Unbound Gravel 100

Jonny spent time improving his gut tolerance during training and in races, including at Amstel Gold Sportive, PF&H Partnerships Manager Jonny G nailed his fueling plan at Unbound 100. On race morning, Jonny had a solid pre-race breakfast which included the PF 60 Chew Bar to top up his liver glycogen stores after they would have been depleted overnight.

Across the six-hour ride, Jonny was extremely consistent, taking on ~306g of carbohydrate up to the crewed checkpoint at halfway and then ~303g from the checkpoint to the finish, averaging just over 100g/h. Despite the faster than anticipated pace making it harder to open and access his Chew Bars and PF 90 Gels, Jonny stuck closely to his plan and never experienced a drop in energy. If targeting similar high-speed gravel races in future, he may want to experiment with PF 300 Flow Gel, a more accessible format to get some of his carbs from, as he wouldn’t need to open individual gels and chews each hour.

After identifying his hydration as a key area to improve upon after Amstel, Jonny took a more flexible and proactive approach this time by listening to his body and the high intensity, hot race demands. He started with a bladder of plain water alongside two litre bottles of PH 1000 (Tablets) and swapped this out like-for-like at the halfway checkpoint. Listening to his body’s thirst cues, Jonny drank over 800ml per hour to keep up with his moderate sweat rate. Jonny could have considered increasing the concentration of his bottles with PH 1500 (Tablets) so that the relative sodium concentration of his drinks more closely matched his individual sweat sodium losses, as he was diluting this with plain water from his pack. That said, he avoided dehydration, cramping or noticeable performance decline, indicating this strategy was sufficient for these conditions and race duration.

Similarly to his last race, Jonny chose not to use any additional caffeine on race day aside from his morning coffee. He doesn’t feel a significant benefit from using the stimulant and decided the potential negative side effects of stomach discomfort and impaired heat regulation were not worth the risk. While caffeine could still be worth experimenting with in training, sticking to what he knows works made sense on the day.