Hey STer’s,
I’m leaving tomorrow for RAGBRAI (Iowa here I come). I’m a first timer and somewhere along the line I thought it might provide me with a bike focused week leading up to IMMOO. Any tips, suggestions on how to get the most out of my RAGBRAI experience? I’ve always wanted to do this event but it will probably be a one and done for me. FWIW, I’m using the Quad City Bike Club charter service out of Davenport, so I should get a chance to meet a lot of great people.
Jay
It is what you make of it. You can party or get a nice workout all at the same time. If you want a workout, leave early (6:00 - 7:00 am). If you wait too long the roads get crowded, and dangerous. Don’t get in pace lines with people you don’t know, and also be aware of people sucking your wheel.
I will say the later you leave the slower you go and the more fun you will have. It is a great event, you will meet a ton of people and have a blast. Probably not a great workout week if you do it right.
Coopdog,
Thanks for the advice. I do plan to enjoy the event but maybe pick out a couple of days to push the pace. I will try to steer clear of pace lines at this event for sure. I hope to also swim and run a lot during the week because I’ve grown out of the party scene (2-3 beer/day limit). Plus, what else am I going to do all day?
Jay,
I’m doing RAGBRAI again this year for the third year in a row and it’s honestly the funnest event I’ve ever done. It has grown to become my favorite week of the year and I just don’t think any description I can give it will do it justice, you kind of just have to arrive and behold the spectacle.
As coopdog said, RAGBRAI really is what you make of it. You can spend the entire week in a drunken pork-chop fueled haze where you stumble out of your tent with blood shot eyes and collapse back into it in a stupor, both times with a beer in hand.
You can make a much more spartan go of it, rise early, ride the route straight through without stops on clear roads. Get solid work in and be at the overnight town with ample time to recover and do it all again the next day.
But honestly, if you did that, I think you’d be missing a lot of what amounts to the essence of RAGBRAI. Last year, I split the difference, we’d roll out of town at about the same time as everyone else, I’d take off on stretches between towns and try to get solid work in, ample opportunity to wrack up 20’ threshold intervals. I’d reach a designated town, take it easy for a few, let the rest of my group catch up, maybe have a few beers, ride with them to the next town, then pick another leg to take off and get work in. After the ride I’d get my brick in, hopefully find a pool or lake to get some swimming in the stay loose, then head out to town to have some food and a few beers, but not stay out until the bars shut down like a lot of people will.
Ultimately it’s not that hard to have fun and still get some work in, just pick some days that are going to be your business days and ride them hard, then designate yourself some party days as a reward. When I threw it all in WKO+ at the end of the week I had managed to accumulate an extremely solid week of TSS and managed to have a blast at the same time.
Hey STer’s,
I’m leaving tomorrow for RAGBRAI (Iowa here I come). I’m a first timer and somewhere along the line I thought it might provide me with a bike focused week leading up to IMMOO. Any tips, suggestions on how to get the most out of my RAGBRAI experience? I’ve always wanted to do this event but it will probably be a one and done for me. FWIW, I’m using the Quad City Bike Club charter service out of Davenport, so I should get a chance to meet a lot of great people.
Jay
If you don’t drink a beer at each town on the route, then you have not done RAGBRAI. If you push the pace and roll into the finish town at 11am, what are you going to do all day? RAGBRAI is not a bike-focused week, unless the focus is on keeping the bike upright while you stagger drunk the final stretch to the final town.
Homemade Pie - 3.14 miles ahead!
Years back when I did this, they had just started to crack down on the party only crowd–those people who would get drunk, sleep until noon and then drive their bikes to the next camp site and start the party again. Still, I had a blast both riding hard and having a couple of beers afterward. It’s true, you could just hammer the day, get to the next campsite by 11AM and wonder what to do with yourself the rest of the day, but why?
Think of it as a cycling vacation, enjoy the sites (there’s plenty, costumed riders, serious pacelines, boneshakers, recumbents), ride well, eat well, live well. Don’t waste RABRAI on serious training–you’ll miss the point of doing it.
