If you were tracking the dot on the live results feed and saw me suddenly slip from second female to a standstill somewhere in the first hour, that was me, on the side of a Kansas gravel road, wondering if my race was ending before it had really started.
It wasn’t ending. But it felt like it might be.
Kansas in May
Emporia is unlike any race venue I’ve been to. It’s a small city in the middle of the Flint Hills that transforms every May into the global capital of gravel racing — flags everywhere, the main street lined with bikes, riders from sixty countries trying to look calm while clearly not being calm. I arrived having done the Gralloch thirteen days earlier, feeling better than I expected, and genuinely nervous in a way I hadn’t felt since the Traka start line in Girona.
The 200-mile start went out at 6am. Dark, cool enough that you could see your breath, and chaotic in the way that Unbound starts always are — 1,250 people trying to position through the same street, the atmosphere electric in a way that makes it almost impossible to stick to a plan.
I stuck to the plan. First fifty miles are not the race.
Kilometre 45
Something went wrong at km 45. I’m not going into the details here — there’s more to the story and I’ll tell it properly when I can — but there was an unplanned stop, time lost, and a moment where the race looked like it was over forty-five kilometres in.
The calculation in those minutes felt like it took much longer than it did. I was watching riders pass me. I was trying to do the maths on how much time I’d lost and whether the race was salvageable. I made myself stop catastrophising and focus on one thing: get back on the bike and keep moving.
I got back on the bike.
How the Race Actually Unfolded
The splits from the official results tell a story I find quite satisfying to look at now, on the other side.
At mile 32, I was sitting third female. At mile 53, I was second. By mile 63 — just past the 100-kilometre mark — I was leading. And I held that lead for the remaining 207 kilometres.
That’s not a story about raw speed. The opening miles were conservative, the km 45 stop cost me time and position, and the conditions — 20°C and 96% humidity with a southerly wind — were demanding in a low-level way that accumulates over eleven hours. What the splits show is controlled, patient riding that got faster relative to the field as the race went on, which is exactly what the plan called for.
The Flint Hills have a particular way of hurting you. The terrain never stops — no long flat sections where the legs recover, just rolling limestone roads that keep asking questions for two hundred miles. The climbs aren’t dramatic individually. Collectively, across 3,036 metres of cumulative elevation, they take everything. The riders who go hard at the start because it feels easy are the riders you pass in the second half. I’ve done enough long races now to know that patience isn’t passive — it’s a decision you make over and over again throughout the day.
By the time I reached the final sections around Council Grove, I was still moving cleanly when others weren’t. That’s the plan holding up.
The Numbers
Official time: 11:26:48 (gun and chip)
Overall: 32nd of 1,251 finishers
Female: 1st of 150
F30-34: 1st of 12
Distance (Strava): 332.74 km
Elevation: 3,036 m
Avg pace: 18.08 mph
The field was not small. 1,251 people finished the 200-mile course from the 1,251 who started. Thirty-second overall is a result I hadn’t written down as a target because I genuinely didn’t think it was within range. I thought top five female was ambitious. I thought leading the race from mile 63 to the finish was not something that was going to happen.
Racing has a way of exceeding your own expectations when you’ve done the work and things go right on the day.
What the Certificate Says
The official finisher certificate says “Elizabeth Finished The Race” and I’ve never been happier to read something so straightforward. After the Traka, after thirteen days of turnaround, after km 45 — yes, she did.
The photo from the finish line is one I’ll keep for a while. It was eleven hours and fifty-one minutes after I rolled out of Emporia at 6am (including that stop), and I was genuinely happy in a way that doesn’t always come through in finish-line photos.
The Ventum Squad
Ventum brought a full squad to Unbound and it showed. There’s something about racing with a team at a mass-participation event that changes the day — you see familiar kits on the course, you share information at aid stations, the logistics are coordinated in a way that removes variables. Thanks to everyone at Ventum who made the week run smoothly.
And to everyone who sent messages before the start — Taylor Phinney, Tiffany, the Vittoria team, all the comments on the Kansas cowboy hat photo — I read them all in the hotel the night before and they landed exactly the way they were intended to.
Next: The Rift
On 18 July I’m racing The Rift in Southern Iceland — 140 kilometres across volcanic terrain. After the heat and humidity of Kansas, Iceland will be a different kind of extreme. I’ve had a proper look at the course. It looks extraordinary.
But first: recovery. Eleven hours on a gravel bike through the Flint Hills requires more than one easy week. Jacob has the plan. I’m going to trust it.
Title sponsor: OGT. Supported by Merlin Cycles, Ventum Racing, Spatz, Coros, and Kenetik. Coached by Jacob Tipper at JT Performance Coaching.