 Finishing the Unbound 200 in under 10 hours had only been achieved once before in 2019, but if there was ever a year to break this record or at the very least get a fast time, it was this year, with cooler temperatures, faster riders than ever before to work with, a course that went south instead of north, which tends to be the faster direction, and a race distance that was 200 miles on the dot as opposed to 200 miles and some change like it normally is. The only thing that might end up hurting the average speed this year was the potential for mud and rain, and boy did we see plenty of that out there. All of that being said, I had a very unconventional pacing strategy for this race, and it's one that I've never heard of a frontrunner using, and if I'm being honest, was a bit of a gamble. Stick around to see how it all played out. The Unbound 200 probably needs no introduction at this point, but in case you've been living under a rock, it's the biggest gravel event in the world and covers 200 miles or 320 kilometers of gravel on the rolling hills surrounding Emporia, Kansas. Being the data nerd that I am, I was scouring previous year's results to see what the pacing tended to look like for the winners. Without fail, even the riders that win the race tend to slow down throughout the race, averaging a higher average speed in the first half than they do in the second half. And then if you look at riders further back in the field, usually the first half is fast, and then the second half gets really ugly as they bonk or crack or overheat and just end up crawling to the finish line. This is how my race has gone in both of my previous attempts. My power and speed dropped significantly in the second half. For example, last year for the first half I had a normalized power of 278 watts and an average speed of 20 miles per hour. In the second half that dropped to 239 watts and 17.5 miles per hour. That may seem like a pretty catastrophic blow up, but I was actually catching riders in the second half, meaning that the other riders around me were actually screwing this up even worse than I was. And I actually ended up finishing in 12th place, despite having a lot of flat tire issues out there. Last year's winner, Ian Boswell, didn't slow down nearly as much, but his pace still dropped throughout the race. This sort of pacing is actually not the fastest way from point A to point B, as any marathon runner or time trialist will tell you. If you were out there alone, then the best pacing strategy is thought to be an even pacing strategy, where you're going at the same pace in the first half as you are in the second half, or even doing negative splits, meaning that you're actually going faster in the second half. The problem is, this is a mass start event with drafting allowed, so almost all of the front runners come in with this same strategy. Stay with the lead pack as long as they possibly can. This can create potential problems though for such a long race. For example, even if you are getting a large drafting benefit from riding with the front group, the pace of the front group is often very surgey, meaning that they're spiking their power very high over climbs, which is generally something that you want to avoid when you're riding for such a long time. Also, as I've already said, the pace of the front group is going to be high at the beginning, and then drop throughout the race. And being in the pack also increases the risk of crashing and getting flat tires, as you can't see your line as well. It's for these reasons that I came up with this unconventional pacing strategy of completely ignoring what the front group was doing and just riding at last year's winning average speed for the first half and the second half as opposed to riding too hard in the first half and then fading in the second half. And while I was at it, I was going to keep my power much steadier as opposed to spiking it on the climbs. Power on the climbs would still be higher than on the flats and the downhills. Research shows that this is the fastest strategy for an undulating course, but I wouldn't be going over my FTP like my competitors would. Following the strategy meant that I was probably going to get dropped within the first 10 miles, long before I would naturally get dropped, and that is exactly what happened. But I actually recruited four riders to do this with me so that I wouldn't be alone, including some of my flow formulas teammates, Logan Casper, Kayla Breece, and Jack Odron, as well as Mazda Lauff rider Chase Wark. And with any luck, we would catch riders who had been dropped off the front group or had mechanicals, and they would be able to assist us with the chase. That was the plan anyway, but here's how it actually worked out on race day. You know, I'm no gravel expert, but I'm pretty sure that overthinking your race strategy to the point that it took you half a YouTube video just to explain it goes against the spirit of gravel. I knew that the start of the race would be chaotic, so it would be important for all the