Unbound Gravel: Reflections

“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.”

This is a quote from my own writing piece the week before Unbound. Unbound Gravel is 200-miles long, it is a beautiful race, but it is a bastard of a race. It is an unforgiving slog through the flint hills of Kansas.

There’s a saying in boxing: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”, that has some correlations with Unbound Gravel.

Where do I start?

For me, Unbound prep started in quite the unconventional way – on the floor of a random Irish road with blood pouring from my arm.

I’m a rider that mixes road and gravel, and the week before the Unbound I raced the Rás Tailteann in Ireland. To cut a long story short, my race was cut short by a pretty bad crash leaving me questioning if all of my bones were intact, let alone if I’d be racing Unbound.

I took a few days off, and travelled to Emporia regardless. Too much time, effort and resources had gone into the race. If I was healthy enough to be on the start line, I would race.

Arriving in Emporia on Wednesday morning, my brain clicked into race mode. What tyres would I use? How would my carb load look? Can I dial my fuelling strategy more?

I did everything that I could to keep my stress levels low. I even ordered a groceries delivery to our race house, because who wants to spend an hour walking around Walmart after 24hrs of traveling?

Carbs, carbs and more carbs – that’s how the run up to Unbound looks. For a 10hr+ race, you need to be fuelled. In the 72hrs before a race, I weigh every single piece of food and input it to a tracking app. This isn’t because I’m scared of my weight, or eating too much, but is instead to ensure that I don’t underfuel.

It’s unfathomable the amount of food you need to eat before a race.

The morning of the race, at 4am in the morning, I had my tried and tested pre-race meal, a smoothie. I’ve tried plenty of pre-race meals over the years. From porridge, to rice, to overnight oats. Personally, a smoothie works best for me. I had 870kcals, and 179g of carbs for breakfast. I probably should’ve aimed for the 1000kcal and 200g of carb number.

The Race

The race itself was hectic. There were multiple crashes in the neutral zone, including one which left a big burn mark on the back of my leg when somebody's tyre got a little too close for comfort. I mean come on guys, why crash before we even start? We have 325km to fight for position!

It was a cagey start at the front of the elite race. Nobody wanted to blink first, everybody wanted to be in a good position and everybody wanted to conserve energy. There were crashes, there were splits, but the first 90-minutes wasn’t physically that hard.

I can’t comment on the pack dynamics for the rest of the day. After some 25-miles, on the first minimum maintenance road, I slit a side wall in my tyre. While I fixed it relatively quickly, there was no coming back to the front group. I chased, chased and chased some more. But, puncturing that early into a race like Unbound is goodnight

My brain switched into autopilot. Just get to the finish line.

I’ll hold my hands up, I made a big mistake in my fueling strategy. I realised after the first pit stop, some 80-miles in. It was a rookie mistake, and one that I realised pretty quickly, but couldn’t do anything about.

In my USWE Hydration Pack, I’d put 4x Precision Fuel and Hydration 1500 sachets. The thinking behind this was to give me the electrolytes I needed, but also the added boost of some carbohydrates too.

In my bottles, I was using the Carbs Fuel Original Sport Mix. I had three scoops in each bottle, giving me 75g of carbohydrates and 500mg of sodium. I simply had too much sodium, and my stomach was doing somersaults.

I craved water and my mouth felt like seawater. To add insult to injury, I’d predicted this problem in my Unbound prep article:

“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.”

I stopped at the water oasis and dumped all of my Carbs mix in favour of plain, cold water. It was incredible. I was transformed within a matter of minutes and felt normal again. Water is so underrated.

Sometime not too long after this, I punctured twice more. It really wasn’t turning out to be my day. I limped to the second pit stop on a tyre liner, and got a sealant top up.

Some seven and a half hours into my day at this point, I was craving something that wasn’t sweet. Away from liquids, my race to this point had been fuelled by three sources: Precision Fuel and Hydration Chews, Precision Gels and Carbs Fuel gels. I had a little bit of flavour fatigue, and was craving anything that wasn’t an energy product.

My saviour came in a flavoursome jerky stick. I hadn’t predicted or foreseen this. I’d never had a craving for anything like that in my life, but it did the job and cleaned the sweet flavour out of my mouth which allowed me to return to energy products.

Overall, it will go down as ‘one of those days’. Some ten-and-a-half hours after I started, I crossed the line in Emporia feeling emotionless. It was a mentally challenging day out, with big chunks riding solo in autopilot to get to the finish line.

It was one of those days where lady luck was not on my side. Everyone has some sort of problem at Unbound, it’s just unfortunate that mine came so early on.

With all that said, it’s another Unbound Gravel in my legs, and most importantly, it’s another day of lessons. What I did wrong this year, I’ll bring back to the race next year with the goal of a top result.