This past weekend I went to Iowa with a few members of Team Pegasus to support the racers we had entered in the Trans-Iowa race. Pete, Dan and I were the support crew for Ben, Julie and Cale. This is an incredibly hard race that was about 320 miles on gravel road and 'B' grade roads, which are basically dirt (or mud) roads through fields. Racers start at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning and race through until they get to the finish, racing eachother as well as the 2:00 p.m. cutoff. There is no sleeping and there are no official breaks planned.
Luckily, I wasn't doing anything so crazy as that. As support crew, it was our job to drop the racers off at the start line and then pick them up wherever they finished. Julie had to drop out of the race because of mechanical issues at about 11:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, Ben had to drop around 5:00 p.m. because of knee problems and Cale actually finished! It was really interesting to see such a race, and it's pretty tempting to register myself for next year. I don't know if I could finish, but it would be great to give it a try.
I will, however, be doing a 300k brevet next weekend, which amounts to about 180 miles. It's on paved roads and gives you a good amount of time to finish, so hopefully I should be able to tackle it. I get excited just thinking about it. More on that next week!
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