The Packfiller: Cycling Culture & Comedy · Patrick Bulger | Cycling Host & Creator

446 Watts vs. Broken Chains: Flanders Preview & Gravel Disasters

April 1, 2026·1 hr 36 min·9 clips

The 24 Hours of Riverside promises 12 hours believing you're an athlete, 12 hours believing you're dying, and a cold hot dog at dawn.

Registration opens with suffering already built in. The 24 hours of Riverside sounds less like a race listing and more like a polite warning about bad choices, night descents, crooked gear, and the kind of dawn hunger that makes a cold hot dog feel like the right answer. Then Spokane is asleep, and the cold open drops into a 2am bottom-bracket standoff with grease-covered hands and patience long gone. The comedy stays dry. Mechanical misery and endurance-race drama both point to the same thing: ride bikes long enough and even sensible people start questioning the deal. Once the table settles, the talk turns to fueling. A gravel-race section gets into the ugly practical bit of how riders keep eating when pace, distance, and flavor fatigue all pile up. Untapped becomes the test case. One rider brought ten, ate seven, and still comes away thinking he probably needed more than he managed to take in. Variety starts sounding less like a preference and more like survival. A stack of identical vanilla fuel packets might work on paper, but it sounds bleak in real life. That leads to a bigger training admission. The long, grinding, eleven-hour ride has worn out its welcome, especially when eating starts to feel as hard to repeat as the riding. Three or four hours sounds more human. The group circles a familiar rider problem: keeping enough endurance for gravel without letting big mileage steal the speed needed elsewhere. Strength training gets real respect, and game changer lands because it comes after discomfort, not fitness-poster optimism. News waits. Before headlines, Thomas Hammer Coffee gets pulled in through a bit about asking for Pack Filler Blend before anyone in the store knows what that means. The seed is planted anyway. The closing stretch returns to training hopes, survival math, and the old desire to be fast enough to hold the wheel. Then the calendar tightens. Flanders gets the sendoff, the Twilight series is already waiting a week later, and the plan is simple enough: get home Friday, catch on over the weekend, and go full gas.

As heard by us

Practical race prep for riders who know the difference between training and punishment.

Late-season cycling talk does not often sound this plainspoken. This one stays close to the real stuff: fuel, fatigue, and the small bargains riders make with their bodies when a gravel calendar starts to bite.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Fueling, strength work, and gravel-race misery for riders who still think 11-hour days are a lifestyle.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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