Just trying to find other fellas who were out there this weekend and validate or not my opinion that organizers should have made us take gravel roads instead of the top-soil mud trails 3 + 8 miles sections they made us take.
I am of the opinion that 6+ hours of hike a bike straight is out of the range of what I signed up for, and that it’s the responsibility of the organizers to keep the race a bike race, and not an « adventure » hike a bike contest, but happy to hear counter arguments
it was a glorious first 200 miles, even with the rain and mud, a very enjoyable experience. But the added top-soil section was just totally unnecessary and 100% avoidable
I rode it. I’m still processing it, to be honest, and need to think on this topic. It fucking sucked in every way, but then I guess I signed up for it? My mind is fried. Probably the part that was sktechiest was just the wild thunderstorm that hit us (my group sheltered in a barn.) Some quit to avoid screwing their bikes. I will be interested to see if they make changes, but I also guess it’s part of the game. The main challenge they face is that, if someone were to have been hurt, they could not get a vehicle down those roads
So an order of magnitude less in terms of distance, but we have a gravel race here that does veer into farm fields and wooded areas. And there have been 1-2km of ankle deep chocolate frosting that destroys your bike and adds 40lbs of mud to it. And yeah, I’ve basically decided it’s stupidly unnecessary and am not doing it again. Easily bypassed with gravel roads.
Yeah the morning storm sucked, thunder was hitting very very close and we didn’t have any shelter. Their rescue team was definitely undergunned, but unclear how capable 911 would have been would they have been needed.
I guess the « I signed up for it » part is where I feel the most split. And that’s interesting to hear your opinion. To me, it is outside of the range of expectations (and outside of anything i experienced in past editions of the XL) in the sense that #1 it wasn’t clearly enough communicated by the organizers at the Thursday meeting that we would potentially have hours and hours of hike a bike given their routing choices at 3pm on Thursday. And #2 I would have planned differently would I have known that (probably cyclocross tyres, bringing a strap to carry bike, mentally and operationally prepared for a 32+ hours ride instead of a 24h ish one, and delaying my return flight, etc…).
My opinion is that they should have decided to bypass that 12ish miles section of top soil trails on Xavier rd, and make us ride the gravel Yarrow rd parallel to it instead.
And to Scott’s point, that’s exactly it. Gravel bikes have become very capable, but no bike is made for going through ankle deep mud. If it is for few hundred feets at a time that’s fine. But purposefully picking an 8 miles long of it is not what a cycling race organizer should do. There was a guy riding a Salsa Fargo with 76mm clearance!!! He had 40mm tyres, and still, fully clogged up with mud and had to push/carry like everyone else. There is not a bike capable of handling that. It stopped becoming a bike race at that point.
Guys riding mtb’s were basically pushing a sled. They’d find a creek and just tip them in to try and restore some functionality to the wheels and derailleurs. It just becomes a death march at some point and that’s not what I’m there for. It’s not supposed to be a Tough Mudder. I finished, great, I’m a hero. Then I had to undo the damage to my bike. No thanks.
I agree. Lifetime has tremendous resources and popularity for this event. One might cynically argue that unridable sections serve as entertainment value, but there are real costs to amateurs. Spending significant money on registration, qualifying through the lottery, and then destroying bikes on deliberately chaotic terrain seems unacceptable.
Beyond equipment damage, I’m concerned about a public health dimension. Throughout the race, riders unintentionally ingest mud from farmland, which carries high concentrations of fecal matter. As a physician, the infectious disease risk from this exposure troubles me and deserves more attention from race organizers.
I read these sorts of reviews and think I’m very glad I did my local grassroots gravel event (Gravel Cup R3G3) on Saturday morning instead. 168km/2750m of climbing. Lots of fantastic forest roads and nice gravel roads. Some good technical bits, a bit of sand. But the only thing requiring getting off the bike for were maybe 15 or so trees that blew down across the roads in a storm the night before.
Didn’t ride it this year, but I was in the XL for 2023. We had similar things… not really warned about how bad it could be, and then no real idea of help if something went horribly wrong. I ended up doing some pretty bad damage to my bike and DNF’d. I came back the next year to get it done, though.
I think it goes beyond the threshold of “I signed up for this” purely on safety and equipment grounds. I have done a few events with hiking, but they don’t destroy your bike and had no questions about safety.
The last few years I have the impression that Lifetime is taking the attitude of throwing the regular folks into a stupid situation, just to get the glory content. People have spent a lot of money on their equipment, so to trash it for one race it a lot.
I am going to be the dissenting voice. While I have never done, nor plan to do Unbound, I remember hearing horror stories of the mud, rocks and heat going back to 2015 in the DK days.
The mud is exactly what you signed up for. It is discussed more than if we are going to get a wet Paris Roubaix.
Hopefully these discussions are pervasive enough that people understand this race is in an impressively remote area with insane weather that can go from beautiful blue skies to tornados in a matter of minutes.
This event has oversold what can be handled in such an area, there is a reason it has remained so unsettled despite centuries of trying to conquer the west.
What everyone should really fear, is a genuinely hot year. Eventually there will be a race held when the temp is in the mid 90s and humidity to match. Damn the bikes, that will break your body, for good.
I think that we need to get to the specific of what this rant is about.
what it is not about first: it is not about the mud, the rain, the thunderstorms, the thigh deep river crossing and the chunky rock sections, or any other expected features of the course
What it is about is a specific section of 11 miles straight, that were not gravel but top soil tractor path, that the winner had to walk for 5h straight without being able to ride his bike at all, and where the vast majority of people (~200/260 participants) ended up giving up after hours and hours of moving at sub 1mile/hour carrying their bike in ankle deep mud.
Tha very path parallels a road that is a regular muddy gravel road, where riders could have been rerouted to, it would still have been muddy, but somehow rideable, similar to the picture above.
Roubaix is a great analogy, remember in 2020 when the had to do so much extra cleaning because moving Roubaix to September meant that it was in the middle of beet harvesting season and pavés were coated with inches of mud? Even with cleaned pavés, it ended up one of the most gruesome edition in modern history with the epic Colbrelli win. Would they have not cleaned them, it would have simply not been cycling
That’s the same idea here. There was already more water, more mud and more rainstorms than most Unbound editions. There was no need for the XL organizers to keep that hike a bike 11 miles section when it was perfectly reroutable.
The super hot year happened—2019. There was no XL at that point in time. Brutal mid 90s to over 100 at some points. People dropped like flies—it was a pretty common occurrence to see people just lying in the grass at the side of the road. This was before the race really got super professionalized and there was essentially no real help so it’s a marvel that no one was really injured (at least as far as I’m aware of). I said for many years after that I’d rather a mud year but after hearing about this year I’m not so sure of that any longer.
Off topic, but I did Ironman CDA in 2021 where the air temp hit 101 F and the surface temp on the pavement during the run was 133 F. 27% DNF rate (more than double what it usually was). I finished but it but was scarred enough that I sold my TT bike and quit triathlon shortly after
