I think I must represent more the average rider here. Typically ride 1000 miles or less each year. We have large hills here in Ohio too, we just avoid them, if we can, when we ride. If I were to go back and alter my training for RAGBRAI, I wouldn’t increase the mileage but I would increase the intensity. There are hills here that rival twister hill, I just have never ridden up them. Had I known what I was in for, I would have ridden all of them. That being said, my legs were never sore during the week and I was glad for that. The first two days were right at the daily average in length, but the heat and hills made it a tough two days. We got a break from the heat on day 4, down to 85 I think, but what a difference it made. Much nicer riding!

More about my RAGBRAI ride - Got up around 5:30 every day, ugh! Some of the riders got up at 4am just to beat the heat. Makes some sense, but then you get to the end town with nothing to do at 12 or 1pm?? Hang out I guess. The number of riders on the road was amazing, 20,000+ everyday. You were never very far from another rider whether you liked it or not. Some of the riders were quite inexperienced which made me nervous on downhills and climbs at times. The pass-through towns put on festivals for us and most had free water, but sold other drinks and all kinds of food. At each town there was so much congestion of riders, we had to walk our bikes through. It was neat the way they greeted us with cheering and bands.

I was surprised at the number of bikes that were pulling trailers. Most of them were battery powered radios! I thought it was really fun to have the music along for the ride. I also enjoyed seeing all of the different bikes. I even saw two World Voyageurs!

Every day we took packets of powdered Gatorade which saved us a lot of money since the heat required us to drink so much, like 1 bottle per 10 miles or so. Eating a pork chop on a stick was sooooo good, I couldn't believe it. The Beekman's ice cream was the best! Meeting riders from all over the US, Canada and Europe was really cool too. I was really amazed at the number of people I met who had riden double digit RAGBRAI's. I doubt I'll ever get there. Sleeping in tents was really tough with the heat and noise from other campers. I need sleep to be able to ride and I only really got two good night’s sleep. Even the earplugs didn’t help a couple of the nights. No rain while setting up or breaking camp. I really was happy about that.

In the afternoons we would come into camp, find our bags, set up our tents and then go sit in the shade and cool off and drink some water for an hour or so. Then we would go to a church or somewhere for dinner. After dinner we went to the showers and then found a cool place to play cards. When the temperature went down, we would hit the tents for the night.

A great experience! I'm glad I went and I'm sure I will do it again.