 However, disaster would strike for that group shortly because Payson looked over his shoulder to assess the damage that had been done to our group and in the process overlapped wheels with Jasper and both riders went down. Welcome back to the channel. This video is fueled by The Feed. Gravolokos is only in its third year, but it's already seemed to become the unofficial tune-up race for the Unbound 200, probably because it's in relatively close proximity to Kansas, the terrain is similar, and it's only 50 miles short of the Unbound distance, which is long enough that it's still a good test of endurance, arguably the most important factor for the Unbound 200, but it's still not so long that riders won't be able to recover in the two weeks between the two races. And this seems to be particularly true for the Europeans. For whatever reason, this race seems to bring a bigger international presence than any other gravel race in the US other than Unbound itself. This year brought the lights of defending Gravolokos winner Jasper Aucalon, defending Unbound winner Evar Slick, Laurence Tendam, Nicholas Roach, former quick-step rider Petter Vatcock, and others. North American talent at this race included former Unbound winner Ian Boswell, former US road national champion Alex Howes, Admiral Baerge, Payson McKelvin, Brennan Wurz, Ted King, etc. etc. Yeah, needless to say, in typical Gravolokos fashion, the race was absolutely stacked and would for sure make for a hard day on the bike. I've never heard of any of these guys. Are they even on Strava? This 157 mile course has just under 7,000 feet of climbing, so it's certainly on the flatter side, although there are plenty of rolling hills out there to contend with and the three worst climbs of the race come back to back around mile 50. Although they aren't very long, they are steep and the gravel is quite loose, making it a critical spot of the race. The other critical point comes just 13 miles from the finish and is the North Bost River Crossing. This river is normally so deep that it's not rideable, but this year the water was low enough to make it through and with it being so close to the finish, fireworks were flying at this point, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Before I get into the race breakdown, just a quick note on my bike setup for this race. As you may have noticed, I did not have arrow bars on my bike despite the fact that they are not against the rules for this race and it is a good course for them. So what gives Dylan? I thought you were Mr. Arrowbar. Well Unbound has had a rule change and arrow bars are no longer allowed for the pros for safety reasons, even though they're still allowed for amateurs for some reason. I know, it makes perfect sense. I think you may have misinterpreted the rule there. You see, it's not for the physical safety of the pros, but rather for the safety of their fragile egos. Anyway, being that this race is kind of a last dress rehearsal before Unbound, I decided against using them because I wanted to work on being in a very aerodynamic position without them in a race scenario, which is easier said than done when you're out there for seven plus hours. Perhaps I'll make a video on my bike setup for Unbound after the race. Let me know down in the comments if that's something that you're interested in seeing. Alright, let's get into the race itself. There aren't really any critical sections or pinch points until those three climbs at mile 50, which meant that the start was relatively tame, requiring a normalized power of just 260 watts for the first 30 minutes. There was a bit of shuffling in the group to try to get in good position, but nothing too crazy, and some early attacks did go, but for the most part, things felt in control at this point. Around the 45 minute mark, things started to heat up though, mostly due to attacks being thrown by Lawrence Tendam and Nicholas Roach. Personally, I did not want the race to come down to a big bunch sprint because there were a lot of good sprinters in this race, and my sprint is more mediocre amongst pro gravel racers. So I was looking for strong riders like Tendam and Roach to make moves and then latch on to them. Maybe if we could get five strong riders together, we could make something stick. The first attempt was unsuccessful, but required an NP of 356 watts for over 20 minutes, which is quite a hard effort for the first hour of a 7-hour race. The pace calmed down after that, but not for long. Tendam was added again at mile 36, and this time we actually did manage to form a small front group that worked well together, but there was still a chase group of over 30 riders at this point, and this second move would be short-lived. Not long after we got caught, we had the three back-to-back climbs to contend with, and Payson McKelvin was the main protagonist here, not only riding hard up each of the three climbs, but also pushing the pace down the backside of each of the climbs on the descent to try to create some separation in the pack. We exited the climbs and riders were dangling off the back, but none of the favorites had been shaken, and we still had a group of over 20 riders at this point. Hitting these three climbs, my NP was 385 watts for 10 minutes, but this includes the downhills. If you look at the individual climbs themselves, we were doing well over 400 watts for a minute to 90 seconds of each one of them. And if you include the attacks from Tendam and the pace set up the climb by Payson, this turns out to be the hardest hour of the race, requiring an NP of just over 320 watts. As we left the 8th station at mile 50, the pace mellowed out quite a bit. I think everybody was a little bit gassed from the first third of the race, and we only did 238 NP for the next 30 minutes. Around the halfway point, moves started going again. This time, mostly thanks to Ian Boswell, who probably attacked the group five or more times over the next hour. However, he wasn't the only one. Tendam got some digs in, and Petter Vatcock was very active as well as Ivar Slick. My tactic here was simply to follow wheels. I didn't initiate any of these moves myself, but I was really hoping that one of them would stick. However, whenever we looked back, there just