How Bond Almand Broke the Pan Am Cycling World Record

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Before he saw the oil tanker hit the dog, Bond Almand had already been slowly breaking down.

Near-constant headwinds out of the south and southwest were blowing dry, desertified dust into his face, which meant that at times he was averaging only 10 miles per hour. The West Texas landscape was stark, barren, and brown. Huge semis rumbled up the highway toward him, clouding his already addled mind with depressing thoughts about climate change. The ride down the western spine of Texas should have only taken two days, but at this rate Almand’s tires wouldn’t hit the Mexico border until he’d been pedaling south for three.

Throughout his trip from Alaska, it wasn’t abnormal for a dog to run down a dusty driveway to bark at Almand before turning around to trot home. But this time, somewhere south of Lubbock, the curious dog didn’t get to go back. An oil tanker coming from the other direction smacked into him as Almand was riding by, and the dog died upon impact.

Almand knew it wasn’t his fault but he also knew logic — if he hadn’t been riding by, the dog wouldn’t have run out to the road, and if it hadn’t run out into the road it wouldn’t have died.

The next eight hours — more headwind, 95 degrees — were practically unbearable. Although Almand was about to set a new fastest known time (FKT) from the United States’ northern border with Canada to its southern one with Mexico, it was hard to feel excited. Instead, he was sobbing.

Almand had been riding for 23 days, having started in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska on August 31. Until Texas, the 20-year-old junior at Dartmouth College had mostly been buzzing with good sensations, despite the headwinds that began in the far north. He felt strong and fit, the roads were OK, and he was averaging over 200 miles per day.

Early in the trip, a few days before he crossed from Canada into the U.S., a friend messaged him to tell him that someone had just set a new Canada to Mexico FKT. The friend said if Almand kept up the 220-mile days he’d been averaging the past week, he’d break that record without even trying. Sure enough, when Almand reached Colorado’s southern border, he was averaging well over 230 miles per day.

Then he got to Texas. With the headwinds And the dead dog. He was only a quarter of his was through a 14,000 mile journey from Alaska to Argentina.

“And that was the first time I really started to crack,” he said.

Segment 1: Dream

In his application for funding from the Dartmouth Outing Club, Almand wrote that trying to break the world record for fastest bike ride of the Pan-American Highway from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina “will quite literally push me to my mental and physical limits, and likely beyond.”

Of course, he didn’t know at the time how that would feel or what it would look like, but by the time he made it through West Texas he’d had a good taste.

Although he’s only 20, Almand seems cut out for the challenge. The endurance sport bug big him early in life, and even in high school he set some audacious goals on big pursuits.

One was to set an FKT on the Double S.C.A.R. route, a 144-mile trail run across the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. His first attempt, at age 17, saw him drop out with a stress fracture 100 miles in. It also made him hell-bent on going back.

In Almand’s life, determination is a recurring theme.

“Before we got home, in the car I told my dad, ‘I hope you’re ready to go again in the spring because I failed at my goal and we’re doing this again,’” Almand said. “Every time I achieve one of my goals the next thing has to be bigger, and if I don’t achieve one of my goals then it has to be done again.”

Almand started scheming the Pan-American ride nearly 10 years ago when he was just a little kid. Until very recently, breaking the record for the fastest time wasn’t even on his radar — he just thought it sounded like an amazing adventure. However, when he started training in earnest during his freshman year of college, Almand began to let possibility creep in.

“I started to realized that my body was way stronger than I thought,” he said. “I kept getting stronger and stronger and I started putting in these really big endurance rides and all of a sudden a 100-mile ride seemed pretty routine. And so I started thinking, ‘maybe the unsupported world record is feasible.’ I really never had faith, but I thought maybe when I get out there, I’ll start pacing at 130 miles a day and see what happens, maybe there’s a chance.”

When it came time to apply for the $5,000 Outing Club grant, Almand still felt like he was faking it. The grant is typically awarded to students “doing something that’s never been done before,” Almand said, so while people have certainly biked the Pan-American Highway, there can only be one record. So, he put the words ‘world record’ in writing. And then he won the grant.

Almand still didn’t believe he could break either the supported or unsupported world record (84 vs 95 days, although Guinness doesn’t differentiate). He was strong, sure, but he hadn’t even completed a bikepacking trip without aborting due to injury.

“I wrote in my journal in January, “‘I have a less than a 10 percent chance of finishing, and my chance of breaking the world record is so minute it’s naive to even think about,’” he said.

And then there was school. Almand is studying government and climate policy at Dartmouth, a rigorous responsibility even without a 40-70 hour/week training load. He spent the year before his world record trip juggling it all — “and I even managed to get a girlfriend,” he said.

“It was impossible to do everything as well as I wanted to,” Almand continued. “I wasn’t investing as much as I wanted to in my training and my classes or my social life, but with the resources I was given I did a pretty good job and I’m proud of how I was able to balance them.”

Segment 2: Despair

The headwinds started in Alaska, but Almand was too high on life to be bothered that much. The late summer sun shone at the perfect angle, and the days were crisp and cool. When he left Prudhoe Bay on August 31, not much could get him down.

The early days of the trip carried on similarly — with Almand’s strong body and clear mind powering him along the stunning early September scenery in the western Rockies. Almand made incredible time through the U.S., hence the first record for fastest time from border to border.

Despite the trying time in Texas, Almand recovered and found himself elated with what lay ahead. Crossing the border into Mexico marked a major milestone that Almand documented excitedly in his blog.

“I feel good, like really good. As grateful as I am to call the United States home, I’m extremely excited to be in Mexico. The warm-up is done. The real test of the Pan-American begins now. Alaska, Canada, and continental US was all a big warm-up. The first 4,500 miles of this trip were a spin out to get my legs ready and my mind strong for the next 9,500 miles. The next week will be incredibly telling of how the rest of this trip will go. Can I sustain myself in a foreign country, in the desert, all by myself on a fatigued mind and a fatigued body?”

