Unbound XL

Unbound XL was my focus race for this season, and also my first gravel race. I'd signed up back in October, mostly as an excuse to buy a gravel bike. My prep felt genuinely good going in. I'd done a couple of long races earlier in the year, Stagecoach 400 and Tour de Los Padres, both quite fatiguing and about a month apart from each other, and while I hadn't been able to do much significant training in the weeks right before this race, I was still coming in with a good base and some real experience pushing my bike. That experience turned out to be very valuable here.

I flew in and put my bike together Wednesday around midday. It rained on and off Thursday (foreshadowing), and I spent the day starting and finishing The Wager (more foreshadowing) instead of prepping gear. I didn't want to get everything dirty before the race even started, since I was staying at the campground without easy access to bike cleaning equipment or a wax pot to rewax my chain.

Starting a race at 3pm was a new experience for me. It guaranteed I'd be riding through the night for the first time, and meant that unless I could sleep in until the late afternoon, I'd be up for a minimum of 30 hours, assuming a 20-hour finish.

The race was basically chill for all of three or four minutes, at which point the big dogs started hammering in the crosswinds and my heart rate jumped to around 175 for the next three and a half hours. I got dropped from the chase group before the first gas station (yum, Gatorade), which was honestly a blessing in disguise. I needed the time to regroup. Watching those groups ride off had been a bit crushing, but I was in pretty good spirits as night fell.

We mostly avoided the significant thunderstorms almost miraculously, until we turned directly into one of the gnarliest ones: lots of close lightning, lots of passing riders who were smart enough to be hiding from that lightning instead of riding through it. The road surface while it was raining was about as good as you could hope for, gravelly and a bit sandy; my stuff got dirty, my battery banks got soaked, my nutrition mix spilled in my top tube bag, but no mud yet. That came right after the rain stopped.

For the next six hours I walked through the mud, picking people off. Stagecoach 400 had prepared me for this, as well as the dehydration. I skipped a resupply because it was .2 miles off route, and I regretted that. I think much of the grass on the edges of the mud-wrestling pit that was the road was actually rideable, but mentally it was easier to just walk, so that's what I did. I think a lot of people let the mud piss them off, and while I had bad moments too, the fact that I could pass people I probably didn't have the legs to pass in a riding race kept me going pretty well.

The mud mostly stopped once the sun came up fully, but there was still a lot of race left to go.

I'd really mentally set my sights on Council Grove, but right after that I quickly realized there was still about 85 headwindy miles to go.

Fortunately, I had Kevin Benkenstein and Oskar Hertz to share the miles with. Having someone to share the wind with on the long rolling southbound stretch was truly lifesaving. After so many solo miles, it was also extremely nice to have someone to complain about the endless mud with. We pulled and cajoled each other through the final miles to the finish line. There was nobody close enough ahead or behind us to really motivate us to do much more than finish, so we mostly just did what it took to get there. At the finish, it didn't feel right to sprint, so we rolled across together, in a three-way tie for 8th, glad to be done.

I collapsed into my tent at the campground and woke up confused about whether I was human, and once I figured out I was indeed a person, which state exactly. In the next three hours I had: $15 of burritos at Taco Bell, $30 of burgers and fries at Spangles, and a Panda Express bowl.

Overall, I was happy with the race result. I wish I'd had more sharpness in my legs and been able to hold onto the front group longer. Still, the extra energy was definitely useful during the mud portions, since I was able to keep pushing when many others decided to stop.

Gear-wise I was also pretty happy with how things worked out. I have a more detailed bike breakdown in the YouTube video linked below.