Trans Iowa v13: Registration Update

A previously unreleased image from the Trans Iowa v13 course! WooHoo!

I thought I should take this opportunity to do a long form update on the registration process so far. I cannot really do this with the limited space available to me on the Trans Iowa site.

I was not sure if we could get the 55 spots filled in the Vet class but since there are so many Vets out there now, I felt setting up the possibility of a lottery would preempt any issues had I not had a plan in place. To be honest, I felt as though it may have been a good idea to have a Vet's lottery drawing last year, but it all worked out fine. With 47 "new vets" from T.I.v12, I knew that filling out the vet class was a distinct possibility. The weeding out of possibilities by using the "inactive riders" idea helped, but there were still a lot of possibilities out there. Since the current winners and "frequent flyers" of Trans Iowa did not take all of their spots, I was able to kick down 10 spots more to the Vets raising their limit to 65 riders.

Then the Vets only sent in 50 cards. Well, that's ten over what I used to allow, so I am on the right track here. Granted, Finishers used to be its own category, which is not the case now. Anyway, now I have only 65 folks on the roster. That means that 55 slots remain for Rookies. Which means that maybe there will not be a Rookie lottery either. It will be touch and go, but it will be close, I'll bet.

So, that's the lay of the land right now. However; there is one more thing to discuss. Tandems.

In the years past, I have not made any special provisions to accommodate a tandem class. We've only had two tandems ever attempt Trans Iowa. Jay and Tracy Petervary in v6 and Dennis Grelk and Christina Anthony tried it in v10, I think it was. That said, I was contacted by Andrea Cohen, who has done Trans Iowa several times. She asked for a Tandem class and said if I allowed it that she was coming with another person as her team mate. I decided to allow this based upon who asked and to help promote the tandem idea, which has gained a lot of traction at Dirty Kanza and Gravel Worlds. I figured, hey! Why not? No one has ever done a full Trans Iowa as a tandem team, so this is kind of a "last frontier" for the event, in a manner of speaking. It could be a good thing. We will see.

More soon.....