Quitting was NEVER an Option! (My Unbound 200 race recap)

three two one i'm gonna finish for sure but right now i'm dying inside i'm embarrassed i'm frustrated hey evc here so we're talking about my experience at the 206 unbound gravel race that's six matters everyone just calls it to 200 but they're six anyway we're talking about gravel so on the pre-rides i kind of came across three different types of gravel really hard packed this sort of loosey-goosey on top and then the real chunky monkey okay so we're out here pre-riding and the first 10 to 15 miles it's pretty hard packed right i mean this is this is basically road in certain sections right but this is what it gets to be it's just these massive massive rocks and you'll see that some of them are razor sharp that's why that's why you get flats out here is that these uh pieces of gravel being cut in half we're about to get cut in half so let's talk about the bike now i'm riding the new canyon grizzle i prefer to be on my personal bike the canyon grill i love this bike but canyon has the new release of the grizzle so they want me on there also i'm a great guy and my buddy travis doesn't have a bike so i'm letting him ride my grail i'm riding the new canyon grizzle which is a much uh beefier bike right can fit way wider tires so let's kind of break this down so the bike is the canyon grizzle i've also got irc tires a 40 in the rear a 42 in the front i'm fueled by flow i've also got some saddle bags one from epidura i'm running the tt bars also later i wore a camel pack now i only got one day to ride on this bike i actually really liked it but let's talk about the hitters because there's so many so now on the female side we have lauren who actually ended up winning the race we've got izzy we've got a midi we also have kathy pruitt uh we also have jess and allison i mean they're just commonplace at these big events but for the men's it's such a stacked field we have three active world tour pros we have quinn we have keel we have mateo keel in the middle there from trek actually ran like 18 miles or something then we have x world tour pros like lauren's ian ted peter then you have past winners like colin and then you have dylan and jeremiah and eddie and travis and payson the list goes on of hitters now it would be cool to hear their story but you're going to hear the story from an annoying vegan who's way over hyped so for the first 30 miles it is full gas everyone's really racing uh to stay up front and if you're on the front it's pretty chill but if you're sort of in the back you know it can get real sketchy and so everyone's trying to stay you know as far up front as possible now there's 930 something riders registered for the 200 i would say there's probably close to 200 that are really trying to race now there was flats and crashes constantly i never really got any on camera um but just this first 30 miles just surviving it which a lot of people didn't do um it was kind of crazy and so you know there's a little bit of luck involved with racing right and but you gotta sort of make your own luck so i'm trying to be as far up front as i possibly can so that i can get as lucky as possible right give myself an opportunity to really race here now what's so crazy about gravel racing what i love the most is look at this i'm riding next to quinn simmons lawrence tandam peter stetna eddie anderson this is insane so i'm just trying to keep it super cool not trying to breathe super deep right i want to make everyone look like oh dude i'm cool and i'm also riding next to matteo jorgensen legit movie star i mean this is insane lauren's tandem gives me the thumbs up i frame it i put it next to the wall next to ted king's thumbs up some carrots i cooked my verified button and a 25 applebee's card that i won during a prem so i have made the front of this race i am so excited this is like literally the highlighter there's ian boswell he won it's the highlight of my career so now an event of this caliber can be super intimidating i mean look at this dude's quad that's insanity like quad goals and so usually i would feel way out of place i would feel that i don't belong here but one of the things that my sports psychologist had told me and taught me while i was coming back from my injury is to reframe my thoughts right so you have thoughts you have ideas and then you have behaviors and they all sort of feed into each other and so here i reframed my my thought that i don't belong and that you know i just these the caliber of writers here way beyond me i reframed that thought into you know that they're all just humans everyone here is a human i'm a human we all have legs we all have hearts and i've put in the work so you know despite on how i might finish i'm gonna give myself the best opportunity mentally like i mentally belong here and i'm going all in and that sort of changed my whole perspective on this race and to be honest it made it way more enjoyable it made it way more enjoyable that i sort of uh broke down this like pedestal that i personally put all these riders on like when i see a red bull helmet i get so intimidated and i'm just like oh my goodness here i sort of just like everyone's a writer and i'm just trying to pass everyone but look with all that being said you can be mentally as healthy and as motivated as you want and not have skill right so this section is starting to take a lot of skill it's starting to take a lot of trust in your bike uh you kind of get into these two-lane roads right these kind of ruts and then the gravel just started getting extremely angry and you don't want to flat so you can't just fully send it into these sections or else you don't even you're going to flat or crash and so it started getting a little bit hairy and the the front group split so now there's a gap and i have a decision to make i can either a settle in and just do my pace for the next 170 miles or i can risk it for the biscuit you guys silly i'm still gonna send it [Music] [ __ ] [Music] [Music] all right we made it back on look neat this next section is where it's the most technical it was extremely fast