Thoughts on RAGBRAI 2010

For the uninitiated, RAGBRAI stands for the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. It's a weeklong trek of about 10,000 bicyclists, who ride roughly 60-80 miles per day from the western to eastern border of Iowa. (If you need to know more go to ragbrai.com.)

2010 marked the 38th RAGBRAI. I've been on all or parts of 9 or 10 of them, including the third RAGBRAI when I was just short of 11 years old. Owning a 10-speed bike was a big deal then; helmets and biking jerseys were not.

This year I rode from Sioux City to Storm Lake on Sunday (72 miles) and Storm Lake to Algona on Monday (100 miles). (If you followed me on Twitter at @streffbuddy, you'd have received rolling updates!) RAGBRAI has evolved over the years, and mostly in a good way, with a few exceptions. Here are my thoughts from this year's ride:

*The average age of riders keeps going up. The aren't so many in the 20-29 age group anymore, and that used to be the main age not so long ago. RAGBRAI is slightly more family-friendly now, and it's mostly comprised of people in their 30s and 40s, and plenty in their 50s.

*RAGBRAI riders used to be in better shape than they are now. About half of today's riders would be considered overweight, and wearing tight bike shorts doesn't help their appearance. This may be correlated to the average age being higher, but it more directly correlates with Americans' poor diets. Even factoring in what can be burned off during a 450 mile week of bike riding, I'd say many riders have a net weight during RAGBRAI week, plue they generally eat and drink too much and don't exercise enough for the other 51 weeks of the year.

*Speaking of caloric intake, while there is a lot of food and beer consumed during the ride, there really aren't enough food and beverage vendors along the way. I think most communities on the route simply can't get their mind around how much eating and drinking is done by the thousands of riders in a short period of time. Lines have become way too long. In conjunction with this, there aren't enough portable toilets, either. Plenty of tall corn on the roadsides, though.

*The ride and riders are much safer now. I never saw a single rider without a helmet. Law enforcement keeps vehicles off of the route in both directions, and there are ambulances dispersed at short intervals. Still, there were several crashes, some serious. I personlly saw two riders go down crossing some railroad tracks. (They were going slow so they were not seriously injured, other than bruised egos.)

*What once was a given on RAGBRAI - church-run pie stands - has suddenly become obsolete. I saw a total of two places selling pie, in two days, and one of them had run out. It seems like the only sweets being sold on the route now are cookies and bars. I'm used to having one or two pieces of fruit pie every day on the ride. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE PIE ON RAGBRAI?

In summary, RAGBRAI is still a fun and challenging endeavor. Everybody should put it on their bucket list, at least for a day or two.