The Story of a Cyclist, 32 NFL Stadiums, and One Very Important Football

It started in Miami. On July 7th, Bond Almand rolled away from the Miami Hard Rock Stadium. In Seattle, 6 days later, the ultra-distance cyclist made it to Lumen Field on the eve of the NFL season. In between were stops at the 30 other stadiums of the National Football League.

All of it in order to bring the ceremonial game ball to the first game of the NFL season.

The project, which was a joint effort between Extreme Networks and the NFL, was born out of a connection at Dartmouth. Almand, who graduated in May, was looking for his next cycling project after breaking through with his world-record-setting time on the Pan American Highway in 2024 and various long-distance world records since.

The idea to connect all of the NFL’s stadiums by bike, and then deliver a ball to the field on the opening night of the season, seemed like it was right down Almand’s esoteric alley.

“It’s usually strangely anticlimactic,” Almand told The Athletic about the experiment. “I think this one has a pretty incredible climax.”

[Coincidentally, we caught up with Almand at Unbound. He was racing Unbound XL with an eye towards prep for his summer adventure, criss-crossing the United States. You can watch that short interview here.]

In total, Almand rode 11,178 miles on his 65-day trip, or 169 miles a day for just over two months. For reference, riding directly from Seattle to Miami is 3,300 miles. Almand’s path was a winding one, running west from Florida to Texas before heading back to the northeast.

Then, it was all the way across the country to Los Angeles, including riding through the high alpine terrain of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, and 124-degree temperatures in Death Valley. Along the way, Almand came across everything from National Parks in the American West to abandoned towns in the Midwest.

“Tranquil, enjoyable roads,” Almand wrote on a Strava description for a ride across Oklahoma. “The landscape has a certain beauty. The small towns in this corner of America feel forgotten and abandoned. It’s very sad.”

There was also the task of getting to all of these different stadiums, many of which are marooned deep in sprawling, car-centric cities. Cities that were more daunting than any climbs. “Would you rather: live in a suburb of Houston for 6 months,” Bond wrote for a ride through Houston, “Or subject yourself and your entire family to the punishment of Titan Prometheus for 1,000 lifetimes? Give me Prometheus.”

To learn more about the journey, Almand has been posting regularly on Instagram, narrating the journey in an engaging, understated manner. His Strava is also an interesting look at the numbers behind the mammoth ride across the United States.