'You don’t often see someone biking around with a football' – Meet the endurance cyclist attempting a 10,000-mile all-American odyssey

Bond Almand sitting in a stadium with bike and ball.

Bond Almand might be young, but he is no rookie when it comes to big-distance cycling. On 15 November 2024, when he was a 20-year-old student, he finished a 14,000-mile solo, unsupported bikepacking expedition from the North coast of Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in the very far south of Argentina, setting a new world record for riding the Pan-American Route in 75 days. In September the following year, he bagged another world record, for the fastest North–South cycle crossing of the United States.

Currently he is cycling between 170 and 200 miles a day as he attempts to ride between the 30 stadiums of the teams that populate the USA’s National Football League (NFL) before the first game of the 2026–27 season kicks off. When Cycling Weekly first caught up with Almand, by phone on his approach to Dallas, he was enduring a horrendous heatwave.