riders that were in on my plan to be in close proximity to one another, and we were all able to manage that despite some crashes and hectic slowdowns. I reminded my team that we needed to keep it steady. There was no need to surge up climbs or around corners. That would only end up hurting us later in the race. About 10 miles in is where we started to lose contact with the front group, but again, this was no concern of ours. As we dropped off though, I encouraged other riders to hop onto the back of our group. Some of them would be able to help with the chase, but even if they weren't, having riders draft you actually makes you faster even if you're the one hitting the wind. Our group traded pulls well, but probably 50 miles in is where my flow formulas teammates lost contact, and the only two of us left from the original plan were me and Chase. Fortunately though, we were in fact catching strong riders along the way just as I had envisioned, including Brennan Wertz who got a top 10 finish last year. Before the first aid station 77 miles in, we were keeping the average speed solid at just over 20 miles per hour, and this required a normalized power of 281 watts for almost four hours. Our group had swelled to about 10 riders, and as we entered the first feed zone, we caught another group of about 10 riders, which included Jasper Akelon who had won gravel locos a few weeks earlier. He had flatted out of front group and I quickly told him about our strategy in hopes that it would motivate him to help with the chase, and he was able to do a lot of work at a really high pace, and in fact for about an hour, he was one of the only riders in this group of 20 that was doing the majority of the work. Around the five hour mark is when the weather started to turn, and it wasn't long before we were in the middle of a heavy rainstorm. This made drafting difficult because the spray from the rider in front of you would get in your eyes. Unsurprisingly, we were dropping a lot of riders from our group around this time, but we were also continuing to catch riders. We caught Alex Howes and Andrew Lesby, both of which would be a huge help in the chase as well. Unfortunately though, around mile 135 we missed a turn, and we didn't catch this mistake until we were about a mile down the road, and by the time we looped back around and got back on course, we had lost about seven minutes. Fortunately though, this didn't seem to dampen the spirits of the group, which contained about five riders at this point, including Alex, Jasper, and Andrew. So the firepower of the group was still very good, and we were cooperating well together. As we rolled into the second and final feed zone, yes, that's right, there are only two feed zones in 200 miles that unbound. The rain started to clear, and we got in and out quickly, although Jasper got in and out a little bit quicker than the rest of us and got a gap on us. During that middle section of the race, my normalized power was 262 watts, which was lower, but we still managed to keep the speed over 20 miles per hour. There were now just 40 miles in the race remaining, and I was pretty confident that I could maintain 20 miles per hour for the entire race. That is, until we got to the notorious mud section at mile 170. Andrew Lesby, being the incredibly skilled mountain biker that he is, was able to ride through this section. Alex Howes, Bryn and Wurz, and I all attempted to follow, but quickly came to grief in the mud, and soon got off our bikes and started running. At one point, I attempted to get back on my bike and ride it, but I made it about 20 feet before I ended up crashing, and my handlebars went straight into the mud and ended up getting covered with mud in the process, making it hard to grip the bars for the remainder of the race. I tried to wash off the mud in a creek section, but I had little luck. As I exited this section, I had lost contact with Alex Howes and Andrew Lesby, but I still had Bryn and Wurz to work with. He was very helpful for the next 30 minutes, but as we entered the last hour of the race, I could tell he was starting to hurt, and I started doing the majority of the work. With about 20 minutes remaining, I dropped him, and for the first time all day, I was by myself. Looking at my head unit, I saw that I had roughly 5 miles to go and about 15 minutes to make it in under 10 hours. I started doing the mental math and realized that I was going to be cutting it very close if I wanted to make it in under 10 hours, but making it in under 10 hours was definitely possible. The last 15 minutes was by far the most painful of the day as I tried to fully empty the tank all the way up to the finish, and by the time I had hit the line, I had just barely managed a sub 10 hour finishing time of 958.43 with an average speed of 20.2 miles per hour. In that last section of the race, my power had further dropped to 258 NP, essentially meaning that the tailwind was what allowed me to maintain my average speed, because despite my pacing strategy, my power was still dropping throughout the day. Stats from the whole race, we've got a 269 normalized power, 246 average, 155 average heart rate, 176 max heart rate, 202 miles instead of 200 flat, 541 TSS, and nearly 9000 kilojoules. So, the burning question, what place did I finish using this unique pacing strategy that allowed me to achieve a record-breaking finishing time in last year's winning average speed? Drumroll, please. 