Unbound Gravel: Preparing for the World’s Biggest Gravel Race
By Joe Laverick
Guest Writer
It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are, and what your intentions are – Unbound will test you and bring stories that last a lifetime. Guest writer and gravel racer Joe Laverick provides us with his take on preparing for the biggest gravel race of them all: Unbound.
It’s equally feared, as it is revered. It’s 200-miles of tyre-slashing, kilojoule-burning, leg-destroying beauty. It’s everything you expect, and everything you don’t expect, all at once.
It doesn’t matter who you are. Whether it’s your first time or tenth edition. Whether you finish on the podium or in last place. Whether you beat the sun or finish in the dark.
Unbound will test you, and Unbound will bring stories that last a lifetime.
Hi, my name is Joe Laverick and I’m a new athlete at The Feed. I’m a 23-year-old British privateer with a background on the road. I spent my U23 years racing for the world’s best development teams, and couldn’t quite make the step-up to the World Tour. I accidentally pivoted into privateering, the best mistake that I ever made.
Nowadays, Girona is home and I run a split calendar between Europe and the US. I love gravel, but I’m a roadie at heart so I have to keep a bit of that in the calendar too!
I raced my first Unbound in 2023. It was only the third gravel race I’d ever started, and I wanted to hate it. I wanted it to be this overly-hyped, overly-corporate circus. It was everything but that. It was a mental challenge as much as a physical challenge, but that’s beyond the point.
I could write reams and reams about the mud, oh the mud! I digress, though I was in the elite race, I wasn’t really racing for very long. Problem after problem caused me to be a tourist that was just enjoying the ride around Unbound last year.
As an athlete, I race every event as hard as I can with the goal of winning. We shoot through aid stations at a hundred miles an hour, the whoops and cheers a blur along the way. Unbound for me, was a great way to experience it for everything Gravel is. Though, with that said, my goal for this year is to be at the pointy end ( please weather gods, no mud baths this year).
You can plan as much as you want, but there’s an inevitability that something is going to go wrong. I, arrogantly, only took enough nutrition for ten-hours, figuring that the race-winning time would be around that time, so that’s all I needed to carry. Oh, how wrong I was.
Pro Tip #1: Bring extra nutrition
However long you think you’re going to be out there, add two hours and plan to take that much nutrition with you. It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
I reached the second aid station as a broken man. I was hungry, craving salty food and feeling a little sick of anything sweet. I hadn’t planned this, and luckily my pit crew had a whole bag of chips that I demolished as I waited for the rain shower to pass.
Pro Tip #2: Be clear with your strategy
Last year I had a plan - remember the six P’s: Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. While it’s important to have a plan, it’s important to be flexible too.
Listen to your body. I knew something was wrong after the first checkpoint. In all my genuity, I’d decided to decant a Precision Fuel and Hydration Caffeine Gel into my bidon the night before. The idea behind this was to give myself a little caffeine top-up throughout the long day.
I prepared two caffeine-charged bottles, one for each checkpoint. What I didn’t do was label my bottles. As I passed the bottles to my pit crew the day before the race, I realised that I didn’t know which was caffeine charged and which was a plain electrolyte mix. I thought I’d be fine. I wasn’t.
To cut a long story short, between checkpoint one and two, both of my bottles were caffeine charged. Let’s just say I was racing my bladder to the second checkpoint porta-potty.
Knowing what you’re going to eat, and when comes into the planning side of things. This all starts the day before. Eat a lot of carbs. If you think you’ve eaten enough, eat a little bit more. Eat so many carbs that you’re going to burst - you’ll be needing them tomorrow.
Go into the race with a plan. This is the working progress of a spreadsheet that I’m using for this year’s edition. It’s not perfect, and I won’t stick exactly to it, but it’s a guide.
In the days before, I’ll make up a stem sticker that reminds me what I need to eat and when. I’ll be aiming for 120 grams of carbs per hour. That’s a little over-ambitious for what my stomach can handle, but I know that somewhere along the way I’ll miss a feed, or drop a bottle - so it’ll all level out.
I’d rather overeat and feel a touch bloated that to bonk and be a broken man in the Kansas Hills.
Pro Tip #3: Eat. Eat. Eat.
If you have any mechanical problems, or have to do a long hike-a-bike, remember to still EAT. Missing just one bit of food in the long day will cause you issues later on.
Products Joe is using in his nutrition spreadsheet:
I do go into a little bit more detail at the bottom of this spreadsheet about how I want my pit stops to work out. My pit crew, The Mulready’s Team, were incredible last year. But, compared to the big boys, I felt like I was bringing a knife to a nuclear war.
They had everything lined up to go, they took musettes, their stop time was under a minute. That was a big lesson for me, and minimising stopped time is a big goal. Here’s a working breakdown of how my checkpoints will look.
As you can see, Checkpoint Two has some back-up items for those salty cravings.
Pro Tip #4: Water.
Water can be the greatest tasting substance in the world.
Don’t underestimate the power of crystal clear water when you have a dry mouth. In last year’s race, I purposely left the final aid station without any drink mix or electrolytes in one of my bottles. After a long day out, sometimes all your body wants is water.
Sitting on the curb a few hours after finishing, I have a beer in one hand and a burrito in the other. I’m happy. I bump into a few members of the local community who have taken me in, they hug me with a smile.
Unbound, it will challenge you physically, it will challenge you mentally. You will go through hell and back, but it is worth it. It is the Unbound that people ask me about months later on those long winter training rides, it is the Unbound which gets everyone excited. It’s the Tour de France, the Super Bowl, the Champions League Final of the gravel world. Nothing compares to this race. Respect it, fear it, but most of all - enjoy it.
I’m writing this ten days before Unbound Gravel 2024. My spreadsheet is made, my planning is done. All I’ve got to do is turn up and pedal. I’m surprisingly excited for the 10 hr+ challenge that faces me the weekend after next. It’s the north course, which is apparently a whole new challenge in itself.
I’ll be back after Unbound, with another blog to tell all on how it went down…