Hi there, it’s the Enough Cycling collective here! 3T invited us to join their blog for a nice little series of posts from now to one of the most exciting events we have on our calendar. No need to say it’s Unbound Gravel. So let’s get to it.
Well, we’ve been riding for quite some time here in Europe and we’ve been attending the most diverse events in our Continent. From one-day gravel races to adventure races, simply because we like to ride our bike no matter the format of the event. We both like exploring and riding just for the fun of it and we like to race too, sometimes.
Badlands, Jeroboam, Italy Divide just to name a few of the events we did last year. But you know what? It seems like you’re not legit if you haven’t raced at Unbound. There’s so much hype about it!
It’s been on our list since the very beginning and we had a spot last year too, but unfortunately covid restrictions didn’t allow us to fly to the US and had that experience in 2021. It was quite disappointing but what could we do? Well, nothing at all. So better just stick to Europe and make the most out of what we had here. Which is a lot already.
This is the point. We often say gravel does not exist but if we want to be serious for a second we do realize gravel means very different things in Europe and in the US and it certainly developed quite differently. We have tons of great events here but when it comes to one day racing things are just getting started – take The Traka in Girona as the best example. We’ve many more adventure races and non-competitive events which are absolutely great and we love to ride.
On the side of the Ocean it’s another story. Pick a weekend and you can easily go racing four different one-day races on gravel, wherever you want in the country. The racing scene and community is much more developed and the level is quite high too.
So the thing is we want to go there and check out how they do things, how these events look like and how tough the competition is. We can’t wait to meet people and to exchange opinions, to meet the riders and see how this big community is.
And then, of course we will race. We will line up in Emporia, Kansas with four riders. Mattia and Frank racing the Unbound 200 – meaning 200 miles – as well as Maria Vittoria, while Federico will ride the Unbound XL – a race of about 570km.
3T asked us to share how we’re getting ready, so wait for the next blog posts to see what the four riders think and how they feel about the upcoming race. One blog post a week until we will finally take off to the US.
For now let’s just say we think it’s an important event for sure and we definitely want to be there. On the other hand we think it’s as interesting and great as many other things we have on our plate. Take The Traka, Granguanche, Badlands, The Rift. We just keep saying to ourselves: let’s go race Unbound – yes – but let’s not make it our obsession.
We’ve never been obsessed with anything. Let’s just not start now :)