didn't seem to be a lot of separation. The group may have been getting smaller, but at no point did we establish any sort of breakaway from the front pack. These efforts spanned another hour of the race, and my NP from this portion was right at 300 watts. After that, we slowed down before the next 8th station at mile 100. I think everybody knew that the race would be decided after this point and decided to buy their time. When we exited the 8th station, we still had over 20 riders in the group, and we rolled at a relaxed pace for a while. But with the finish line now within striking distance, it would not stay like that for long. A flurry of attacks came again from Tendam and Boswell at mile 110. These attacks required a 356 NP for 13 minutes for me. Shortly after that, there was another cluster of attacks at mile 125, with 310 watts for 10 minutes. During that second surge, Tendam did manage to get away solo, and it's pretty incredible that he was able to stay away for as long as he did considering that we had 15 strong riders trying to pull him back in. I can only imagine what kind of power he was probably doing. When we did manage to catch him though, we would slow down a lot for the next 20 minutes, only doing 187 NP, but the last 40 minutes of the race was nothing but action for every minute of it. As we approached the infamous river crossing at mile 143, Payson quickly sprinted to the front. Payson recognized exactly what was happening. We weren't going to neutralize through the river, not at all. Payson was going to bank on his mountain bike skills to create some separation on the most technical part of the course, and that's exactly what happened. Sure enough, it was full on attack mode going through the river, and when you come out of the river, the gravel is quite chunky and Payson just kept on the gas. His plan had worked too. We found ourselves in a group of five riders containing Payson, Jasper Aucalon, Adam Robirge, Brennan Wertz, and me. This move seemed to contain enough strong riders that we could potentially hold it to the finish, which would be great, because then the worst I would be looking at is a fifth place. However, this race is on open roads, which is normally not an issue as there's very little traffic. However, there is a highway crossing three miles after the river crossing, and when we hit that, there was a car, and we had to slam on our brakes, which was enough of a momentum killer that the chase group caught us. So, so much for that one. And this move took 370 watts NP for seven minutes. However, no time was wasted getting back on the gas. Counterattacks were thrown by the likes of Alex Howes, Tan Dam, Ian Boswell, and more. At this point, the race had become a boxing match with punches being thrown left and right, and we were just waiting for someone to crack. With less than five miles left in the race, Payson, Jasper, Adam, and Brennan started to create some daylight between themselves and the rest of the front group. However, disaster would strike for that group shortly, because Payson looked over his shoulder to assess the damage that had been done to our group, and in the process, overlapped wheels with Jasper, and both riders went down. Adam Robers wasn't slowing down for anything at this point and continued on solo, and the rest of us chased in a pack of 12. We had Adam in sight for the remainder of the race, but we simply couldn't close the gap. I myself was at my absolute limit at this point. I think the last 30 minutes of this race was the hardest that I've ever gone when I already had seven hours in my legs. Ian Boswell was particularly motivated to catch Adam because he was not happy with the fact that Adam wasn't pulling much during the race, but it was all for naught and Adam came into the finish solo, which left us sprinting for second place from a group of 12 riders. I was actually in very good position going into the sprint. I was second wheel behind Ian Boswell, and Ian just seemed to leave the rest of us out. I think he was more concerned about catching Adam at that point than he was about his sprint. I launched my sprint, but to be honest, I had very little left in my legs at this point. It's not like we gave ourselves a minute to breathe before we started sprinting. Also, I did kind of start my sprint a little bit too early because I ran out of gas before hitting the finish and riders came around me. Ah yes, going too early. My favorite excuse for a poor sprint and also other non-bike related activities. In the end, I got eighth in that sprint, which meant I was ninth place on the day. That 40 minutes of the race required an NP of 304 watts, and the last 10 minutes was 330 watts, and this was seven hours into the race. In the final sprint, I hit a max power of 920 watts and 745 watts per 10 seconds, which really goes to show how tired I was. That being said, I'm very happy with how this race turned out. My jukebox teammate Adam won the race, and I managed to get into the top 10 in a group that contained many of the top contenders for the win at the Unbound 200 in two weeks time. This, along with my numbers from the race, seemed to indicate that the form is there right now. For the entire race, I had an NP of 284 watts for seven hours and 12 minutes, which I think is a record for me for this duration. My average power was 232, average speed 21.7 miles per hour, average heart rate 148 beats per minute, max heart rate 189, and 463 TSS. All this gives me confidence heading into Unbound for sure, especially amongst the European competition. An interesting fact, out of the top 10, only three of us were American, which is absolutely wild for a gravel race that takes place in the U.S., but I guess it goes to show that U.S. gravel is gaining international recognition, which is awesome to see. So, are you going to talk about the controversy between Ian Boswell and Adam Roberge, or what? I mean, that's the only reason I even clicked on this video. Instead, I had to hear about how you didn't win a race again. Thanks for watching. If you want to follow my racing closer, be sure to check me out on Instagram. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like, subscribe, and share it with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.