one_beatnik

For most it's not a drinking game on RAGBRAI. There is a group wherein it becomes a progressive drunk as the week rolls on, but for most it's a couple of beers at day's end. I've ridden with 90 yr olds and 4 year olds; I've ridden with those riding a $69 Huffy and those with $10K bikes; I've ridden with entire teams that are paraplegic pedaling with their arms. I've told people for years that you can find anything you want on RAGBRAI from naked beer slides to Bible studies....the beer slides are easier to find! When you get a group of 20,000 people in the overnight town, 2% that are after the drunk is a large number. At times RAGBRAI does suffer from image, but more-so from riders not paying any attention to normal legal rules of the road. I get upset when riders won't even get out of the way for an ambulance coming from behind....and those riders are in the oncoming traffic lane! One of my friends described RAGBRAI as "It's Mardi Gras married to a county fair whose parents were a rock concert and a church potluck all on a bicycle ride."

kerk

The beer was easy to avoid. I didn't have any problem or even notice anyone who couldn't maintain their behavior. The pass through towns were amazing. I was surprised that we had to walk through towns due to the LARGE number of riders trying to get through. Every town had a festival just for us. Every type of food they had was for sale, lots of pork chops/brats/burgers/pulled. The churches had great lunch/dinners and were always the best deal. Bands played, cheerleaders cheered people had their sprinklers set up to ride through, it was amazing. The number of riders on the road was overwhelming. I was always just a little leary of what other people were going to do. On the other hand, yesterday I jumped onto a paceline with the Arizona team and we road 18-20mph between two of the pass through towns. That was really fun. I was very surprised that riders didn't organize into groups based on abilities more. There was more of it on the last two days, but I thought it would happen right away. As my riding buddy said, "RAGBRAI is not for the faint of heart". Boy was he right. It is the longest, toughest ride I've ever done. The 900 miles of training I did was good enough that I was not sore at all during the week so I was really relieved about that. I had a lot of fun, I could be talked into doing it again.

DGlenday

Perhaps I wasn't in the right (wrong?) place at the right time, but I saw remarkably little of this sort of thing. Pretty much everyone I saw, rode with, and hung with after the rides, was a straight-laced rider. Some drank a few beers, but I did not see anyone over-indulge. So I'm guessing that the people who do this are in a small minority.

My slowest all-day average was 16.8 mph on the last day, fastest was 19.6 mph opn the century.

Plenty of "jeers" here




Final day:

Plenty of rolling hills near the beginning, then long and flat.

For me, the going was tough - my upper back was hurting, and saddle sores were developing - and I doubt I'd have managed another day. The last 10-or-so miles seemed to drag on forever, partly because it was hilly again, and partly because we knew we were in the final stages of a really, really long event! Also, it was hot. Seemed to me that this was the first day with low humidity. That was good - though it meant I had to slather on more and more sunblock at almost every rest stop. (I felt like a glazed doughnut!)

I took plenty of pictures on the last day and will publish them here after I get home, on Tuesday.

Barrettscv 

Congrats on completing an Epic event!

markrj

I will report on our RAGBRAI 2011 adventure as soon as I get done processing all the photos etc...

It was our first ever RAGBRAI. The entire team just started cycling 14 months ago or less.

Here we are at the finish line dipping the front wheels in the mighty and muddy Mississippi.



I'm the first person on the left.

wnl256

Not sure if this should go here or in the "show your 50+ jersey thread".

I finished...... sort of.

Sunday and Monday were tough. Really tough. Not just from the hills....those I could handle....but the heat was horrible. And it got to me. I had to sit Tuesday out to recover from dehydration. But by Wednesday I was a new man and the temperatures had let up a bit. I gave lots of detail in my blog.

DGlenday

Still looking forward to Kerk's updated impressions. And thanks to all for the kind words of encouragement etc. to the riders.

Great picture. Pity the river, at the dipping site, was so green - it looks like you're standing on a lawn! (I believe they tried to scoop some of the green gunge away later in the day.)

It was very cool of them to arrange for volunteers to take pictures (with our own cameras) of riders dipping wheels in the Mississippi.


I left very early each morning to avoid the worst of the heat - finishing around 10:30 to 11:30. It helped a bit - but there were heat advisories at every city along the way. I thought the day you skipped was the worst day for the heat. Cool that you felt good for the rest of the event, though. I drove across Iowa today, am now in a hotel in Omaha, and will be flying home tomorrow. Will browse your blog a bit later this evening...

