His heart was still racing, as he stood to wait for the wild animals to file through a farmer’s gate. They had the right of way.

Lachlan was a world away from the Clásica Jaén Paraíso Interior, a road race he had done a few days earlier. In the middle of that circus of helicopters and team cars and TV cameras, the reporters all wanted to know: what’s next?

This.

The last horse trotted through the gate, and Lachlan took off down the sun-bleached trail. He plunged down a pitch of gnarled singletrack to the beach and sprinted onto a windswept headland. Waves shimmered over the Mediterranean.

Every so often, Lachlan’s wife Rachel would meet him on the course with the mountain bikers who had invited them to Menorca. She would hand off fresh pastries and refill his water bottles.

There were no crowds, no reporters.

“It was just one of those days that you will remember forever,” Lachlan says. “It’s a special trail that I think any mountain biker should put on their bucket list. It’s very, very difficult, quite technical, very, very rocky, and super engaging all the way round. I was happy to get the chance to ride it at speed.”

That’s what FKT (fastest known time) chasing is all about.

Human beings have always liked to go on difficult journeys and see who can get from point to point the fastest. Modern marathons re-enact the run from Marathōn to Athens that an ancient Athenian messenger first travelled on foot to bring home the news of his fellow citizens’ victory in battle. There is swimming the English Channel, the round-the-world Ocean Race, cross-country skiing’s Vasaloppet. Speed enhances adventures. So does competition. That is the racing spirit.

For the past couple of years, most races have been put on hold. When marathons and other long-distance events were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyday athletes began to look for new ways to compete. Shoulder-to-shoulder racing was out of the question, so they turned to racing against the clock. Technology made virtual contests easier to join. On roads and trails all over the world, millions of athletes now strive to top online leaderboards. Most would be satisfied with a KOM on a local climb, but for some that is not enough.

For ultra-runners, fastestknowntime.com has become the definitive source for the best long-distance routes. Its editors curate them and record who has done them and how fast. To be included, a route has to be ‘notable and distinct enough so that others will be interested in repeating it.’ More and more athletes have gone looking for these kinds of challenges. Over the past couple of years, thousands of niche ultra-running and hiking records have been registered on the site. At the moment, its keepers do not consider routes and times from other sports. That doesn’t mean that cyclists haven’t embraced the concept. It’s nothing new.

Cycling has long had its own iconic routes. Paris-Brest-Paris and Land’s End to John o’ Groats are two of the most famous ones. Randonneurs know many more. For over a century, they have been going on ultra-distance solo brevets and taking on audaxes in groups. What’s old has become new again. Cyclists from all over the world have started keeping records for scores and scores of new routes.

The Camí de Cavalls is one of them. It’s an old path, which was first used by Menorcan soldiers to travel between the forts and watchtowers they had built around their coast. Now, it’s mainly used by hikers and mountain-bikers, who use it to get to some of Menorca’s remote beaches. Riding or hiking the whole trail over the course of a few days is a popular trip, and is hard enough, but a few years ago some locals decided to see if they could ride the whole trail in one go. One of them managed to do so in just under 24 hours. They started tracking their attempts. The fastest known time has since fallen fast. Before Lachlan took it on, it stood at 10 hours and 55 minutes. Impressed by Lachlan’s feats at last year’s Alt Tour, Menorca’s mountain-bikers invited him to come and try to set a new record.

It was quiet in the port city of Maó when he set off. Rachel gave him a kiss, and he pedalled to the spot he had marked as the start. He hunched over his handlebars and went. He had 185 kilometres ahead of him—one lap of the island on the centuries-old trail. He’d decided to go anti-clockwise but could also have gone clockwise. The effort was his and his alone. The few hikers and beachgoers he met en route hardly noticed the lanky mountain-biker who raced past them. They did not know they were witnessing a heroic effort.

“Ten hours is a very difficult distance, in that it is still short enough that you are basically just doing a toned down time trial,” Lachlan says. “From the very beginning you are pushing, and because of the technical nature of the trail, it meant that whenever you could get on the power, you really had to push.”

For 10 hours and 12 minutes, Lachlan was completely focused on his surroundings, adrenaline coursing through his veins as his hyper-aware mind noticed every root and rock. When he arrived back in Maó that evening, having broken the old record by 43 minutes, he pedalled slowly through the warm, floral air back to their hotel.

“The terrain was really beautiful,” Lachlan said afterwards. “It is rugged and windswept with very-hard-to-reach beaches along the coastlines. It seems like the culture is very preserved. It was kind of a step back in time to a very simple way of life.”

The locals noted down his time in their book. You could go and try to beat it. Or find another FKT to chase.

The horses won’t care. What matters more is what you’ll experience along the way.