Just one question: Why??
Over the course of 64 days, Bond Almand rode 11,112.1 miles and visited all 30 NFL stadiums across the United States on a Trek Madone. He averaged 175.12 miles per day at a vicious clip, stopping frequently to inhale carbohydrates and cool off in beer caves, yet somehow finding the energy reserves to take detours through Badwater Basin and up Mount Tam. His mission was to deliver a football for the opening kickoff of the 2026 NFL season, which he accomplished in the nick of time before the Patriots played the Seahawks in Seattle last Wednesday.
Sounds bonkers, right? Well, unless you followed Bond’s vlog posts on Instagram throughout the journey (by the way, go follow him) you don’t know the half of it.
Bond getting feted at the finish line: Midfield of the Seattle Seahawks' Lumen Field.
- His body took a massive toll. He developed rock-hard calluses on his hands and feet (and other contact points on the bike that are better left unsaid). He even got a cavity from all the sugar he had to eat, despite brushing his teeth multiple times a day.
- Here he is describing his diet. Bond consumed 80-100 grams of carbs per hour (about 2.5 pounds a day), which he accomplished by pounding two-liter bottles of soda, mixing his water with maple syrup, and clearing out gas station snack aisles. Even hummingbirds think his sugar intake was excessive.
- (Please enjoy his recipe for Tennessee Rocket Fuel:
- The ride highlighted Trek’s nifty engineering skills, and we’re not just talking about the Madone. Trek built a custom football holder out of carbon fiber so that Bond could carry the ball on his bike. As with a bike, the holder was designed to be stiff and lightweight. Most importantly, it never fumbled.
- The conditions were brutal. Bond absorbed steady rain for 19 days during one 20-day stretch. He fried in plus-100 temperatures in the July and August sun. He was blasted with winds reaching 70 miles per hour as he rode through Oklahoma (where he also passed through an abandoned town).
- The temperatures got so high, he’d stop to sit in the cold of gas station beer caves until the proprietors got wise and asked him to leave. At its worst, the heat made Bond sweat two liters per hour, or about 50 pounds of water weight per day.
- And that’s just Mother Nature’s influence. He also had to combat dangerous stretches of traffic along interstate shoulders. At one point, in Louisiana, he rode through chemical plants and got covered with toxic bauxite dust.
Bond and the Madone he rode for more than 11,000 miles.
- Here is a good point to say: Do not do this yourself. Bond is a uniquely-suited and proven athlete to take on such endeavors, and even then, he experienced a lot of good fortune to arrive in Seattle in one piece.
- He did have fun though. Bond got to tour NFL stadiums, once visiting three in one day. He stopped at Detroit Lions training camp, where 250-pound linebacker Jack Campbell rode Bond’s Madone and made it look very small. He also received a warm welcome at Trek Headquarters in Waterloo, Wisc., on his way up to Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
Bond at Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
So why do something so nuts? The ostensible reason was a partnership with Extreme Networks, which works closely with the NFL on a host of technical aspects from WiFi to analytics. Extreme Networks livetracked Bond’s journey, and auctioned Bond’s bike to raise money for the NFL Foundation in support of wellness initiatives such as Play 60 and GENYOUth.
The deeper reason was that this is how Bond is wired. He set the world record for riding the length of the Pan-American Highway — 14,000 miles from the north coast of Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina — in 75 days. He was doing rides of 100-plus miles at 10 years old with his dad, according to a story in The Athletic, and he hiked the Appalachian Trail by himself at 15.
What it's all about: High fives with Blitz.
These endeavors aren’t easy for him — in his vlogs, he doesn’t hide when pain, fatigue, and loneliness get the better of him — but Bond seems to have a preternatural ability to find joy in suffering and discovery. Throughout his videos, Bond takes delight in small things, like a bit of history about the local area, or the view from the famed Blue Ridge Parkway, or sucking down Tennessee Rocket Fuel.
Bond’s journey is an incredible story on its own, but it’s also a heartening lesson in how perseverance works. In the face of seemingly insurmountable tasks, small steps and little reprieves push us forward. The key to survival is finding, and sometimes redefining, your oases. A beer cave, a tube of maple syrup, or whatever.