Hi Jay (and anyone else going)
I am going to my first RAGBRAI too!
My plans are similar to yours. Train hard (I’ve got IMC and IMAZ on the docket) a few days and get some real training in. Plan to do some bricks. Then slack off somedays, hit the beer tents and pie stops, and generally enjoy the shitshow.
PM me if you want someone to leave early and hit the road and get some real training in. I am a stronger female cyclist. I’ll be riding a P3 and leaving early at least 3-4 days of the ride to leave the rolling party behind.
Sue
Ultimately it’s not that hard to have fun and still get some work in, just pick some days that are going to be your business days and ride them hard, then designate yourself some party days as a reward. When I threw it all in WKO+ at the end of the week I had managed to accumulate an extremely solid week of TSS and managed to have a blast at the same time.
Thanks for your input. Finding a balance seems to be the key. I’m just a few weeks from IMMOO–I don’t want to gain 10 lbs but definitely do want to enjoy a pork chop or a piece of homemade apple pie!
Did it in 97 and still remember how awesome it was. I rode out early every am, and pushed hard between towns. Enjoyed all of the good food and drink but always stayed ahead of the crowds because they are dangerous! And if you don’t shower in someone’s driveway before it’s all said and done, THEN you haven’t done RAGBRAI!
ENJOY, IT’S AN AWESOME TIME!
The others pretty much have it covered, you can make of it whatever you want: Training or Party. I am riding M-W, was hoping to swim in Atlantic but it appears as if their pool is down for repairs starting Sunday. There will be pools in Carroll and Boone, however, so will probably try to get up one of those two mornings to swim before riding. Really looking forward to seeing all of my RAGBRAI friends again.
I have done the Ragbrai several times. Lots of different ways. The advise on not getting into pacelines with people you don’t know is a strange statement. How many of the 15 thousand will you know? It is not a race, and you will wear out your voice if you say “on your left” to 10% of the riders you pass, and no penalty for passing on the right in Iowa.
The roads are closed and if you ride in the middle of the pack there are spots where the riders are curb to curb. Statistic wise, I think there very few wrecks per captia. Yes there are tons of kids and not too skilled riders, but just go with the flow. The fast groups are a great workout, but when you finish there isn’t squat to do but hang in the hot sun for about 5 hours. One day tailgun a tandem. If you are a good rider the tandem crew will thank you for keeping their tail dusted off. I have looked back to see around 100 people behind the tandem on a windy day. The nest day as I went past they yelled they needed a tailgunner if I wanted a job that day.
One year I rode with the fast guys and was totally bored. (that was well before the famous bar bet in Hawaii by a few years) I got into fantastic shape and did well in Super Week a few weeks later.
Another time a few years later I rode pretty hard and ran in the evenings and had my fastest Ironman Hawaii time and 10k that season. I had a sort of private hellweek training vacation.
Best time ever on Ragbrai was on a fixed fear year. That is fairly tough, but we were drinking beer, eating porkchops and stopping at every town and neat looking farm just to talk to the people. Iowa has some great places and fantastic people.
My advice… Find porkchopman at least once. Find Farm Family for the breakfast as often as you can and stop if the line isn’t too long. Lose your religion if you are vegan, Iowa makes PORK. Find the local pool every day and get used to cold showers.
Buy a local kid lunch one day. Stop by cool farm houses and talk to the locals. A lot of the families look forward to meeting new folks. Find a bar and watch the Tour on Sat/Sunday.
The whole idea in each town is to know that there are around 20,000 people passing thru your little town and they are all looking for food and drinks and have cash in their pocket. It is like hitting the lotto for every Boy Scout, Girl Scout, Lion Eagle,Rotary, Football, Soccer and cheerleader squad for one day. Clap, spend money, and thank every one you feel is doing a good job.
Might be a good week to forget you are a triathlete and just have fun. If you aren’t shy in talking to strangers you will meet some great folks on the RAGBRAI. Take lots of small bills and look for the beer guide. Man I wish I was there.
Sorry for my ignorance, but you’re gonna have to explain what a tail duster is.
