Trans Iowa V11 Report: Prologue

In many ways, this personifies TIv11 for me

Prologue: 

Last week I posted about the weather being the "wikd card" of Trans Iowa and stated the following: "This is shaping up to be a Trans Iowa that just might be a super tough one."

Spot on.

It was a super tough one. It was so tough that no one finished. So tough that only one individual made the time cut off for Checkpoint 1 in Guernsey Iowa. So tough that cranks broke, derailleurs sheared off, and tires were shredded to bits in the span of 54 miles.

But that isn't the story of this Trans Iowa. In fact, there are so many stories, stories I don't even know about or can begin to tell, that it would amaze you- the readers- to know about them all. Hopefully there will be stories posted elsewhere that I can link to to illustrate this in some some way. Truly- it was overwhelming to hear about some of them for me. I am going to be processing this event for some time to come.

In the meantime, I will tell the tale from my viewpoint. As usual it will take up most of the upcoming week, and I will start out with Friday, move on to the Pre-Race Meat-Up, and then talk about the day Saturday which was so packed with action for me it felt like three days when it was over. For now, here are the facts in terms of numbers and a few stats for you all to chew on till I crank out the first installment of the T.I.v11 report Monday.

• 92 started with 2 Volunteer Exemption riders: Total 94
• There were 2 no-shows at the Meat-Up
• Checkpoint #1 Cutoff time was 8:30am
• Greg Gleason cleared CP#1 with 5 minutes to spare before the cut off
• Bruce Gustafson came in 10 minutes after the CP#1 cutoff
• Greg Gleason covered 123 miles of T.I.v11 in 12 hours and 20 minutes before he stopped.
• T.I.v11 ranks as the "shortest" of all Trans Iowas so far. 

More soon........