The answer, as we now know, was yes. However, doubt would become Almand’s constant companion just days after writing the post. After two days of riding high through the relative calm of northern Mexico, Almand found himself on roads connecting big cities in the interior — San Luis Potosi, Queretero, the capital. These roads, he said, “were probably the most dangerous part of my whole trip.”

When planning his route through Mexico, Almand opted to travel through the mountainous interior of the country rather than along the Gulf coast like many longhaul bikepackers. He did so following U.S. state department travel advisories in an effort to avoid the dangers of cartel activity, but in retrospect he would have chosen that risk vs. the treacherous roads.

“I was warned about this going into Mexico that the drivers would be really rude but I didn’t expect them to be quite literally out for blood,” Almand said.

One day, he was buzzed by a semi who came so close that the trailer grazed his body. 30 minutes later, he crashed into a semi that was parked on the side of the highway in order to avoid being hit by another truck that was speeding past the parked one. He went down hard and cracked his front rim in the process.

Every day after that, Almand woke up feeling unsettled and anxious. He also experienced his first panic attack after riding by a pedestrian who’d been killed by a driver just moments before.

“I was suffocated by my emotions,” he said. “The anxiety for the next couple of days was overwhelming. Getting on the bike every time, I was so, so scared and there wasn’t much I could do about it.”

Almand carried on although his mind made hard work for his body. Supportive messages from home came in the form of text messages, voicemails, and comments on his Strava posts. They became indelible reminders of what matters most in life.

In fact, the importance of real human interaction came into sharp focus for Almand as he woke up and faced each day alone. Like many modern people, until recently Almand believed he was an introvert. Putting in thousands of miles, separated from other humans by both language and physical space, made him realize how much he craves togetherness.

“I didn’t realize how valuable my relationships are,” he said. “I think that is probably the biggest way I can see myself changing during this trip. Every time I get a text or call or picture from someone, I’m like, ‘this is so special, someone took time out of their day to think about me.’ Before it was like, ‘oh it’s just another text message.’”

Almand was also struck by the effects of climate change on his journey, noting that “humans have exploited pretty much every aspect of the environment.” Whether it was Texas oilfields or the sprawl of a Central American city or massive industrial agricultural operations, Almand often felt depressed by the notion that being an ethical consumer is “nearly impossible,” he said.

But, it was ultimately the noticing — whether how important relationships are or how much of an impact humans have on the globe — that left Almand feeling enlightened more than depressed.

Segment 3: Dartmouth

On the morning of November 15, Almand arrived in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southern terminus of the Pan American Highway, where his father and stepmother were waiting for him. He was skinny, dirty, tired, and hungry. He had just ridden 13,595 miles in 76 days, setting a new world record for the fastest trip by bike from Prudhoe Bay to the glaciated tip of Argentina.

Almand knows that he will be asked many hundreds of questions about his experience, but at that moment, so relieved to be finished, the answers are yet formed.

It’s a funny thing about the metronome of life on the bike — while there is a lot of time to think about things, sometimes the real gift is the dissipation of thought entirely. And so while Almand knows that he underwent life-altering changes on the road, he’s not yet ready to answer the question of what exactly about him has changed.

“It’s actually really hard for me to even think about the Bond that was in Prudhoe Bay 70-odd days ago,” he said.

“It’s a really amazing question that I just can’t answer right now because I don’t know the answer myself. But it’s a question I really want to return to and this winter, when I’m done with this trip and have time to relax a little that’s the question I’m going to be asking myself for the next couple of months, even the next couple of years.”

As Almand processes his experience on the Pan American Highway, he will also have to go back to being a college student. Rather than worrying that the experience will have set him apart from his peers — that they won’t understand him or vice versa — he’s actually looking forward to some normalcy.

“I would hate if people turned me into someone like ‘there’s that guy who set the world record.’ I don’t want to be that guy,” Almand said. “I just want it to be ‘hey, that’s Bond, he likes to ride his bike.’ That’s great. Whatever comes of it, my reputation has always been ‘that kid that likes to bike and run and do crazy stuff sometimes,’ and that’s fine. I hope that continues.”

Although Almand wants to be a normal college student again, he’d be lying if he wasn’t also thinking about what’s next. This is the same person who said that any time he achieves a goal, the next has to be bigger.

But whatever he does, despite whatever degree of notoriety the world record brings him, won’t be motivated by fame or prestige.

In fact, the advice that Almand would give to someone who wants to try something as audacious as riding from Alaska to Argentina?

“Make it about what you love and maybe the record will come with it,” he said. “I never set out to bike the Pan Am with the record in mind when I first started thinking about this trip. It was more, ‘I want to ride that route because that looks amazing.’”

It was only through the long and often unglamorous process of training and planning and preparing his mind for the undertaking that Almand let himself imagine anything beyond a bike adventure. Setting out for glory, he said, wouldn’t have been the “right way to do it.”

Nor would have been fixating on the record, even as he was breaking it. Yes, it served as motivation during the hundreds of hours of demoralizing headwinds. But in moments of excruciating pain, like when the dog died or when he felt so lonely he could cry, Almand was just an ordinary human, even if he was having an extraordinary experience.

“You just have to find yourself, find your spot, and if you really believe in it and work on that, that little spot you carve out for yourself, then maybe the next big thing will come.

“So that’s my advice. Do what feels right. Do what you know you’re good at or what you enjoy. I would be out here riding the Pan Am whether it took me 600 days or 80. That’s the beauty of it. Maybe no one would be writing about me if I were doing it in 600 days but I’d be just as happy.”