TRANS IOWA: TOUCHING THE LIMIT…LIGHTLY | Bikepackers Magazine

“On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit. And you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, ‘Okay, this is the limit’. And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further.” –Ayrton Senna

Content and Images courtesy of Alex Roberts
As I start this, it’s been a week since Trans Iowa.  Sitting on my couch, I can’t honestly say I wish it was this time last weekend.  At this point, I was 11 hours in, and fighting a headwind.  After making great time to Checkpoint 1, the wind was starting to raise serious doubts about a finish.  But we’ll get to that.
We rolled into Grinnell, Iowa just after noon on Friday, April 25th.  The hotel said check-in was not until 3, and the pre-race ‘Meat Up’ didn’t start until 4.  We hopped on the bikes to spin out the legs and find the start.  We found the start just in front of Bikes To You in the charming downtown area.  We met the shop owner Coop who was the first of many wonderful people associated with this event we’d meet over the weekend.  We grabbed a map, ate lunch, chilled with some IPAs, and waited for the pre-race meeting.
Leaving the pre-race meeting, I started getting worried about being too fat.  Well not me, my bike.  I was seeing carbon bikes running Zipps and had to look hard to find bikes with tires wider than 35s.  Here I was with a steel frame, fat 2.0 rubber on 29er mountain bike wheels, and gear that put my total bike weight just over 40 lbs.  Had I made a huge mistake with this bike and set-up?  I couldn’t help thinking perhaps I had.

Comments

  1. Sounds like you had a lot of fun in Iowa on your bike. It's a shame you didn't have one of those carbon bikes though.

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