and you really had to be on your p's and q's and so we hit this little town and there's like a side by side on the front of the group getting some shots because they were supposed to be live streaming it and everyone chased that side by side and the race just completely ignited from this point i'm probably sitting like top 40 or 50 and it's just gaps are opening everywhere the the the gravel is getting extremely chunky so it's really hard to keep your bike straight and again you have to ride in a certain way to not get a flat so you kind of have to like hover on your seat because if you just power and you just don't even look where you're riding so many people are getting flats and every time i saw someone with a flat on the side of the road i was thinking okay don't do that and we are i know this doesn't look like much right the gopro 9 stabilization is unbelievable uh this looks like it's super smooth it's not i mean these roads are chunky they're difficult there's there's like these little lines that you don't see until the very last minute there's dylan johnson flying he got a flat earlier actually and very impressive ride um again these little sections that like they're pinch points and only one person can go at a time so being far up front allows you to sort of see this stuff here like i didn't see this little gap i hit that thing square so hard but so the field is just blown apart right everyone is full gas racing and i'm left with this decision and this sort of battle between you know my mind and my ego saying go and my legs saying chill you know and so who do i listen to do i listen to my legs do i listen to my mind you guys the chill chill chill chill y'all thought wrong i'm just gonna keep on sanding it [Music] [Applause] [Music] you're not that guy pal trust me you're not that guy so i bridged as many gaps as i could and i basically ended up connecting with like the second group on the road but jeremiah bishop he had gotten a flat super early on and caught this group of guys who were full on racing and he just sort of rode by everyone and it was like a fabian consulara type thing where he just you're just looking at him riding like i don't understand how he's going so fast he doesn't even look like he's trying so everyone's trying to get on jeremiah's wheel everyone's sort of losing it quinn simmons bloody face knee split wide open and i'm like whoa dude what happened there that that can't be good everyone said quinn was gonna win this hands down and so this section right here actually caused a ton of wrecks some people got concussions in this spot and i know if you're a mountain biker you're looking at this as this is no big deal but like right here there's like a triple you can't see it and if you're flying and you're on someone's wheel and you don't see that stuff it can really catch you off guard and so you know a lot of people that were trying to stay at the front man they got messed up right here i'm on the tt bars let me talk about the tt bars for a second they're cheating i mean it was such a huge advantage to have those tt bars on i could not believe it i mean it saved it saved me so much on these downhills here um especially these downhills you could get in the tt position and just rail so i'm feeling super good this we caught travis actually so this is me right here i am the i might be doing the best hundred miles i've ever done for a battery go for a battery i already took it out keep going up bottles [Applause] so here i get my camel pack now there's only two rest stops on the whole course right that's and that makes this race very difficult because you can't uh get the nutrition that you want when you want it there are some neutral water stops for the most part there's one at like 60 miles and then there's one at like 150 that you actually get fueling so here i am with my camel pack and we are with i would say maybe like the third group on the road now like there's the front group then there's a chase group and then there's us so we're sitting top 30 to 20 right now and i'm feeling really good about that and i'm feeling amazing feeling like like a freaking million bucks i'm usually the weakest in a group this group here not only was it full of strong guys but i was i was contributing to pooling i was uh just doing really well i belonged here like that mindset where i belong here and so i was also trying to give some encouragement to the other guys but then around the 100 mile mark i started just feeling exactly the same way i did in 2019 where my stomach was no longer absorbing anything and i couldn't eat or drink because i felt like puking which was so frustrating because i've never had these kind of issues before ever on any place ever other than here in kansas and the only thing i can think of is that when i threw that camel pack on i was so thirsty it was so hot uh that i couldn't stop drinking i it was just too easy to bring on too much fluid at one time now you're gonna say bro it's a vegan excuse you just went too hard you blew yourself up cool i know what blowing myself up feels like and i know what coming back from that is i i've been able to completely annihilate myself physically and then you can still ride and you can still eat and that's a thing but when the stomach completely shuts down there's very little you can do and so what i think happened is that i just drank way too much in such a short period of time i probably took in over 200 grams of carbs and like i don't know 500 calories 600 calories or something like that in such a short period of time like 20 minutes 30 minutes and so right now i'm starting to die inside and everyone that group that i was just barely hanging on to they stopped at one of the neutral water stops but i have my camo pack is still about a quarter way full um and i can't drink or eat anything right now so i actually used the opportunity to jump up to this next group hoping that i was gonna get better and i just didn't and i just didn't have the power and i just kept falling off and i'm getting so frustrated at this point because guys are flying behind me and so now it's sort