25th place. That's right, 24 other riders went faster at Unbound than ever before, and the winner Ivar Slick completed the course 36 minutes faster than me in 9 hours and 22 minutes. Why in the world were the times so fast this year, and was this strategy a bad idea? Of course it was a bad idea, dude. If you're not leading the race by the end of the neutral rollout, then your race is over. As you can imagine, I've been giving this a lot of thought over the past two weeks, and this is what I've come up with. First of all, we have the southern course, which is undoubtedly the faster direction, but people forget that this is not the first time the course has gone south. In fact, the last time the race went south was in 2018, and I actually attended the 2018 edition, and the winner, Ted King, won in a time of 10-44 with an average speed of 19.2 miles per hour. That year I actually finished 9th with a time that was over an hour and a half slower than my time this year. So clearly the route is not the whole picture, which brings me to my next point, which is the level of competition at this race. Every year this race keeps getting more and more prestigious and attracts more and more big names to it. A top 10 finish in 2018 is not the same as a top 10 finish in 2022. But I think that the most significant factor was the weather. Now on paper, it may not seem like riding in the rain and mud is optimal conditions for trying to go as fast as possible, but for the most part with the exception of the mud section at mile 170, the course actually remained pretty fast even when wet, and crucially it stayed cool all day. Unbound is usually a very hot race, and when a race is this long, the effect that the heat has on your body only compounds. Temperatures staying cool meant that the power remained high, and I have to admit that this was probably my biggest oversight when considering my pacing strategy. I assumed that the drop in pace throughout the race was due to poor pacing, and that is definitely part of the reason. But the bigger reason is because as the race progresses, the race gets hotter. The race starts at 6 in the morning, so often the first half of the race is in pretty mild temperatures in the morning, and the second half of the race is in the afternoon in the heat of the day. So of course power is going to drop throughout the day as you heat up. Definitely something to consider in the future. So did my pacing strategy work? I will say that it actually did work. I averaged 20 for the first half, and 20 for the second half. I just didn't anticipate that the average winning speed would be 22. I could have told him that, and what did I say about the weather two weeks ago? I don't know. Look at your checks on your phone. I said it's going to be cold and rainy. Oh, you did say that. I did. He's acclimating down in Texas for three weeks, sitting in a hot car, riding in the trainer in the yard. Well, what I will say is that this is by far my best executed unbound, and my power didn't drop nearly as significantly as it has in years past. But again, is that due to cooler temperatures or better pacing? It's probably a bit of both. From looking at some of the power numbers posted by riders who went with the more traditional strategy of staying with the front group, it does look like the pace of the front group during the first three hours was quite high. So undoubtedly I would have had less juice in the tank in the second half of the race if I had gone with that strategy. But perhaps I would have been further up the road when I eventually got dropped and would have been able to hang on for a better placing. Or I could have blown up catastrophically and finished an hour slower. I guess I'll never know. And of course, going off course for two miles didn't help, but everybody has issues at unbound and there's no room for excuses on the results page. Right, but there is plenty of room for excuses in your Instagram post about the race. So I don't want to make it seem like I'm disappointed with this race. I'm actually very proud of this performance and how I was able to ride out there. And I'm currently sitting in 13th place in the Lifetime Bram Pre after this race and looking at the list of riders in that series, I'm absolutely happy with that right now. And hopefully I can stay consistent there. Good enough for the Pang ones, good enough for the village. Thanks for watching. If you want to follow all of my racing, the best place to do that is over on Instagram. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like, subscribe and share this video with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.