DGlenday

It's a great read, and well written. Thanks!

And do I gather that you only just qualified to post in this forum? If I read that right, then happy birthday, and welcome!

wnl256

Yes. I turned 50 just before RAGBRAI started. The picture above is the first time I wore the 50+ jersey.

I got way behind on hydration and on food. I thought I was drinking enough, but apparently not, and my appetite suffered. But with some tips from fellow riders and with reduced temperatures I was able to return to the road for the rest of the ride. It was a fantastic experience.

DGlenday

So that's the 50+ jersey!

I saw several of those, and didn't know what they were

markrj

I'm not 50 yet.

I have about 7.5 months remaining as a 49er.

I just searched for RAGBRAI and this thread popped up on the search results.

Looks like I found a place to visit in a few months.

JimTjr

Congrats to all of you that competed/participated in this ride. It looks incredible for sure! To the rider that sat out one day, I wouldn't be disappointed in sitting one day out, sounds like a very difficult time, with the record heat and humidity that the midwest has been having.
It's also uplifting to me, to see this,,Guess I'd be one of the "Racers" ! COOL!
I do have a difficult time keeping it under 17-18mph it seems. (Well, at least on a 24 mile group ride) we kept that pace very easily.....

Again, Congratulations on the completion of this ride,, it deserves much more than a piece of pie, eat the whole damned thing! LOL and a half gallon of ice cream to go with it!

KDGast

I will be turning 60 next month and just finished this year's RAGBRAI on Saturday, my first RAGBRAI. Total miles logged was 493 which includes the century loop. I train in the hills of Missouri west of St. Louis and found the hills on the first two days to be long but not particularly steep, more of an annoyance than anything. "Twister Hill" is what is we normally train for so it wasn't that bad. I didn't care for the heat, particularly camping at night. I thought the majority of the riders were courteous and cautious. The accidents that I say were mostly caused riders crossing up in "illegal" pace lines and wheels getting caught in the road cracks. The people of Iowa were wonderful and served some great food. I look forward to next year and hopefully it will be bit cooler.

kerk

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.

Ridinmurray

Congrats to all who rode & thanks for the post. I enjoyed reading them & seeing the pics, hope to see more.
Maybe I can post some pics of my ride some day.

markrj

I started a blog on the adventure. It will be filled in with more photos and text soon.

RAGBRAI 2011 Blog

kerk

Nice pics on the blog! Did you see that there were two of the cow tandoms? I thought they were pretty funny. Did you see the bananna recumbent tandom? I thought that was awesome. They had a radio and the guy was singing along loudly, really funny.

kerk

I forgot my camera (stupid) but took a couple of pictures with my phone....

markrj

We saw the "Banana Boat" recumbent tandem on more than one occasion. They tended to start very early so we usually passed them at sometime during the day.

How about the skateboarders! I met one of them in Coralville. He had completed every day and fully intended on completing the entire route. He had already gone through 3 pairs of shoes at that point.

wnl256

I could not believe the skateboarders. That's just insane.

There was also a guy on a unicycle, and a guy on a pennyfarthing. One of the days I saw two pennyfarthings side by side, but I think only one was riding for the whole week. I even saw a two-seat surrey one of the days! Later I saw the riders pushing that surrey up one of the hills.

markrj

I love this photo. I had no idea what was being photographed at the time. I set my GoPro Hero960 to shoot a photo every 60 seconds and this one really surprised me.

kerk

Yep, I saw all those guys plus did you see the tandom with the mom up front and a 6-7 yo on the back? They had a third crankset and chain raised up on the back seat tube so the kid could reach the pedals. Pretty cool setup. However, the most impressive rider I saw was a woman (saw her several days) with one leg. She had her telescopic crutch strapped to her bike for when she got off. Very impressive.

kerk

I thought of one more good one. Did you see the dude with the cinder block on the back of his bike? That looked nuts!

KDGast

One of the "cow" tandems, which was actually quite nicely done as well as the matching jerseys, was in front of us and hit one of the wide center cracks in the road and went down very hard. The lady in back hurt her knee pretty badly. I felt sorry for them as they really had a nice setup.

DGlenday

I damn-near lost it in a center crack near the end of the Karrass loop, while riding with a big paceline, at 23+mph.

Both wheels were in the crack, and I had to almost "jump" the bike out. Got the fright of my life!