UnTapped athlete Ian Boswell retired from racing in the World Tour after seven years and now lives in Vermont with his family. He’s been gearing up to compete in his sixth Vermont Overland, one of gravel’s most iconic events and a distinct challenge. We sat down with him recently to talk about how he approaches fueling for this challenging race, the trend of elite athletes leaning into performance nutrition made with real food ingredients, and what advice he’d give to other competitors at Overland.

For the uninitiated, what is for Vermont Overland all about?
Overland is probably one of the more historic and iconic gravel events in New England. It’s got a long history of being a very relentless course. It really showcases the beauty and the challenge of Vermont riding — a beautiful mix of climbs and descents, the beautiful, smooth gravel roads we have, but also incorporating a chunk of these Class 4 roads that are iconic in the state, especially for gravel cyclists. It’s not one of the longest gravel events, compared to Unbound or Steamboat. However, that doesn’t make it easier. It is a very hard, challenging course just because you’re pretty much going up or you’re going down the entire time. While the descents aren’t necessarily dangerous, they do require a lot of focus and concentration. And just when you get to the bottom of it and start to think about recovery, the next hill is right in front of you. 

What’s your approach for nutrition and hydration this year?
Fueling in endurance sports, and especially cycling, the volume which we are consuming now is higher than ever. The number of grams per hour, and just pure volume of calories you’re consuming on the bike is continually increasing. Overland is a very intense course, which means you really have to think about fueling. On paper, it’s a shorter event, so riders might think, ‘Oh, I don’t need to bring as much fuel in my bottles or as many gels.’ It’s an easy event to under-fuel just because the stats on paper don’t look like it’s going to be a very long event, but the intensity is so high and the opportunities to eat and drink are so limited, you really need to make sure that you’re taking a gel or drinking a bottle whenever you can. 

What do you pack on the bike with you?
I’m a bit of a camel when it comes to water consumption, so I’ll plan to race with two bottles with Mapleaid. I’ve really been loving the Grape Maple Aid and then because it is a pretty short and intense event, some caffeine is helpful as well, so I’ll do the other with Lemon Tea Mapleaid.

For nutrition, I’ve really leaned on using the flasks rather than individual gels, just because it’s easier to carry a larger volume of gel. Usually I do one flask that’s very low sodium and I really love the mint gel. The other flask, I’ll put something that has a little bit more sodium in it, so maybe I’ll put in three plain maple gels, and three salted cinnamon spice gels, just so I’m making sure I’m also getting that sodium. Of course, it’s also in the Mapleaid drink mix, but for me, I found that higher sodium and electrolyte content during a race is super beneficial.

You did Unbound recently. For something like Overland that’s three hours in duration versus a longer race, how do you approach fueling differently?
For Overland, with the intensity so high and the speed for the elite riders so quick, I want to carry everything I need. For the majority of participants, there are two aid stations out on course that UnTapped supports, so you maybe don’t need to carry everything you need, and when you stop at an aid station, you’ll get the Mapleaid or the Gels and Waffles you need. 

I’m always curious how we take your approach to nutrition and hydration as an elite athlete and make that relevant to somebody who’s maybe a weekend warrior or just happy to finish. Are there lessons for everybody?
Part of this movement of high carbohydrate consumption is that it’s not as easy as people might think. There’s a lot more practice that goes into it than someone who goes for a ride and just drinks water, and then all of a sudden they go to a race and they’re gonna try to consume 100 grams of carbohydrates per hour. So for someone who has been training and preparing, but maybe not to the same degree I have, then aiming for even 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour would be a great goal. That’s also gonna be much more sustainable on your GI tract. Thankfully, with UnTapped, I have zero GI issues and it is a stable form of carbohydrates that your body can naturally digest. But people read all these articles of what athletes are doing at the Tour de France, and they’re like, oh, I’m gonna do that. It’s like, well, it took a long time for the athlete to build up to that volume.

Anything else people should know?
At Overland, just take opportunities to fuel early, whether it’s setting up a reminder on your bike computer or even a 20-, 30-minute timer on a watch. Something that reminds you to eat and drink. Every rider goes into a race with the best laid plans, and the minute you actually get into that race environment and you’re surrounded by a thousand other riders, next thing you know you’ve gone a while without drinking anything. 

Is focusing on nutrition a positive respite from everything else going on in the race or is it a burden?
That’s one of the beauties of UnTapped is I enjoy consuming it. That’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned when it comes to sports nutrition: the best fuel to carry is something you actually want to consume. Not to rag on other companies, but if you’re literally just trying to get the thing down, like I’m only consuming this because I need the calories, then there’s no pleasure, no enjoyment – that’s the beauty of UnTapped. 

The consistency of UnTapped just goes down so much easier than so many other products on the market. It’s not a burden to eat. Also the variety of flavors, that’s something that I’ve really leaned into this summer. There’s different flavors that I’ve fallen in love with as the temperatures have changed. For whatever reason the Mint Gels have seemed incredibly refreshing. I thought it would be more of a gel I’d like in the colder months. Also, the salted raspberry, it’s just it’s a flavor that I wasn’t really like using all that much and then I opened up a bulk container last week, and I was like, “This is delicious.” It’s something new and different, and the ability to cycle through different flavors is a real blessing when it comes to your sports nutrition. You never really have any sort of flavor fatigue.

Is how you approach fueling now different than it was three or four years ago?
There was a lot more solids people would pack — bananas or little paninis (editor’s note: these are miniature sandwiches, traditional in European road cycling). And I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people at Overland who are packing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and that’s great. For me, all the UnTapped products I mentioned, they’re all quickly consumable. There’s no chewing involved with gels and drink, which is also easier to digest. It’s very quick to quantify how much you need, and that’s really changed is just how and what carbohydrates are being consumed.

Do you use the Recovery Drink Mix that UnTapped recently came out with? How do you approach recovery and nutrition after the race?
Yes, and I love it. Especially this time of year, when I often find myself riding early in the mornings and finish at an hour when I don’t really need a meal, Recovery Drink Mix is perfect. I was at Oregon Trail a couple weeks ago, and I went through a whole tub in a week just because we’d finish the stage and it was a little while until lunch, I knew I needed some protein in my system straight away. The first thing I did when I finished, I’d already have the powder in the mixer and once I finished, I’d put some water in and shake it up. It’s really added to the portfolio of products that UnTapped has and it falls in line with the ethos of the brand of using only wholesome ingredients.

That’s one thing I find so beneficial of the products UnTapped makes; I would give it to my kids. That’s so valuable for sports performance and competing at a high level, where you’re so aware of so many details. Like, you’re tracking your sleep, you’re doing all these little things, so why would you not then use wholesome ingredients when it comes to recovery? I’m not eating Chick-fil-A after a ride, so why would I eat highly processed food during the ride or for recovery? 

Do you sense that more of your peers are making that same decision?
There is a huge focus on nutrition in general. People are getting more aware of what they put in their bodies. There was a notion – and we saw this in the food industry in general over the last 50 years – where people assume something that’s made by science is better than what is made by nature. And we’ve come to learn, when you look at any modern diet, it’s about going back to wholesome foods, real foods, and that’s starting to be the trend in sports nutrition, too. 

What nature provides is pretty amazing. That’s where the next shift in endurance sports will come, is rather than looking at just the carbohydrates that are in a gel, it’s looking at where those carbohydrates are coming from. What’s actually the fuel source? With UnTapped, it’s right there on the label: Real food. 

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