Like a number of thousand fellow racers, Fitzgerald and the Rodeo Labs crew arrived in Emporia, Kansas, a number of days previous to race day. The one key distinction: Fitzgerald hadn’t introduced a motorbike.
As an alternative, Fitzgerald and the Rodeo Labs of us bought three $200 Kent single velocity seaside cruiser bicycles from the native Walmart in Emporia with the intention of driving them so far as they’d go on race day.
The Kent bikes function a welded metal body, hi-tensile metal fork, coaster brakes, alloy wheels, a “deluxe” padded saddle and a single-speed drivetrain.
The newest race content material, interviews, options, opinions and knowledgeable shopping for guides, direct to your inbox!
Rodeo Labs stripped them of elements, painted them with “sick fades,” after which reassembled the bikes.
Why go try a 200-mile,10,000-feet-of-elevation-gain route on some questionable Walmart seaside cruisers?
(Picture credit score: Rodeo Labs)
“We intention to finish the Unbound 200 on these bikes, and furthermore we intention to have enjoyable alongside the best way,” Fitzgerald wrote on Instagram earlier than race day. “We have no idea if both goal is definitely attainable. Failure is feasible, and relying on who you ask, possible. And therein lies the attract of all of it: Absolutely the unknown of what [race day] holds.”
Taking over distinctive challenges is a part of Rodeo Labs’ blood:
“Saying that we’re a lab means we’ve received stressed minds and we need to use them to attempt to make significant contributions to biking,” says the group at Rodeo Labs. “If now we have an thought and it’s adequate, it turns into a lab challenge [which could be] something: a race idea…a option to do one thing higher…[or] an elaborate joke.
Fitzgerald wrote on Instagram throughout two separate posts after the race: “Gravel began as a result of it was enjoyable, and as we speak it felt like we touched only a little bit of that dwell wire…On the market in these hills, everybody was equal. We have been all simply making an attempt to get there. It’s by no means earlier than been made that straightforward for me to grasp.”
