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An endurance event is born: final planning for Trans Iowa
In my last installment on the Trans Iowa endurance event, I touched on my quest for a decent map and how gravel roads are not very well documented in Iowa. This week I’ll discuss the significance of that and tell of some of the successes that we got out of the event.
Setting the route
One of my favorite things to do is to stare at maps and plan out cycling routes. At first, my job — planning the route — was looking pretty easy!
At first, I had a route that I laid out using the atlas that I had picked up at a bookstore and it looked pretty good. I went on the conservative side, not knowing what a racer would think about a really tough route. Once it was all laid out on the atlas, and the miles were tallied up, Jeff and I planned an actual drive of the course. We had to wait for the snow to clear, so we didn’t get out on the route until early in February. It didn’t take very long for us to find our first surprise.
On the dirt roads of Iowa
I had absolutely no idea that Iowa had actual dirt roads anymore. The counties mark these as “B Level Maintenance” roads although calling them “roads” is giving them way too much credit. Imagine the grass graded off your yard in an approximate width of a road. Then imagine that four wheelers have passed through during soft and muddy conditions. This is what we found! The map didn’t show these at all. As it ended up, we had three mile sections of this type of road.
Vanishing lines: the disappearing roads of Iowa
Then there were roads on the map that weren’t in existence in the field. Since we had no alternative, Jeff and I had to make decisions quickly and move on. This happened in several spots and lengthened the trip by several hours. Our mileage calculations were totally off, and in the end, we missed the final tally by around five or six miles. The saving grace for the event riders was that Iowa has every single road marked with a street sign, even in the “boonies”. The cue sheets had these names on them, so at least they could seek out the signs instead of using mileage for directional changes.
Promoting the first Trans Iowa
While the route recon turned out to be a near disaster, we had far better luck with our promotion of the event. Jeff put the idea on his blog and a couple of other endurance forums. The response from potential riders for the event was overwhelming, to say the least! I had thought that we would have difficulty in getting 50 people to sign on to this. When we opened registration, it filled up in 48 hours! We even had people begging to get in afterwards.
And ‘the industry’ responded to the event in a positive way too. We had companies asking us if they could be involved. I was amazed.
Jeff always says that “Everybody likes a freak show”, when he talks about the industry’s sponsorship of Trans Iowa. It seemed to me that he was right. The “schwag” we received to give to the racers was absolutely stunning. Jeff and I figured that every racer received approximately $75.00 worth of schwag for their $20.00 entry fee! It was crazy!
Everything was finally set, now all we had to do was to actually put the event on. In the next installment, I’ll share with you the tale of how this 300 plus mile event was put on by a handful of people.