7 Days and Counting

Training:
On the Ragbrai website, they recommend getting 600 miles of training in before the actual ride. My guess is this is to give people who may just get a spontaneous urge to ride across Iowa a pause to think. My original goal was to log 1,000 miles by July 20. I was on pace for that until a couple of weeks of travel set me back. To date, I have logged 831 miles. I am hoping to ride 5 days this week with rest days scheduled for Wednesday and Friday.

RAGBRAI DAY 1 PREVIEW

From what the website says, Day 1 will include some climbing. We start in Missouri Valley, IA. This is on the banks of the Missouri River. The tradition in RAGBRAI is to dip your tires in the Missouri River at the start of the ride, and then dip them in the Mississippi at the end. Shortly after dipping our tires, we will traverse the 59 miles of Day 1 out of the valley.. As is the case with valley's...the only way is up! In fact, we will climb 3,797 feet in day 1 ALONE!

Our overnight stop will be in Harlan, IA. Between Missouri Valley and Harlan, we will pass by several Iowa small-towns. They are:

Beebeetown (9.4 miles)
Underwood (14.5 miles)
Neola (5.4 miles)
Minden (4.5 miles)
Shelby (7.9 miles)
Tennant (5.8 miles)
Harlan (10.9 miles)

As you can see, the longest road without a stop is only 14.5 miles. I'm not sure I'll stop at every town for long, but my goal now is to get a picture in every town we pass through. It is my understanding that towns LOVE it when RAGBRAI comes through because of all the money that comes with it.

Check out Harlan's Page for RAGBRAI

Stop by tomorrow for a Day 2 Preview.