Yesterday my Dad, snister (aka sister, aka Christina), and I completed RAGBRAI Day 4 – a 56ish mile ride from Ames to Des Moines, Iowa. This was the big bike ride I’d been training for for a few months!

It went well, but whoa… it was hot – the hottest RAGBRAI we’ve ever ridden – it was in low 70s when we started and mid 90s when we finished. We all did a great job staying hydrated, and you create a bit of a breeze when you’re cycling, but… that’s just too hot. Too hot to be outside. There was one of those heat advisories that was like “don’t go outside, brah.”

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning.

RAGBRAI is the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. It’s a weeklong ride from the western to eastern side of the state where the course changes each year. RAGBRAI is in its 50th year. Dad and I have been doing one day for 9 years now, and this is my snister’s first time joining us.

Dad and I often ride the last day of RAGRABI, but this year I chose Wednesday because it started in Ames (where I went to college at Iowa State University (ISU)) and ended in Des Moines (where the ride started 50 years ago).

We aimed to leave my snister’s house in Cedar Falls around 6:00 am, and left closer to 6:15 – it took us a bit of finagling to get all three bikes to fit on the back of my car.

Steven drove us to Ames. He also went to ISU and has family in Ames and friends in Des Moines and planned to spend the day with them. Thank you Steven!

We had interesting weather on the way in – rain, a rainbow, and crazy clouds. Our drive was an hour and a half, so I knew we’d drive out of it, and didn’t have a chance of rain on the ride (I don’t ride in the rain).

When we got to Ames we parked at Steven’s fraternity house (ACACIA) and took off from there. It takes about 15 minutes to get ready to ride – I need to put air in my tires, put my speaker on my bike, put on sunscreen, put on my gloves and helmet, add my water bottles, put everything in my pockets, blah blah blah.

Notice we have matching jerseys? My snis got them for us! Thank you snis!

We started riding at 8:20 am and I almost immediately had us stop to hide a rock. Ha. I hid 7 rocks on the course – one in each town (one town got two rocks) we went through.

Then we were on the road! This day of the ride was “World Record Day” for the amount of riders. I’m not sure if they made the record, but the route and passthrough towns didn’t feel any more crowded than past RAGBRAIs.

We saw someone on a glider in Ames! Also, Christina got a lot of comments on her basket – people loved it!

When I do these rides I don’t pay too much attention to what towns we’re going to or how much distance is in between them – I just look at how far I need to be able to ride, and what the general elevation is (this year was really flat, woo hoo). So each town tends to be a surprise. And they’re usually featuring something neat!

On the way into Slater! Also on the way in, a woman asked if we wanted to play “Bag or Bang” where she plays a one-hit wonder and if you know the band you get a bag, and if you don’t, she shoots you with a nerf gun. Dad won a bag for “My Sharona” by The Knack. 

Slater

When we got into Slater they had a bridge cutout and lots of information about the Historic Hoy Bridge in Rhodes, Iowa, which, looking at a map today, I realize is 30 miles away from where we were. Ha. All sorts of people come out to RAGBRAI to take advantage of the crowds to promote whatever their thing is.

Slater food – we had popsicles

(last year I was whiny I didn’t get much “real” food on the course, so I tried to make amends this year. I also ate a lot of gels and had a Vitamin Water and mini Gatorade along with TONS of water.)

Madrid

Ha, the cool Madrid feature was a bridge too, which required us to go off course. As we were leaving town, I saw that you could get on a bike trail to ride to the High Trestle Trail Bridge, which is something I’ve seen pictures of and always wanted to see in person! It was totally worth the extra mileage to see, even though some jerk yelled at Christina (unwarranted!), and something flew into my helmet and stung me (I was a bit dramatic and swerved off the trail and threw my helmet off- it was freaky to have a bug stuck in my helmet while I was riding!).

Madrid food – grilled PB and banana (for Dad) and PB and raspberry chipotle (for me)

Polk City

Hmm, all I remember about Polk City is parking our bikes and walking all over in the hot relentless sun trying to decide what food to get. I should note, LOTS of people had misters and sprinklers set up for us to ride through to cool down, I generally avoided them because I am nervous about riding through water, but the few I went through felt nice.

Polk City food – brat (Dad), hash, French fries, and fried pickles (me & snis), bike cookie (snis)

The food tasted great, but Christina said she felt super icky and barfy from all the fried foods. Which makes sense – you eat hot fried food in the hot sun then get on your hot bike? Ick.

Ankeny

Ankeny is a bigger town and had quite a few places to stop. Right when we got into town, we saw this giant sculpture, which was across the street from where one of Christina’s friends lives, so we saw them too.

Then we kept riding to meet up with her boss, who told Christina she was at live music. We stopped at the first place with live music and didn’t see her then realized Ankeny was big enough to have TWO spots with live music so we kept riding and found her at the next one.

We visited with her boss for a short bit then got back on the bikes to finish the ride into Des Moines!

Ankeny Food – delicious ice cream!

Des Moines 

As I mentioned earlier I don’t really pay attention to the course map, so I glanced at it and saw we ended in Des Moines near the capitol and asked Steven to leave my car there. You could see the gold dome of the capitol on parts of the ride and I was excited to be getting closer. I felt fine, but was ready to get out of the sun.

We made it to the capitol and pulled over and I was surprised not to see much else going on there – just a few booths. I went to ask them where the merch tent was (I always get me and Mom one of the pins) and they were like, “it’s a few miles that way.” Oops, apparently our day did NOT end at the capitol?

But since we’d gone off course we’d covered the full mileage, and that’s where our car was, so we were DONE! (We’d ridden 56.96 miles in 5:33:55 – an average 10.2 mph pace. We were out from 8:20am until 3:25pm ish)

We got to the car and blasted the AC, and loaded up our bikes, changed, and went to pick up Steven (who was at a friend’s place).

Then when we were all together we stopped at Taco Bell for crunchwraps – it’s tradition!

I enjoyed the ride and felt good. I kept hydrated and while the sun made me uncomfortable (and burned me, despite many applications of sunscreen – I missed some spots), I wasn’t miserable. My body felt good – my toes did cramp in the middle of the ride so I rode with my foot on top of my shoe for a bit and never had issues again (yay!). I definitely ate enough and had plenty of energy!

Christina said she may be a one and done. The heat made her feel miserable. I hope she joins us next year and it’s cooler. This really was a record high heat day.

Dad doesn’t have an option, he has to do it next year with me, muah ha ha.