Good luck riding fast. I think you will find it frustrating. If you do have to go fast, best to leave really early or really late, and stay WAY over to the left. If you keep your eyes open and are a decent bike handler you’ll probably avoid crashes, but you don’t want to leave a trail of destruction in your wake as you zoom by. Everybody is different, but it does not do much for my ego to cruise past a bunch of novice riders all day long. At the end of the day, or week, many RAGBRAIers are rightly proud of their accomplishment… it is a big deal if you only ride 800 miles per year including ragbrai. Not so much for a trained triathlete. As for me, I manage to get a good amount of long easy riding by sitting bolt upright on a cargo bike and carrying about 80lbs of stereo and gear for my posse.
You’ll have fun, but I would not plan on too much of a workout on the bike.
Actually it is a tailgunner that dusts the tail of a tandem in exchange for a nice draft to follow.
Tandems make a huge draft and on the flats can just fly along. So if there is a headwind everyone and his brother wants to follow behind the tandem. In big group rides sometimes people follow too close, overlap and take a tumble. A single rider has about a 0% chance of taking out a tandem by hitting their rear end, but the tandem team feels real bad when they have 20 people following them and the trail gunner (or the guy on their wheel) goes down and takes a bunch of guys with them. Often then the tandem team has to disrupt their ride and help sort the carnage. No one likes to see people hurt in a family event, especially a kid.
If you have someone that is polite and can follow their wheel it takes some of the pressure and worry off their shoulders. I have worked this situation a bunch of times from the driver, stoker and tailgunner positions. The stoker only has to talk to one guy when they are pulling over, relaying road hazards, or changing lines, speeds, or feeding then the tailgunner can get the message out.
In the Rules of the Spoke (mythical road manual) the tailgunner also sort of educates the trailers on road manners and keeps people from asking the stoker too many dumb questions. Some people seem to think since the stoker isn’t steering the bike they are the Dear Abby of the event or a Google resource of tandem information. Most tandem people are the nicest people on the road and following them to help keep the ride safe is a really nice thing to do. I usually ride up to the driver and stoker, introduce myself and ask if they mind having me tailgun for awhile. I have never been told no. However follow behind them to be sure you like they way they ride and be sure they aren’t too fast for you. Before you ask them to join.
If you go to a rally in Cali like the old Davis Double or some such, besure to measure your fitness first. When you get behind a couple or racing tandem teams that are faster than you. Know you will hurt at a very high speed. Hope that helped explain.
Now don’t get me wrong, when I say you can get some work in on RAGBRAI I’m not talking about comparing to a week at an actual dedicated training camp. Iowa ain’t Boulder.
But, if you have to take a week’s vacation somewhere and have a blast while doing it, you can do a whole lot worse for your fitness than RAGBRAI. In the end, you’re going to be riding almost 500 miles, there’s going to be at least a century day in there. You can run before and/or after your rides, last year was pretty good for swimming with the lakes. I’m pretty sure you’re still going to come out quite a bit on top of what would have been the standard weekly training volume for the vast majority of AG’ers.
As Andy mentioned though, another common practice is to bring as crappy/heavy or otherwise cargo-laden bike as possible to increase the difficulty. Towing 30 pounds worth of stereo equipment on a blazing hot summer day makes it a little more interesting.
I personally have never done Ragbrai but my buddy did it for the 2nd time last year and told me it was like “Woodstock” on a bike.
He also said he had a great time.
Good luck
Thanks!! Totally helpful, I don’t see many tandems on my rides so they are kinda foreign concept aside from the fact cab go real fast and make a big draft.
Wow, great discussion everyone. I can’t wait to see how this epic adventure unfolds next week!
I had RAGBRAI on my bucket list but if it is nothing but a big beer fest, where people think you need to drink to have fun, I’ll have to prematurely cross it off.
just like at a lot of gatherings, the drunks really stick out. Plenty of non-drinkers ride too. I think there is plenty of vitamin D intoxication from spending the entire day in the sun. It truly is a sight and event to behold - bikes as far as you can see, everybody having a great time.