The US gravel season is hotting up and, through the course of a new diary series, Logan Jones-Wilkins will be writing about his escapades for BikeRadar. In part one, Logan introduces himself ahead of Unbound, which takes place this weekend, and unpicks the jigsaw puzzle that comes as part of competing as part of the gravel circuit.
I must start this diary with a clarification. My name is Logan Jones-Wilkins, and I am not a professional cyclist.
Well, that isn’t exactly correct. I am a professional cyclist in that my job is “cycling”, generally, even if I'm not a professional cyclist in the conventional sense. Instead, I am a professional cycling journalist, whatever that means in this day and age.
I also race, but I am only very loosely professional in that sense. All of this is to say, I am here to tell you the story of American gravel racing from the liminal space between the full-on, well-funded, hyper-elite, performance-obsessed group of professional racers and the elite-level amateurs.
I have more time to travel to races, the resources afforded to journalists to use high-end products without paying the high-end price, and the motivation to perform on race day. Yet, I don’t have quite the same bandwidth to train for 20-30 hours a week at altitude, nor the talent to maintain a threshold of six watts-per-kilo.
I am a metaphorical B+ student.
Nevertheless, unlike pros and amateurs, I am a professional at explaining things. That’s why my racing story might be useful to you. In this diary series spanning my summer calendar, I will pick apart my racing from this somewhat professional position to offer tips, tricks, and insight into gravel – the wild west of cycling.
To start, let’s get into the wildest of them all: Unbound Gravel.
Unbound is much more than a day in the calendar
Unbound is so much more than a day in the calendar – it occupies a month for those who are lining up in the elite field and often for many in the other categories as well. 200 miles won’t ride itself, after all.
Yet, even considering the demands of 200 miles over some of the gnarliest terrain that could be called gravel, the notoriousness of the Unbound training blocks, heat training, carbohydrate consumption, and gravel tyre testing has become a story industry in and of itself.
All that information, or posturing if you consider it more cynically, might seem overblown, but it is a byproduct of the hype and obsession that Unbound has cultivated in the gravel community, both in the United States and abroad. While I can’t speak for others, this hype and obsession fuels the joy I find in the process of prepping for a 200-mile gravel race.
Proper prep for Unbound means taking the month of May to focus on a singular 200-mile race: dialling the intervals down, releasing the pressure of off-bike responsibilities, trying new equipment, and riding long rides. Oh, and eat a lot. Unbound isn’t the time to shed weight, it is time to fuel the beast. And that, to me, is a beautiful process.
If only the other months of the spring were so simple.
Racing in the US is far from simple
Outside of the Unbound block – a period in which the best results can come if it’s done simply – gravel racing at any elevated level in the United States is far from simple. The race calendar is chock-full of opportunity, but spread out throughout the behemoth country with little to no coordination.
Racing in Arizona is paired with racing in Oklahoma before returning to California, and so on. The East Coast remains very underserved in the grand scheme of things, but even if you were to ignore the left side of the country, what remains is an area that still rivals the entirety of Europe.
Yet, thestruggle isn't just around picking a calendar. Prepping for those events, while keeping an eye on the bigger targets like Unbound later in the year, is an added layer of complexity. It all quickly sets up a jigsaw puzzle of logistics and expectations that becomes a process of discovery, problem-solving, and disappointment.
This season, I found all of those outcomes in spades.
My prep began in October and started fantastically, as it often does for ambitious athletes, with the warm Phoenix winter ushering in a reprieve from the long-hot summer. I had refocused on bike racing after a few seasons away from the fray, and that all culminated in three very strong months building through January, stacking volume, working on torque-based strength work and technique practice, and slowly adding in race intensity.
Sure enough, the smooth progression stopped when the racing was slated to start.
One week before my first gravel race, my wisdom teeth flared up and I had to get them removed, taking me off the bike for ten days. Next up came a cold in the week before my home race at Belgium Waffle Ride Arizona, followed by wildfires cancelling Mid South. A dislocated arm came next, before a bout of norovirus the night before flying to Sea Otter put one big chaotic bow on my pre-Unbound season.
Nevertheless, as quickly as the luck turned bad, life adjusted as the build to Unbound began. And while it hasn’t been picture-perfect, kicking on from a stop-start spring has been like finding the right puzzle pieces under the table and completing at least most of the jigsaw puzzle that I began to try to piece together way back in October.