Ian Boswell heads into the unknown this weekend for Unbound Gravel. The 200km gravel race will be the second of former World Tour pro Ian Boswell's career and the longest day he has ever experienced, but the former Team Sky and Katusha man is looking forward to facing off against the likes of Lawrence ten Dam, Colin Strickland, Ted King and others.

"It's going well. I ran my first gravel race at the "Rule of Three" in Arkansas. A lot of riders were in Texas for the gravel locos, but I was trying to figure things out and the field was decent. It's a different world than the road scene and this was my first action in a group since my crash at Tirreno-Adriatico in 2019. It's been a long time," Boswell told Cycling News.

The American was forced to hang up his wheels at the end of 2019 after a series of violent crashes and concussions. He had built a solid career as a mountain domestique and had cut off his road aspirations, but had lofty gravel plans for 2020. A global pandemic canceled or postponed the race, ruining those plans, but the 30-year-old has managed to keep his full race schedule this year, balancing his athletic ambitions with his work in Wahoo.

Now in Kansas for Unbound Gravel and set to ride the fancy new Specialized Diverge gravel bike, Boswell is experiencing firsthand the vast difference between the life of a somewhat pampered road pro and a gravel racer.

"It's very different from road racing in terms of conditions. In the Rule of Three, the pack split up really early, so I helped push the pace early on to try to make a selection before the singletrack sections. The dynamics of road and gravel racing are the exact opposite [in Sky, for example, I've made my career by setting the pace for other riders. Sometimes a match that gets burned early can bounce back on you."

"Unbound is an event that really tests your experience. Some people have won it on their first attempt, but if you look at Colin Strickland and Ted King, it's an event where you learn every time you do it. You just hope you don't get into a situation where you need to overhaul your bike in the middle of the race," he told Cycling News.

The race takes about 10 hours for the top-level men and women. Boswell is not accustomed to that kind of time on the bike, but he expects the race to continue to the line because of the many variables and obstacles unbound, unlike on the road, where small gaps can haunt you for a long time.

"I can count on one hand the number of times I've run more than seven hours so far. Still, that's three hours less than the time needed to unbound. In the end it's about fueling up and saving energy for when you can. [17][18] "I was talking to a friend a few days ago and they said it's basically a great event, but just 100 miles is too long, and even if you run 200 miles, the pace is race pace, so everyone falls apart at the end. You have to keep going until the end because you never know what is going to happen. It's very different from a road race because the riders go up and down and even if you get a 5 minute gap you can't just switch off, because a 5 minute gap can disappear in an instant. So it's very different from a road race."