Shave the hairs off your tyres: Dylan Johnson’s Unbound Gravel bike is a Frankenbike of the best order

Among the veteran riders of the elite fields on the Unbound Gravel, tools selection is vital. There’s an understanding that sturdiness outweighs marginal features to succeed over the 200 miles of rugged terrain. 

For anybody unfamiliar with the evolution of gravel bikes during the last decade, tyre clearance and compliance numbers have elevated to higher meet the calls for of tough roads like these featured all through the Flint Hills of Kansas. It’s typically agreed upon that a very powerful facet of any setup is tyre selection. For most mavens, tyre choice is dependent upon the course situations however because of the aggressively sharp flint gravel at Unbound, puncture safety is a significant consideration.

Felt-UN1TD rider, Dylan Johnson, put collectively one of the vital hanging, well-thought-out builds that led him to complete in tenth, comfortably with the primary chase group behind race winner Lachlan Morton. Using the Felt Breed Carbon frameset, Johnson pieced collectively a strong frankenbike rig full with Reynolds highway wheels, slender aero bars, a mix of SRAM and Shimano, and 29 x 2.2in Continental Race King mountain bike tyres, which he claimed to be shaving the hairs (aka vent spews from manufacturing) off the night time earlier than the race. 

We met up with Johnson together with former British gravel nationwide champion, Dani Shrosbree, and Paris-Roubaix winner, Niki Terpstra, on the Felt-UN1TD compound to get an up-close view of their gear selection forward of race day. 

Niki Terpstra

Dani Shrosbree