Welcome back to the Roadman podcast. Today I'm joined by cycllosport.com pro rider Mr. Alex Wilds. He returns to the podcast to break down his insanely fast setup for the Unbound 200, the legendary 200 mile race across the Flint Hills in Kansas. We talk everything from tire choice and tire pressure, drivetrain, arrow kit, fueling strategy, and hydration choices. Make sure you stick around till the end though because he reveals one crazy piece of equipment that he never rides Unbound without. It's something I would never think to bring if I was taking part in the event. He also has great advice for firsttime participants in the event. So whether you're racing Unbound for the first time or whether you just love geeking out on gravel tech, this is an episode that delivers realworld insight from the sharp end. It's Mr. Alex Wild. Alex Wild, we're back. We're talking Unbound. Oh, almost June already. And we're going to go straight in. No kissing. We're going to get geeky straight away here. I want you to walk us through the Unbound setup. I'm talking frame, tires, gearing, drivetrain, everything. So, let's start from the ground up just so I don't lose my mind and forget one crucial part. What tires you running? Brand, model, width, and pressure are you going to dial in on the day? Yeah. Uh, have a few options. Emporia's weather right now is a little all over the place. So, we could get rain, we could get dry. On a dry day, I'll run 22 air tracks front and rear. So, mountain bike tires, the new essentially the Renegade replacement from Specialized. Um, undecided on pressure at the moment, but probably 20ish front and rear. Um, dial it in when we get there. Uh, I'll use the Tire Wiz sensors for this race. More so, one for dialing it in before we get to the race, but also it's nice to know like that ghost flat feeling. You can kind of check. And then also if you plug a tire, I had this happen at um Big Sugar last year when I plugged the tire, you're kind of unsure if the plug had seated or you know, you're getting that ghost flat feeling and you can kind of just check that it's holding air, which is nice. How how does Tire Wiz use? How does Tire Wiz work? Because I haven't used it. It's essentially just a live electronic pressure reading that you can have on your head unit. So I can throw it on my hammerhead and it'll tell me what my pressures are front and rear. You can also set alerts. So, for example, if you want it to alert you if it's under 15 PSI, it'll like beep. So, it tells you if you're essentially getting a flat. Um, for Unbound, it's nice just to dial in pressures, but like I said, if you plug a tire or kind of have that goes flat feeling, it's nice to know you have a screen that tells you what your tires are at cuz I know Zip rolled out a new wheel yesterday which has the integrated tire pressure gauge in it. So, is tires like an aftermarket for any wheels or is they only integrate into certain wheels? No, you can put them on any wheels. So, I'm running the Revol Terra CLX wheels and you can throw it on there. Um, I've also run it on the control cells, which is our mountain bike wheels. It's essentially a sensor that sits on top of the valve and it will connect to your head unit. So, you can throw it on any wheel. Is there a weight penalty? It's like 25 30 grams. I mean, yeah, Unbound's relatively flat, so I'm not not shaving down to 30 grams. Are you going sealant and inserts? Just sealant. I'll bring inserts. I'm historically not a fan of them. I don't enjoy how they make tires feel. At the same time, Unbound isn't very technical, so maybe worth having the insurance. I think the biggest choice will be which tires I run based on the weather. I'll also bring 50 C tracers and 45 C pathfinders. Essentially, the smaller I go, the more clearance I have for mud if there's any like unmaintained sections on course essentially like a couple years ago. So, have a have a few options for width. I would like to run the air tracks all things considered. And then for gearing, uh, I'll bring a 48, a 50, and a 52. And then I'll be running explore in the back. Likely running the 50. Um, one one by one by Yep. the 48 spread looking like on the back. It's a 1046 13 speed, so pretty tight clusters, but you still get that uh 46 for Little Egypt, I'd say, is the the steepest and more grindy thing on course. But yeah, I think the 48 would be more for again mud clearance if the weather turns essentially it gets it further away from the frame.
But when we revisit this in the postmortem for you to have a successful day at Unbound, what does that look like? Is it a resultbased? Is it expectationbased? Is it power numbers based? Or is it something entirely different? Yeah, it's it's never results based for me. Um, I'm kind of a outlier in terms of you could probably just send me off with my power meter and my intervals and no racing and I would be very happy. I really enjoy just seeing where my progression is year-over-year and racing is kind of an outcome. I mean, I enjoy racing, don't get me wrong, but it's not who I am. And I think that's that's a separation I've made in the last few years in terms of racing is what I do, but it's not who I am. And I think for me, it's all about effort. You know, if I if I look back and say, well, I could have made that split if I digged a little harder or, you know, I I gave up mentally before I did physically, then for me, that's that's room for improvement. But if I cross the line saying, "Hey, like that was everything I had on the day and I just wasn't good enough," then those are the races I'm most satisfied with. Like going back to Schwamagan last year, like second is a great result and you know going up against Keegan in the sprint is also a great result, but it it was the result was the outcome. I committed to my plan. I stuck to everything and I gave it everything I had. So, I was satisfied not because I got second. I was satisfied because when I crossed the line, that was the best performance I had on the day and Keegan was just simply better. And that for me is is always hard to accept because you want to win. But you can be satisfied with that and say, "Hey, okay, I've learned this, this, and this, and now we can move on to the next thing." So, for me, it's all about effort and execution. If I feel like I put out the best effort I had on the day, then that's success. It's a nice way of looking at it. Uh to finish up, there's a bunch of people for the first time, some of them have sent me Instagram messages in the past couple of weeks looking for tips. I'm like, you're asking the wrong person for tips. They're going to Unbound for the first time and they're unsure of what lies ahead for them. What do you wish someone told you for your first Unbound or that you could, you know, pass on this piece of advice to them? Um, be prepared for anything in terms of don't run light tires. Don't don't try to skimp. It's a 10-hour day at least, so you're going to have to have a a durable bike and body. Um, eat eat and drink as much as you can and like you said, you're going to go through all sorts of mental and physical states and just kind of stick with it, you know, one foot in front of the other. And if you're making forward progress, you're making progress. Alex, best of luck. I'm excited to see how you get on. And we will chat on the far side. Keep the rubber side down. Thank you. We have three long form podcasts every week. Some of them are 90 minutes or two hours long. And I realize you're busy. Sometimes it's hard to cut through the noise and figure out the signal, figure out what the important parts are of these conversations. So, I've taken your feedback and once a week I'm delivering to your inbox a newsletter called the Saturday Spin. It's a 4-minute read or less and it's going to break down the very best thing I've learned on the podcast this week. So, it's insights from the biggest names in the world who are physiologists, sports psychologists, and coaches. It's completely free to sign up to the newsletter. All you have to do is go to roadmandcycling.com, stick in your email address, and once a week on a Saturday morning, I will deliver the Saturday spin newsletter direct to your inbox. The link is down below. Go sign up.