Lauren Stephens Dominates the Unbound 100

Lauren Stephens put on a show by winning the Unbound 100mi last week in commanding fashion. However, she has already proven herself in the gravel world since claiming the first-ever elite women's stars-and-stripes jersey at the USA Cycling Gravel Championships in 2023.

Stephens made it clear she has to balance her goals and responsibilities on the road calendar with her gravel ambitions. The Unbound 100 was just the ticket for her in 2024. With a time of 5:06:40, she won the women’s title and placed ninth overall in the full 100-mile field.

Lauren: The 100 is a little less strain on the body and I made that decision because my primary focus this year had been trying to make the Olympic team in the time trial, so most of my training had been under three hours. The girls that are doing the 200 and are doing 30, 40 hour weeks, and I've been doing 15, 20 hour weeks. So there was no chance of being competitive in the 200 without destroying myself.

With Unbound, [the 200] is what it's famous for. So I don't think that's ever going to change at Unbound but it is pretty sick to see that there were more participants in the 100 than there were in the 200. I kind of equate that to how they have professionalized the 200, and there are so many people that just want to come and be a part of what the pros are doing.

The race breakdown.

Very different than what went on in the 200, the 100 was a mass start race – which I really enjoy coming from road. I've always used gravel to help prepare myself for European racing. I enjoy being home in America and to get the same level of racing that you have in Europe.

I found that gravel was my opportunity for that. Mixing it up with the guys fighting for the wheels, making those selections. I mean, that's what a Classics race is like and so that's what I've always used gravel for. It's exciting that we have these women's starts and they're getting to race just the women, but I also like that there's still the opportunity for how I've always used gravel.

For this race, I kind of thought I might've made the wrong decision because I decided to start with a pack and I was going to pick up bottles so that I had no water bottles on my bike… just to [keep it light].

When the group is so large, a pack is easier to drink out of you're not reaching down for a bottle. So, the bottles are kind of useless in the first part of the race. You're never going to want to reach down on these chunky roads and in these big groups.

However, looking around, it seemed like most people were carrying everything, they had packs and bottles. So I knew the feed zone was going to be very critical to be as quick as possible to be sure I maintained my position in the group I was in because I was in the front group of men at that point. Luckily, everything went smoothly in the feed zone and I had just a short chase to get back into the group.

On the nutrition side, one of the decisions is you have to [make] is to carry everything and have this extra weight, or to gamble and have to stop and pick up things when that's not what everyone else is doing. In the end, I was happy with my decision – I made it and got back in the group.

Q: Is there anything specific to Unbound that you did to adapt the fueling and hydration that you typically don’t?

In my pack, I did one and a half liters of water with a Maurten 320 and a Skratch Super High Carb. It was like a little mix, just to get a little different flavor. Then in the bottles I picked up, I had 2 x 750ml bottles with one that had Maurten in it and the other had the Skratch Labs Super High Carb.

I also ate one of the Maurten SOLIDs, but that's all the food I had for a hundred miles. You can get so many grams of carbs now in these drink mixes and the temperatures were low, which made your fluid intake not as high. So that's one reason I went with only the 1.5 liters rather than filling the whole 2 liter pack or picking up 1 liter bottles because I knew I wouldn't be consuming as much fluid with the temps being in the 70s and 80s.

Q: After that feed zone, is that where the race started to heat up for you? Did you know where you were at with your competitors?

I had burped my tire on a concrete lip before the feed zone, and my plan had been to throw some CO2 in at the feed zone, but I kind of forgot as I was scrambling to find the people that were feeding me.

It's like chaos, I was just screaming [my support’s name] and hoping people would point me in the right direction. So, I didn't throw any CO2 and then probably 10, 15k after the feed when we were on some pavement and a headwind the group slowed up pretty good. I decided to stop real quick and throw some CO2 in my rear tire. Just as I did that, someone attacked and I never made it back to the front group.

I slowly picked up guys getting dropped from that front group, so no one caught us from behind. We ended up just picking up people and had up a group of maybe six or seven toward the end.

I got to experience being a race within a race. We had two or three juniors in our group and they were racing each other, so we were all just letting them attack each other. Eventually, I rolled off the front and finished solo from that group that I was in, and that put me in ninth in the men's field and then winning the women's overall.

Q: What purpose did that race serve and how does that fit into your schedule for the rest of the year?

I really enjoy going to the gravel events and clearly, everyone knows Unbound is the premier event. Getting to be at the expo and hang out with people and the fans that are messaging me on Instagram and following my story and getting to meet them in person – that was my main goal of being at Unbound. To be present and show I really exist in real life.

I've got my last race of this race block coming up this weekend and just doing those hard big rides just tends to really spike my fitness. So I just needed that one last really hard ride to spike the fitness for this last race before I take a break.

Q: Do you plan to dip into some of these gravel races more or do you just have your eyes set on specific road events?

After this, I'll head back to the US and head up to Colorado for some family vacation time and then just start looking for gravel races to hit. I’ll likely go to one in Gypsum and then possibly Crusher in the Tushar and Foco Fondo, SBT, and Gravel Worlds. Then, Nationals is kind of up in the air right now – but I'm not ready to say no to gravel nationals. I really like wearing the Stars and Stripes.