit too much. It’s finding that limit. I haven’t raced in a long time so finding that edge is hard. I’d go too hard then crash, I had a few moments. One was in the rock garden and I took out a few spectators.”