Into the Unknown at the World’s Biggest Gravel Race – Unbound 2025

Ben Thomas
1 day ago
6 min read

Unbound Gravel isn't just a race, it's the race. With 5,000 riders lining up in the heart of Kansas, it's the biggest gravel showdown on the planet and a true bucket list event. I’m beyond grateful to my team and sponsors for giving me the chance to take on this iconic challenge. This year’s calendar has already been a dream come true, with The Hills, Sea Otter, Traka, Gralloch, and now, Unbound. But while I was buzzing with excitement the idea of racing 200 miles through the wild, unpredictable Flint Hills was also seriously intimidating.

It took two days to reach Kansas, we flew from London to Chicago and then drove 9 hours in two huge RVs. The huge travel schedule was just the start of what would be a crazy week in the US. In total eight people from the Ribble Outliers team travelled, with six athletes and two members of staff. Our two RVs were our home for the week, it was cozy but a fun way to travel. What we didn’t account for was the tyre blowout on one of the RVs whilst going 70 mph on the highway at 10pm in the evening! A slow repair from the breakdown services meant we ended up spending the night parked up by a petrol station forecourt. After a surprisingly good night sleep we travelled the rest of the way to the race.

The talk of the town was all about the mud, conditions on course looked and sounded horrendous. We were seeing pictures of bikes just completely blocked up from sticky thick mud and stories of people having to walk for miles as bits of the course were just unrideable. If we weren’t scared for the race before we were now! Luckily before race day we had two dry days and the race organiser spent a lot of time with diggers and road rollers removing the worst of the mud.

The expo area and town of Emporia was completely taken over by this huge event, it was a lot of fun soaking up the atmosphere and meeting so many of our great sponsors. Precision Fuel & Hydration were there showing off their great products and supporting their sponsored athletes. They sat down with us to go through our individual fuelling plans, this detail makes so much difference to our success on race day.

The team waiting to collect race numbers

After collecting our race numbers it was time to do the final bits of prep before race day and some media duties. After our ride on course on Friday I opted to change from 50mm to 45mm Schwalbe G One RX Pro tyres. The idea was to give better mud clearance in case any of the muddy sections were still really bad. After some more carb loading where I was aiming for 8 to 10 grams of carbs per kilogram of bodyweight it was time to put the feet up, relax and then get some sleep.

The 3.30 am alarm clock sounded the beginning of race day, oats and coffee kicked started the engine before a 5.20 roll out from the RVs and a 5.50am race start time! An absolutely ridiculous time to be riding bikes. The caffeine, atmosphere in Emporia and realisation of what was about to happen got the adrenaline pumping. Ahead lay 200 miles of gravel racing.

Photos: Cyclingnews

The start straight was absolutely heaving with spectators, the noise from the packed high street was deafening until a few minutes before the race where silence fell for the American national anthem. Unbound 2025 began as the start gun fired. We had around 20 minutes of carnage behind the race vehicle which led us out of town, people were chopping and changing position constantly trying to get further forwards for when the first gravel sections would begin. Over the first 90 minutes we averaged 26 mph and within that did 20 minutes at 28.5 mph, 5 minutes at 33 mph!

Once onto the gravel I was well positioned, an hour into the race we had four Ribble Outlier riders in the lead group. Soon though this huge pack of riders was about to split as we reached the first technical sections, sensing the danger and opportunity the attacks were beginning and Harry with his quick reactions shouted at me to follow the move going up the road, this turned into the key break and from that came the winning move.

I didn't appreciate having to go in the break at the time as the pace was pretty hot, people clearly don’t consider this is a 9 hour race when they are trying to win. Into the lead group I went along with around 20 others, we were later joined by another group which included teammate Jenson. The pace was very variable with moments of full gas racing followed by nice easy zone 2 miles. This continued until two people broke away, these two rode all the way to the finish together.

Despite the danger of the two riders ahead the group rode pretty negatively, maybe only a third of the people there were willing to do any work to help the pace of the group. A big group should easily catch two people but two people working well together can beat a badly organised group. The flints and technical sections were claiming victims with lots of crashes happening in the mud and many punctures ending peoples races, only the strongest could have an issue, fix the problem and re-catch our group.

From around half way through the race to feed zone two, 100 to 150 miles, the pace was relentless, Jenson and I worked together to stay in the group. Having someone else in the group makes a huge difference, I was able to encourage Jenson to keep fuelling after he’d been having some stomach problems. We each helped pace each other back onto the group when we got momentarily dropped at different moments. Having a wheel you can follow which you trust through the technical bits is a huge advantage. You can also open gaps to allow your teammate to slot into the paceline or share the work to move up the group into a better position. Just having someone else there is a big moral boost.

During this part of the race my knee was starting to get really painful, I’m not sure if I’d set the saddle position up wrong on the new bike or if it has slipped earlier in the race but gradually it got worse and worse. By about 6 hours the pain was like having a knife stuck into your knee every time you push down on the pedals. By feed zone two I was ready to climb off the bike the pain was so bad. Jenson was also in a bad way with energy levels dipping and the heat getting to him. He said to me that I was carrying on and we would finish this race together.

At the feed we were just two shells who were put back on our bikes by our staff and the Precision staff. Without their help there's no way either of us would have made the finish line of Unbound. I could barely speak by this point. Saddle position changed, bottles changed, nutrition in the top tube bag, ice socks down the neck, water over the head, chain lube applied, the staff did the lot whilst we stood there unable to comprehend what was happening. After a push off down the road we were back into the race and working together to just reach the finish line.

From this feed there was still 50 miles, 2.5 hours and a further 2100 kilojoules of work to go. As the hours paced the pain let up a little, I no longer wanted to cry and wasn’t clutching my knee each time I pedalled. Either the adjustment by the mechanic or the more controlled pace helped. Working together we rode a steady pace, not thinking about racing, just wanting to be finished. Some how we caught three riders as we approached Emporia, one of which is an Olympic champion and another has a medal at European champs in recent years. These three were clearly suffering even more than us as they put up no response as we accelerated hard into the final corner onto the high street and finish straight.

A massive thank you to Jenson for suffering with me the final half of the race, I thought we were done at feed zone two but together we were able to complete Unbound finishing 28th and 29th. I’d been aiming to match my 17th place from Sea Otter but just crossing the finish line here was a win. The competitiveness of this race was as good as it gets, our finishing time would have been good enough to win the race last year. A huge well done to teammate Sophie on her 21st place. Unbound week was chaotic but the Ribble Outliers rallied to get three riders in the top 30 at the biggest gravel race in the world.

Just like that another unforgettable adventure ends. Unbound and our RV road trip from Chicago to Emporia and back proved even wilder than expected. After two long days of travel the team are finally back home. Time to put the feet up, recharge, and let it all sink in.