peter sagan today revealed that he's headed to emporia kansas to tackle the 100-mile gravel race
at unbound gravel unbanned gravel is considered the world's premier gravel event with thousands
of amateurs lining up alongside world tour roadies gravel privateers and professional mountain bikers
and me i've just found out that i'm riding this as well and well my training has been
riding my bike to work and back and to be honest riding it there is like freewheeling the whole way
so my training has basically just been riding back from work i might be in trouble you know
now unbound gravel is fast and smooth okay there might be some quite big rocks that you can't see
from the photos but generally it's exactly what i'm referring to when i talk about american gravel
races actually being gravel not muddy single track like this which means i've had to make
some changes to my bike average speeds will be high especially in the 100 mile one there's a 200
mile one and then like a 360 mile one or something like that uh whether people take all day and carry
loads of stuff on their bikes the 100 mile one seems like quite a nice sweet spot and the most
compatible with making a video at the same time so that's why i've chosen that it is also the one
that uh peter's sagan is doing that's not why i chose it i only found that out this morning
so it's going to be hotly contested let's just say that a lot of people are going to be doing
it i don't know how i'm going to tackle it yet but definitely in terms of bike choice there
were some well some big changes that i had to make because this is set up for england and the race is
very far from english conditions so this is my gravel bike the addict gravel tuned i've
covered this in videos previously i'll drop the one where i do a full bike check on it down below
first notable change i've added a little mini pump to the frame so this is a lasign pocket drive
which is a variation of the one that i always use on my bikes i think i use a slightly smaller one
actually says light drive on it the event is supported but it will be at different checkpoints
so you still need to be self-sufficient in between them if i do have some sort of puncture uh then
having a pump will be very very helpful i am running tubeless and i've changed my tires this
is probably the biggest change that i've made to the bike because it was purely set up for uk slop
and grime in the words of nick frendo i was basically running mountain bike tyres or the new
gravel tyre from hutchinson which is a 50 millimeter tundra which is really really
knobbly i've now changed those out in favor of speed instead of grip with a tried and tested
hutchinson tour egg now these are just 40 millimeter and the tread is much much finer so
you're still going to get grip but they're going to roll a lot faster so for this kind of race
perfect i imagine most people are gonna be running something around 40 millimeters for this event
it's just the right sweet spot for still being fast but having enough grip when you are cornering
on some of the loose gravel in the sections where you do have to change direction which i think does
happen occasionally in america because there is less of them these tyres are also lighter
and there is about 1 500 1 600 meters of elevation in this event as well over the course of a hundred
miles that's not too bad but there's still going to be some climbing i imagine they're not going
to be short and steep it will just be like a slow drag looking at some of the photos from
kansas i have then put a fidlock magnetic bottle holder on the top tube which already was drilled
for bottle cages uh nice thing about this is if i decide that i do need extra water
i can just put a bottle on and if i decide that i don't need any extra water because the support's
really good i can just run it like that and there's not much penalty and a bottle cage like
in the way obviously there's a range of different size bottles you can get if i really didn't want
to stop i could put one of these bigger ones on but because it's bigger i'm scared it might
start hitting my knees while i'm riding and that'll be annoying so i'll probably stick
to the smaller one for now i will be riding this event with my seat pack on which has all tubeless
plugs and a spare tubalito inner tube as well just in case i do punch her and things get messy
finally thank you to garmin because they're paying for this whole trip and sponsor the event garmin
unbound gravel so thank you very much for making this possible i'm out of breath just talking about
it that does not bode well for the race does it now i guess i should actually do a bike ride
because i haven't had that much time to ride recently i thought going for a run would be a good
idea yesterday it was a bad idea whatever help that might have done to my fitness has just made
me very sore i'm just on my way to meet ben a leg loosener this is what this is open up the lungs
and then uh and then recover over the course of the two days that it takes to get there not late
am i late no i'm racing against peters again when the weekend you're not
you know it's june tomorrow we're in leg warmers why are we riding so fast just smiling so bike's
feeling nice it feels fast with these tires on because the old ones were so uh
so knobbly what's more since filming this video i checked the uh weather forecast in
emporia kansas where the race is guess what what thunderstorms have you got changed my tires back
so mission accomplished legs are working bike is working it's always worth checking especially when
you do a new tubeless setup riding the wheels make sure all the ceiling light gets into the
right places and is ready to see all the holes or potential holes i hope i haven't cursed myself all
feels fine it's funny i have no toe overlap with these tyres which i kind of got used to with the
other ones because they're so big now my lovely bike that i worked on all morning is covered in
so welcome to francis's five-minute chain clean sponsored by gt85 first get a bucket of soapy
water washing up liquid is a surprisingly good degreaser get a brush and apply the soapy water
all over your drivetrain i'd like to scrub the chain at the chain ring keeps it away
from your wheel hub bearings which you don't want to degrease scrub it until it's shiny
and then leave to dry once dry spray some gt85 or similar on a rag rub it all over the chain
use elbow grease you'll probably get loads of black stuff come off it and finally add a layer of
chain loop of your choice bear in mind this will work best if you don't leave your chain
to rot after it's already got dirty so immediately after a ride if your bike has got dirty come in
straight away do this if you leave it for days and then you have a dirty chain sometimes it can be
really hard to clean and ideally you take it off degrease it fully
and you just stay on top of it and it makes your life a lot easier and you'll be saving loads of
money because your chain won't wear out as quick so next update from this channel will be from
kansas because i'm flying there day after tomorrow although it takes a while to get there now i'm
actually there the day before the race and then the race day and then the day after i think
so if there is any particular riders and people that you want me to catch up with on video please
put them in the comment section down below and finally wish daisy a happy birthday it's
her birthday now so we are going out to enjoy it and also for june plug i'm riding a race to
nowhere which francis did last year and it's to raise money for the new normal which is ben's
charity so if you want to donate there's a link in my instagram buy i've got to ride as much as
i can in june considering i've only ridden 400 kilometers this year it's going to be very hard