Lachlan Morton and his famous sandals

If you wondered why Lachlan Morton was wearing sandals during his epic AltTour ride around France here’s what he told me shortly after he finished the ride.

ST: Can you explain what led you to riding in sandals tied on with inner tubes?

LM; Initially it was knee pain. I didn’t ride that much the week before and it was a brand new bike (my spare race bike) and I did my best to dial it in properly when I was in Brest, but didn’t really get the chance. So, I’d thrown new cleats on, and hadn’t tightened one as much as I should have and it slipped on the first day. I was just getting used to riding on a loaded bike and with everything going on I didn’t really notice. During the last 2 hours of that first day I started to get knee pain, and that night, when I checked my shoes I say it had slipped and moved it back. By then it was too late, I’d aggravated it.

The next day I nursed it through, but by the last 2 hours it was almost unrideable. I was really umming and ahing as to what to do, as to how I could get through. 

I realised I had 2 options; to either stop and rest up for a couple of days, but I had an idea; when I was putting my foot in and out of the shoe I wasn’t having the same pain, and out that down to the foot being able put it’s self where it wanted to be.

That afternoon I was going to a supermarket to get some dinner, and they had cheap bikes for sale out front. They had flat pedals, but they wouldn’t sell me just the pedals so I had to buy the bike for EU50 and take the pedals off. 

That was what I rode then. I was thinking it would just be for a couple of days, and it helped the knee pain immediately, and it didn’t seem to slow me down at all.

After 4-5 days I tried putting the shoes back on (I’d been keeping them), but we’d had so much rain and I ended up with trench foot after a couple of days (as I did in the GB Duro).

Then I ditched the shoes, found some mountainbike flat pedals in a bike shop and just ran it because I didn’t want to mess around. It was working really well for me do I just carried on.

Some guy in the Alps had a pair of carbon foot beds in his shoes, which he ran on flat pedals, he just took them out said try them. They were great in the sandals, but being carbon they slipped around in the sandals so in the end I cut up an inner tube and tied them around my foot to keep them from slipping. I had to modify the sandals by cutting off a strap. They were really effective, so I just stayed as I was.