Day 22: Princeton, IL to Iowa City, IA

• Distance: 100.3 mi
• Elevation: 1,913 ft
• Dedication: Al Richards and Uncle Tim
• Ride group: Julia, Collin, Shelby, and Mike
• Host: St. Patrick’s Catholic Church

Today was probably the most challenging day of the 4K thus far, and that’s saying something! We had some sort of last-minute host changes which put a very long ride between our hosts in Princeton and Iowa City. The route Ulman gave us was 164 miles; we would’ve had no choice but to bike as far and as long as we could with daylight and rack the rest of the way. We used a different mapping service and found a 123-mile route, which most of the team felt up to attempting. Bailey even got back on her bike for the first time in a while to see how her knee felt for a few miles, and we all had a great time cheering her on!

Very early in the ride we ran into some complications. We were on a beautifully scenic trail along the Hennepin Canal, but unfortunately that trail was a mix of packed dirt and gravel. We were moving slowly and were slowed down even more by some detours around flooded sections of the trail.

After 45 miles of that, we got onto some paved roads and trails approaching Davenport, IA. The road conditions improved but we were then facing a brutal headwind for most of the day. It was a cool day, though! We crossed the Mississippi River (twice?) and crossed into Iowa about halfway through the ride. We were on a very beautiful trail along the river for while but it was hard to appreciate because the wind was straight up abusing us at that point.

Soon after crossing the border, we stopped for a lunch of tacos and donuts– delicious but not easy on the stomach! Unfortunately the ride got no easier from there. A well-meaning gentleman strongly discouraged biking on Route 6, which we had planned to ride, so we found an alternate route that only added 2 miles to our 123-mile route but was, unbeknownst to us, 90% gravel. Gravel is very, very hard on the butt and hands when you’re on a road bike, adds a ton of rolling resistance, and is not super safe unless the gravel is well-packed. I had three very close calls throughout the day (one almost-fall that was abrupt enough to trigger my Garmin’s incident detection and two almost-clip-and-tips) and I think every ride group had at least one fall. Collin also managed to shoot a rock up from under his front tire and it hit me in the face :( Everyone was okay, though, other than the mental trauma of biking on gravel for so long!

At a certain point it became clear that we would not meet our 125-mile goal before the sun went down. Shelby had gotten a flat earlier in the day (the first flat in any of my groups so far) that was slowly losing air all day. Bethany also experienced a slightly comical issue when her cleat became loose, meaning she couldn’t unclip and her shoe was stuck to the pedal. She calmly announced this to us as she approached our ride group and we held her up as she came to a stop (we ended up taking off her shoe completely and Richa was able to get it off the pedal).

After swapping Shelby’s tube for a second time my team made an audible and followed a paved road into the nearest town and biked around aimlessly until we hit 100 miles, and most of the other groups followed suit. It was disappointing that none of us were able to complete the route because in better conditions we 100% would have been able to finish well before sunset. But, instead, we all got to get ice cream at Arty’s in Wilton, IA, and had a very fun van ride home, remixing a 4K version of “Wagon Wheel”.

We didn’t get to our host until well after 9. I showered, ate, and was quickly in bed. I think everyone was asleep by 11:30 which was pretty good considering we only had one shower per gender! Plus the gym we were sleeping in was super cold, which I was very grateful for :)

Until tomorrow!

Lauren