Thanks.

Hey, Detours.

Here's Svenja Betz from Germany, and the Taurus Mountain Race is my first mountain race.

Um, and I'm having this on my list for a long time, so now it's time to do my first mountain race this October, and I am nervous.

I'm very respectful and I am very excited, um, especially because there's not so many information about route, only the kilometers and the climbing meters, but not really many more informations, which makes it even more exciting.

And to be honest, I have a lot of respect, um, especially checking the weather forecast and, yeah, the crazy terrain which is waiting for us.

I hope I can enjoy the race, and whenever there's the question, why am I doing this, I hope I can answer it with I just like to ride my bike and see the crazy, crazy landscape.

We meet Svenja, cap 13, as she was hiking up one of the climbs that lead to the plateau.

Hello.

How are you? I'm good and you? Right now I'm pretty tired.

I'm sick of walking up.

I just want to ride my bike nice and smoothly.

Doing some kilometers.

Yeah.

It's so slow.

So how does that change how you're thinking about tactics and-

It's pretty hard to think about because my longest is 800, which I did in one r- uh, ride, so without any sleep.

And now it's the question how to sleep, like in sleep rhythm or, like, every night or just when I get tired.

So it's very excited to how this will work out for me.

But, uh, I think I can manage it quite well.

I know my body quite well, so I think this isn't, shouldn't be the problem.

What are you most looking forward to?

Uh, I think for the, like I'm most looking forward to the landscape and the remote area.

I can't imagine that you would've been able to d- to do the same preparation as you maybe would have if you weren't in that period of time.

Yeah.

The thing is, if you go there and you kinda know there's not much preparation and there's not really a plan, there's nothing which can go wrong.

Like, if I go into a race and there was a lot of preparation and lots of time on my bike, like organizing different thing, and then you're like, "Okay, I put so much effort in it, now I need to have something back in ter- in, in terms of a win or whatever." So this time there wasn't that much preparation and, like, the w- One week before I flew to Unbound, there was no thinking about riding my bike because I had these exams in my c- in my, in my mind.

So it was more or less just doing the stuff I need to do already now, like for example, organizing my bike and getting my tickets and stuff, but I didn't focus on it.

And then when I finished my exam, it switched on focus on bikes, but it was just one week of full stress and just focus on bikes.

But, uh, on the other hand side I said, "Okay," like there wasn't too much preparation in it.

And I also starting, like, starting to think about how different Unbound is for something like Badlands, because then it's, you know, twice the distance, and how, how different that experience must have been.

For people that don't know what Unbound XL is, and I'm sure there are people listening who don't know what it is, can you tell us what it is? And then can you talk to us a little bit about how different 2024 was when you came and won that year?

Yeah, sure.

Like Unbound XL is like a bit of the side event of Unbound 200, which is the main event.

And Unbound 200 is the, I would say the biggest Kroger race on earth.

Like it's one very old one.

So it's very popular for sponsors like they want to have their athletes there it's a big expo like there's many bike brands and like this just the world of cycling coming together to one place and it's quite special because it's in a place where there's actually nothing besides there's unbound and then there's like full full one full week of people like riding their gravel bikes So when I was there three years ago, no, four years ago, the first time, it was so special to be there, to be part of this big event.

And I soaked it in like it was just so crazy.

And I was so impressed and so motivated for what a stop like that needs to look like.