Lancaster woman wins UNBOUND 200-mile gravel bike race in Kansas while reconnecting with childhood roots

• By Logan Moyer/ LNP | LancasterOnline

It was still a long way to the finish line. 

Cycling down the gravel path in the Flint Hills of Kansas on an unseasonably hot late-May Saturday afternoon, Stephanie Bennett’s legs were burning. 

Bennett, 51, of Lancaster, was 100 miles into Unbound Gravel’s annual race — still having another 100 miles to go. 

“Why am I doing this?” Bennett recalled thinking. “You have your ups and downs. It’s physically hard, but mentally tricky, too.” 

In the end, the “ups” prevailed. Fourteen hours and 15 minutes later, Bennett crossed the finish line in Emporia, Kansas, to win the women’s single speed category and place sixth among one-gear competitors overall. 

“I wish there was a way of people knowing that they’re not as limited as they may believe,” Bennett said. “My goal was to finish in the top 10 of the men, which was a little extravagant, but I actually (did it).” 

She completed the race, known as one of the world’s premier gravel events, while using only one gear. On top of all the obstacles that go along with such a long event, Bennett was faced with the self-imposed challenges of the single-speed division. 

“It’s a little tricky knowing what gear to choose for different terrains,” she said. “So I kind of just stuck with what I knew and it seemed to work out. 

“It’s pretty limiting with single speed. I feel like you use a lot more upper-body strength, like pushing and pulling.”

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Back to her roots

Bennett was born in Vermont but has spent most of her life in Lancaster.

“That’s what my brother and I did,” Bennett said of cycling. “There wasn’t a whole lot going on where we lived outside of that. We spent all day just riding around.”

Once her adult life started, Bennett said that she “lost touch” with the activity for quite a few years. She got back into it over the past decade-and-a-half, finding a love for gravel riding through a friend.

“I really didn’t know what I was getting into,” she admitted. “The first time I did it, I did it on this used all-city single-speed bike that I found on eBay.”

That friend, Tim, was a Lincoln, Nebraska, native who found himself in Lancaster for work. His descriptions of the Midwest gravel piqued Bennett’s interest.

Fast-forward 15 years and Bennett has a long list of places that cycling has taken her. Kansas. Oklahoma. Québec. Missouri. The list goes on and on.

“I’ve had some great experiences,” she said. “I’ve met old friends and (made) new friends.”

Next on Bennett’s list is Aug. 24’s Vermont Overland, a 55-mile dirt road race. She said she also wants to someday compete in a Belgian Waffle Race, which are mixed-terrain events regularly contested in California, Utah, Montana, Arizona and North Carolina.

Like many cyclists in Lancaster County, one of her most frequent routes is the “river to river,” which goes from Veterans Memorial Bridge in Columbia, through rural York County to across the Safe Harbor Bridge into southern Lancaster County.

Bennett began tracking her mileage on Strava when she got back into cycling. Since then, she’s biked 12,649 miles (three times as long as the Amazon River) and climbed 600,000 feet of elevation — enough to bike up and down Mount Everest 10 times.

As the mileage suggests, the seat of her bike has become a second home of sorts.

“There’s definitely something about it that I’m drawn to and keeps me going back,” she said. “It just makes my little world feel good and better.

“You don’t really have to think. You just have to keep moving.”