The Mud at Unbound Was so Bad That People Peed on Their Drivetrains to Clean Them

This year the mud returned to Unbound Gravel. Just as in 2023, the last time the course went south, the race shattered early due to the sticky peanut butter mud rearing its ugly head within the first two hours of racing.

For the leading men, a few got through relatively unscathed, just a few steps or a quick clean with a spatula or paint stick. Others were not so lucky.

Life Time Grand Prix stalwart Payson McElveen was one of the big victims of the mud. Early in the race, McElveen had an extremely challenging time fighting with his chain to stay on the mud-coated chain ring. Eventually, after he exhausted his water stores, drastic times led to drastic measures.

“Yesterday I peed on my drivetrain to clean it, definitely a first,” Payson McElveen said on Instagram after the race. “At around mile 32, I was sadly massaging the chain with my fingers, bottles used up, just willing the lil guy to stay in place.

“Dylan Johnson understandably wasn’t going to share from his hydration pack (which he was slowly dribbling on his cassette), but his genius suggestion helped tip the scales. I made it to a nearby river, bathed the bike, filled my bottles with river water for future challenges, and made it to Aid 1… in 91st place, 17 minutes down.”

Mud at Unbound presents a two-fold challenge. First, it packs tightly between the tires and the frame, gathering enough mass to completely stop a wheel from turning. This is exactly what the ubiquitous spatula or paint stick is for; with this kind of mud, success is all about managing the buildup.

The second type of mud is wetter. Instead of just clogging the wheels, it sprays up to coat the chain, cassette, and drivetrain. Eventually, enough grit packs into the links to prevent the chain from fully seating on the chainring, causing it to skip and jump. Shifting gears might help at first, but as more mud gathers, the diagonal chainline of certain gears makes dropping a chain even more likely.

The only real way to weather this kind of mud, if you can ride it at all, is to put it in one of the middle cogs in the cassette and grind it out, while periodically spraying it down with water. Nevertheless, without any water, even the straightest chain line can get jumpy. This is the point McElveen reached in his romp in the mud, and peeing was a true last resort before he could make his way to the aid station.

Other racers weren’t so lucky. For all the mud in the 200, the XL saw magnitudes more of the mud and hiking.

Robin Gemperle, who won the race riding a new Scott 32-inch prototype, said he walked a half-marathon of mud throughout the race. That kind of mud meant XL riders were running into the same problem with chains, but they could not afford to dump the same amount of water on their chains.

There was no aid station with a crew waiting a few miles down the road.

“Before entering the first mud section, I just sprayed it off with water, but I used the remaining water from my hydration pack and all the water in my water bottles,” Chris Mehlman, who finished tenth on the day with a time of 27 hours and 11 minutes, told Velo about his romp in the mud in the XL.

“I knew I only had like a couple of kilometers of riding to get to the gas station after that.
But in the next section, I needed to make my 4.8 liters of water last like 120 kilometers of very, very slow hiking and riding, and so I couldn’t spray that.”

“I have experienced that from Atlas Mountain Race peeing on my freehub to warm it up enough to have the paws engaged after they froze, so I did it again [with the chain]. It didn’t work as well this time, not going to lie. I think the key is you’ve got to aim it directly from above, so it actually washes the stuff out.

“But yeah, it didn’t really work that well, so I would say give it three stars out of five rating for effectiveness.