Day 3 - RAGBRAI - 77.1 miles

I woke up today thinking, if it's raining, I'm just going to ride in the support vehicle until the meeting town, which is about 50 miles out of 77.1, and maybe ride the remaining 20+ miles. But, it was only overcast and while my rear and legs were sore, they weren't to the point that I couldn't pedal or sit on the saddle. So off we went on the tandem at around 7am. At first it wasn't so bad. I told Rick to go easy on me and for the most part he did. He, in fact, had to pedal harder since I was occasionally "soft" pedaling up some hills that were over one mile long. Maybe 30 minutes into the ride it started to rain, and the headwinds were pretty strong. I was a little scared going down the hills on the slick road because Rick believes in keeping momentum to go up the next hill. Sometimes I would just close my eyes and pedal. Other times, I'd stare at his back or my feet so that I wouldn't realize how fast we were going. Hearing Rick yell out "on your left" always scared me because I felt that we were so close to the other bikes. I'm sure that in some instances, we were going at least 40 mph. On a dry road, that's fun, but on a wet one, I was definitely scared. But, we made it one piece.

Because it was such a long ride today, we stopped in many little towns. First, we had breakfast at Orient (10 miles). I had a super greasy sausage and cheese biscuit, followed by gooseberry pie, and washed down with coffee. Rick had the same, minus the sausage. Biking must burn up a lot of calories because 13 miles later, we stopped at Kelly's Pies (co-located with Mr. Pork Chop, but at 10am, it was way too early to eat a pound of pig) and had a slice of strawberry and raspberry pie. Then, 2 miles later, we had pasta. This was a little too much food all at once and I nearly threw up on the bike. We rode in to several smaller towns, all of them welcoming us warmly. We watched a skillet throw, which is exactly that...someone throwing a skillet at a dummy with a basketball for a head. I suppose you get a prize if the skillet knocks off the head. Another town called Peru was in the worst place ever. It was at the bottom of a steep hill. There were no signs for it, so a lot of people had to hit the brakes pretty hard to not run the town folks over. I was hurting pretty bad in my legs and rear after 20 miles, but I kept going. By the time we reached Martensdale, our meeting town, I was so sore I didn't think I could walk. There was so much lactic acid in my legs and my shoulders hurt from being hunched down a good portion of the day. The pain in my rear was just extraordinary. But I thought, I only have less than 20 miles to go. I can do this. Tonight, we're staying in Des Moines instead of Indianola, the reason being we wanted to stay in a hotel instead of camp for a third straight night. This forced us off the route and onto a 16-mile stretch on a rails to trails path (for which I was grateful since this path only has a max 1% grade). I almost made the whole distance without crying, but around the 70th mile Rick hit three consecutive potholes on the path and didn't warn me. I absorbed the bumps and that put me in tears. We had to stop for 10 minutes for me to deal with the agony. With less than 7 miles to go, I got back on the bike and we made it to the end. Our friends picked us up and took us to the hotel. I took a really long and hot shower, and it felt wonderful. But, it didn't wash away my pain. My entire body feels like it's pumped full of lactic acid. I'm just sore all over. I'm not sure I'll be able to ride tomorrow. The distance is shorter at 44.4 miles. Everyone jokes that it's all downhill. The cumulative elevation is 2,182 ft. Today's elevation was 4,470 ft. Iowa is definitely not flat.

I'll make up my mind if I want to ride tomorrow based on how I feel in the morning. Right now, I just want to hibernate for a month or two.