Act 21: A Century of...

The title of this post could end with any number of words... Fun.  Determination.  Pork Chops.  Pain.  All were (not quite equally) a part of this adventure.  But let's start from the beginning. 

When I did RAGBRAI in 2008 (the week-long bike ride across the state of Iowa, annually ridden by ~15,000 crazy people and surprisingly, a few dogs) I rode every single one of the 471 miles.  I never had my support driver pick me up in a pass-thru town.  I never walked my bike up a single foot of the 21,000 feet of climb, despite the fact that some of those hills could have (and probably did) make grown men cry.  It's not because I was super fit, physically or mentally.  It's because I never considered it as an option.  How silly of me.

The one thing that was optional that year, and every year, is the Karras Loop.  On an already long day (70-85 miles) near the beginning of the week there is always an optional loop that will make that day a 100-miler.  A century.  It was (and still is) a huge accomplishment to ride RAGBRAI start to finish.  There was no way I was going to go farther than necessary.  "Hey Steph, today's mileage is already 2.5 times longer than your longest training ride.  Wanna add another 17 miles, just for fun??"  Uh, NO.  But that was then...

Fast forward to 2010, just a few weeks ago.  My second RAGBRAI started off with me missing the first day of riding.  I knew from the beginning that would be the case because schedules just weren't going to allow me to be there.  Pressure to ride every mile, gone!  I also knew that this time I wanted the century.  Badly.  It was a new challenge.  It was a feat to check off my list.  It was... a really long ways.

Since my frequent partner/roommate/friend-in-crime Steve and I had missed the first day of the ride, our first day was Monday.  Monday was also Century Day.  The original daily mileage was 79 miles, ridden in varying distances of north and west from Storm Lake to Algona, IA.  The Karras Loop was more than halfway into the route.  At about mile 50 the entrance to the loop went straight south and around a town called Rolfe, then west back to the main route to finish the day.

We hit the road with the rest of our team at about 7 AM, but we quickly pulled away.  We weren't fatigued from the hilly day before and we had adrenaline pumping already, imagining the triple digits we'd see by nightfall.  Everything was working in our favor that morning.  The tailwind was strong, the weather was perfect, and the route was just gently rolling which means plenty of momentum and plenty of pedaling breaks on the downhills.  The pace was a solid 17-18 mph and we rolled into the meeting town, 36 miles away, in just about 2 hours.  I felt fantastic.  I couldn't have asked for a better start to the day.

Now every other day of the week we'd do the normal "meeting town" thing which is joining up with the rest of your team and your support drivers for some food and fun before hitting the road again.  That morning though, we were way ahead of the rest of our team and Eileen, Steve's aunt and our saintly support driver, hadn't even left Storm Lake yet.  Steve and I fueled up on a Pizza Ranch buffet and before you think it, yes, after you've ridden that far a pizza buffet at 9:30 in the morning in an air conditioned building sounds like a fantastic idea!  The food hit the spot and got us ready to go.  We left the meeting town just after the first of our teammates pulled into town.

The next 20-25 miles went by pretty easily.  Stopped in a pass-thru town or two, because that's what you do on RAGBRAI, but kept a good pace.  We were still feeling solid when we saw the entrance for the Karras Loop between mile 50 and 55.  And that's when things started getting rough.  We turned south on the loop route and immediately we were smacked in the face with the worst headwind we'd have all week.  It slowed the pace way down and made me grip my handlebars in an uncomfortably tight fashion just to keep my front tire from being blown off-center.  The southern stretch of the route wasn't even that long, 7 or 8 miles, maybe shorter, but by the midpoint my arms were shaking and I was cursing the wind and myself.  When we made it to Rolfe I was ready for a break.

Everyone who does the century loop gets a special patch for their efforts, like in the boy scouts, symbolizing your acheivement.  You get a different patch for doing RAGBRAI in general.  I don't know what normal people do with these patches, but Steve mentioned sewing them to the Camelbak I religiously wear throughout the week and I'm thinking this might be the best way to display.  Assuming someone wants to sew them on for me. :-)

After resting by a pond in Rolfe for a while and chatting with a man who mistakenly took us for a married couple and told us we'd be setting such a good example for our kids some day, we hit the road again.  The rest of the loop was west and the headwind was weaker but not absent.  When we hooked up with the main route again, we had about 20-25 miles left.  It started getting tough around mile marker 75 or 80.  My hands were starting to go numb from the pressure on the handlebars (something I get frequently) and my quads were starting to complain.  Which meant that we pushed on to about mile 85 for the ultimate prize... pork chops!

Mr. Porkchop is a RAGBRAI tradition.  It's a guy (now the son of the original guy) who drives a big pink school bus that looks like a pig, ears and all.  (pic to come).  He has a huge flat grill, innumerable pounds of pork chops, and a bus full of corn husks for fuel.  They cook the chops about 30 or 40 at a time (I told you the grill was huge) and throw them in coolers (not filled with ice).  We waited in line for at least a half hour and it was worth every second.  We devoured the pork chop and learned that Mr Porkchop has his reputation for a reason.  He's GOOD.  Also fun was the massive slip 'n slide next to the bus.  It looked like a good one but unfortunately it was starting to sprinkle when we went to leave so getting more wet didn't seem like a good idea. 

Sprinkling was the most of it and the weather stayed pretty good for the whole day.  The last 15 miles were pure determination with equal parts whining and grunting.  This was the pain part.  My quads were spent, my butt hurt like crazy, and I just wanted to be done.  It didn't help that the biggest hill of the day (really not that big at all... more like a mound) came at the very end of the day while riding into Algona.  And it felt like a mountain.  The thing that got me up it was seeing my CatEye trip distance read 100.00 halfway up.  I was just euphoric enough to make it up the hill.  I had ridden 100 miles!

Steve and I were quite home free yet though... we still needed to get to the house of the kind people putting us up for the night.  We got a little lost on our way, stopped to ask for directions, and then called Eileen for better directions.  We learned that the house was out of town about 3 miles or so and it was pretty hilly.  Ugh.  Approximately 102 miles down and more yet to go.  Well you know what we did?  We had Steve's other saintly aunt come and pick us up, and I didn't feel the least bit bad about it.