Hemingfield’s professional cyclist Jenson Young writes about his season racing around the world for Ribble Outliers.

This time he takes on the monster in the midwest.

Unbound 2025, Kansas, USA

THE biggest gravel race in the world.

It’s 200 miles long, starting and finishing in the small town of Emporia in Kansas. A race I never thought I’d get the opportunity to compete in. It’s a race to most people that even making it to the finish line is pretty special.

Five days before, the whole team flew to Chicago together.

We were greeted by our team manager and mechanic in two RVs which would be our home for the next six days.

Tired and jet-lagged we took on the nine-hour drive over the next couple of days to arrive in Emporia.

Two hours in the road deviated and the next thing we knew we had a front tyre blow out. We were stuck at the side of a busy highway for a little over three hours while the other RV with the other half of the team carried on down the road.

The days leading up to the race were pretty hectic, my preparation didn’t feel the best, but it was as good as it could have been given the circumstances.

There were last minute adjustments to the new team bikes from Ribble, media to do, race nutrition plans, carb loading and other preparation.

It filled the time before the race and before I knew it 3.30am had arrived, my alarm had gone off and it was time to eat as much as I possibly could, washed down with a Red Bull at 4am.

On the morning of the race day I felt little to no nerves, I don’t think my body knew what it was about to do, or maybe I just turned a blind eye as deep down I knew it was going to be one of the hardest days of my life on the bike.

A couple of people asked me before the start if I was ready. I answered yes, but really how can anyone be ready for that?

5:50am and we were off.

I’d anticipated a relatively calm start as I knew this race could take up to 12 hours and people would want to save themselves for later in the day. However this was far from the case, in hour one we averaged 42kmph.

The race quickly took shape with around 60 riders making the lead group after about three hours, where we entered feed zone one of two at 115km.

Luckily we had the support of Precision Hydration, our team nutrition sponsor who quickly swapped out my hydration vest with a fresh one – filled with my nutrition for the next three hours until I reached feed zone two.

For the next three hours the day got hotter and hotter, reaching 31 degrees by midday.

This just added to the stress and fatigue of the day.

I found myself distanced in a small group with teammate Ben at around 170km, he was struggling with some knee pain but was trying to encourage me as he could see I was suffering with the heat and some stomach pain.

At around 210km we were both distanced from the small group we were in, how we ended up there and what happened at this point in the race, I don’t really remember, I was mentally in a pretty bad place, probably the lowest I was in throughout the entire race.

There was 125km to go and the end was nowhere near in sight.

I suffered heavily for the next few kilometres alongside Ben to the final feed zone at 230km.

Having each other definitely kept us both going to this point.

He told me he considered not carrying on once we got there. I told him we hadn’t come this far to only come this far and there was no way we weren’t making it to the end.

Again at this zone it was another fast bottle swap and top up of the nutrition from the guys at Precision.

Ice was put down my back and cold water poured over me. My sunglasses were cleaned as I downed a can of Coke.

Ben got his seat adjusted as I stopped for a quick toilet stop as soon as I exited the feed zone.

We joined back up and immediately both felt a thousand times better than we did prior to the feed.

Ben’s knee pain eased and I was cooler and much more energetic.

Not much changed for the last two-and-a-half hours of the race, we stuck together taking turns to give the other a rest and we started to pick off other riders who were also struggling from their earlier efforts.

As 300km ticked over I had a wave of emotion, riding my bike most days since I was around seven to look down to see that number and know I was about to complete the race and my longest ever ride was an achievement in itself and something I would have been extremely happy about at the start of the day.

To then finish 29th, first Brit, just out-sprinting Olympic champion Greg Van Avaemart to the line alongside Ben was pretty cool.

Feeling like I’d physically and mentally pushed myself as hard as I could knowing I’d got everything out of myself is something I’m pretty proud of.

My new Ribble gravel bike performed flawlessly, with no mechanicals or issues, something that is rare to say at a race like this.

Now it’s time for a small break without the bike to physically and mentally recover, before I start to prepare for the second half of my season.

Some of my stats from the race:

324.4km distance, 9:05:12 riding time (9:08:00 elapsed)- faster than the 2024 winning time, 35.7kph average speed. 3,000m elevation, 245 average watts (283 normalised). Average heart rate 166bpm. 8,800 calories burned.