of a waiting game a waiting game for my stomach to come back and the only thing i can think of at this moment is just get to the next rest stop and look obviously i'm not like a physically gifted athlete i'm not even really an athlete but the thing that over especially this year that i have learned is just the mental strength that that we have that we all have and if you reframe your thoughts in a positive light it's i know it's cheesy to say but dude you can really do anything and right here i'm dying i don't want to do this i'm thinking of every possible excuse to just quit it's like a carbon copy of what happened in 2019 dude my stomach is just i don't understand i just can't absorb anything man it's so frustrating so look you know that i'm not like a fantastic athlete and i can't really tell you how to win a crit or how to set up your bike right i don't know much but i can tell you this is that when you are in the moment where you want to quit every molecule of your body says stop that you have to just find something about future you put yourself into the future mindset of that when this is over how are you going to feel then and that projection into the future is something that i use to help me get through these moments where dude i'm so freaking embarrassed bro i don't want to make this video i don't want to see anyone i just want to vanish right i just want to act like this never happened because this is the second time it's happened here and so all i'm thinking about is dude just just make it to the rest stop and then lay down and just go from there take it one step at a time but i know future me is gonna be so much happier that i finished and so that's all i have to think about is be future me [ __ ] man it's just oh it's stuck [ __ ] anyways i'm gonna finish for sure but right now i'm dying inside i have all the negative feelings and this guy rode by and he's he just said just keep pedaling and eventually you'll be there at the finish and i was like how dare you use my motivation against me so what i do is i feel like hot sick water in there another huge thing is to never have quitting even be an option if that's an option if that's even how you started the ride thinking oh well i'll just see how far i can make it you'll never finish that can't be your mindset when my brain is going through all of the different ways to stop this pain to stop this misery if quitting in his option that's gonna be the option that i go with but for me personally quitting is never an option i will finish no matter how long it takes me no matter how much it sucks future me is so much happier that i finished so i'm going to get on the bike i'm going to keep going forward and i'm just going to keep pedaling and we're going to see where that takes me i now have two two best friends second best friend what's your name mark mark mark and ethan right yeah you can homies till we die i lost my two best friends i gotta go find some more best friends i have turned a new leaf in my life i am flying right now at this point i literally just tried to forget everything that has happened until this point and now i am rolling i couldn't believe the turnaround that i had had because in 2019 i never got this i never felt any better but for whatever reason the stomach completely cleared and i was able to just start putting some power down and this is what's so crazy is dude i wanted to quit so bad and if i had i wouldn't have known that this was inside of me like i could have done this we only got 10 miles left by [Music] i did not think i was going to be able to finish i am so happy so bro when those demons are just pegging your mind and all you can think about is the easy route right the path of least resistance which is quitting getting in the car calling it a day you got to try to remember that when you get to the finish the finish line for some reason rejuvenates you unlike anything else possible so we roll into the final finish we're about 13 hours into this thing the crowd is cheering it's unbelievable and it this this is why you keep going this is why you don't quit [Applause] [Music] 200 mile finisher so i finished 63rd overall uh 13 hours four minutes you know that obviously that's not a result that i'm happy with but i finished i overcame some serious adversity and that for me i'm chalking that up as a fantastic day on the bike so the triangle of thoughts to ideas to actions and back around that is how i was able to finish i reframed my negative thoughts right it started off with hey i belong here i'm going forward i'm going to get a good result once that was no longer the case if i kept dwelling on the fact that i wasn't going to get top 10 that would have mentally cracked me and i probably would have quit because now the goal i'm not going to obtain my goal so i have to re-reframe my thought and my goal here which was now just to finish and you know i don't care if people are going to talk smack and tell me i'm a weak vegan and all that like what can i do in this moment and in this moment i can't get top 10 but i can not quit i can finish and no matter how crappy i feel inside bro i've never quit anything so that's what i'm going to do so i just want to say a huge thank you to flow formulas they supported me a ton during this they actually got me out to this race i want to say a huge thanks to cask getting me an amazing helmet canyon obviously that that grizzle was a fantastic bike i'll be riding that in future episodes of um the impossible route but also a huge thanks to you and to everyone who uh who gave me encouragement out there at the race it honestly made all the difference anyways as always guys vegan cyclists thank you [Music] you

Channel: VC Adventures

Views: 197,849

Keywords: vegan cyclist, vegan cycling, health and fitness, bicycle riding, road bikes, cycling, bike racing, cycling tips, the vegan cyclist, go pro cycling, cycling go pro, bike hacks, cycling racing, tips for cycling, vegan athlete, cycling videos, cycling workouts, sufferfest cycling

Id: jfKuYLfwPvQ

Length: 22min 55sec (1375 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 06 2021