Unbound Gravel sits comfortably at the top of the gravel racing food chain. In this special Sprint Episode, Dirk chats with Ian Boswell about the training volume, strategy and nutrition planning that enabled him to take the win.
Stand-Out Quotes
“It was 540 TSS. It was 10 hours and 15 minutes, 206 miles, [an] average of 247 watts, [a] normalized [power] of 280 watts. And that’s 4.1 watts per kilo.”
“I was very aware from the beginning just of burning matches. Even early on I wasn’t sitting at the front of the bunch, I was sitting maybe 50, 80 writers back. And just the nature of gravel racing, you know, things kind of space out more, and you get more of a yo-yo effect after the corners, just because people can’t go full speed into the turn.”
“I did the Rule of Three gravel race in Bentonville, Arkansas. I think that was two weeks before Unbound. It was a hundred miles, like five and a half hours…I told myself, ‘Okay, cool. If I finish and I feel all right, I’ll go spin for another hour or 90 minutes, maybe two hours after just super easy just to try to get in that volume.’ But I finished and I was pretty shattered, so I didn’t want to ride at all.”
“[I learned] how important it was to almost over fuel early on because once you get behind at that length of event you’re never really going to catch up.”
“The technical sections were more, they definitely were more challenging than I had thought…. when we hit a few of those unmaintained roads you can very easily slice a sidewall.”
