Culture · Far Beyond
Far Beyond: Lachlan Morton digs in at Unbound XL
Watch our latest Far Beyond film, out now on YouTube
June 19, 2025
Emporia, Kansas is not the likeliest home for the world’s most famous gravel bike race.
For most of the year, the sleepy college town, which lies on the Kansas Turnpike between Topeka and Wichita, is a hub for families that farm the nearby upland prairie called the Flint Hills.
Asa Philips is one of those farmers. Lachlan Morton had the chance to meet him this summer when he was in town to race Unbound XL. He wanted to know what Unbound means to the folks who call Emporia home year round, not just the cyclists who come in for the race.
“Growing up in this area and being a young child riding my bicycle on the gravel roads around here, I never would've imagined that this small town in Lyon County, Kansas would be known for the world's most premier gravel bicycle race,” Asa said. “If you would have said that 20 years ago, everyone would have said you were insane.
Cycling’s deepest roots lie in agricultural communities. From Flanders, Belgium to Tuscany in Italy and now Kansas in the United States, there is an affinity between farming and the patient outdoor toil, required resilience, and nearness to the land that bike racing involves.
There’s the fresh air, hot sun, and biting wind, the need to keep going after disappointments, the hope when you begin an effort you know is going to take a long time, and the satisfaction, all that hard work later, when you see a seed you planted grow into something great.
Our latest Far Beyond film explores a different side to Unbound. We meet Asa as Lachlan is sweating over the hills, spinning through fields of tall grass, under the just risen sun. We follow Asa through his day on the farm and Lachlan through his.
Asa makes time to greet Lachlan out on the Unbound XL race course. They see each other for just a fleeting moment.
“Each person has their own experience that they're going through and this thing that they're doing together simultaneously,” Asa says. “ Unbound to me is something that has always been in the background. I say that as a farmer and rancher in the area, knowing and growing up with some of the people who were instrumental in starting and growing that race into what it's become now.”