Trans Iowa Stories: A Different Affair

A major change in the event format came about due to a social media post.

  "Trans Iowa Stories" is an every Sunday post which helps tell the stories behind the event. You can check out other posts about this subject  by clicking on the "Trans Iowa Stories" link under the blog header. Thanks and enjoy!  

Right after Trans Iowa v13 happened I spent a lot of time on social media, specifically on Facebook, so I could find reports on the event. Oddly enough, many younger/newer to Trans Iowa riders never thought about actually sending me their race reactions/reports. I guess Facebook was assumed to be sufficient for my notification of whatever their experiences were. That was a vast departure from the older Trans Iowa events when I would be sent several race reports, or emails directing me to blogs, etc, where reports were hosted. 

Times change....

Now, I must say that not everyone was like that. Early on or later on- There are always exceptions to the norm, and I recognize that. However; it was sort of disheartening to have to go looking for how people that came to my event were affected- good or bad- and that was made even more sharply felt when people on social media would thank me specifically but not alert me to their efforts to thank me. That was one oddity of social media, but there was another as well.

You can search terms on social media, and of course, I would search "Trans Iowa", #transiowa, or "Guitar Ted" and find all sorts of posts I never would have thought to find. One such post, actually it was a comment on a post I found, revealed an instance of systemic cheating that I was unaware of up to that point. 

At some point many riders had learned how to get around nav to CP#1

This all had to do with how I had been giving out the first set of cue sheets the night before the event at the Pre-Race Meat-Up. Apparently a certain rider who had participated in T.I.v12 was reacting to commentary about cue sheet navigation on this Facebook thread. He said that "many of the top riders" were getting the cues at the pre-race meeting to the first checkpoint and entering the directions into their GPS computers so they would not have to read the cue sheets. They simply only had to listen for the audible prompt and then check to see which direction they had to go in. 

I was deeply disheartened by that knowledge. I was saddened, angry, and hurt. I knew that not every rider had that advantage, and it was, obviously, not at all in the spirit of the rules of Trans Iowa. Something had to be done. I fired off an email to Jeremy Fry and between he and I we had a bit of discussion. Essentially, it was boiled down to not giving the riders who were using this trick the chance to use it by not giving them the cues the night before. The cues would have to be kept secret right up until the event start. It would make the event a quite different affair in many ways.

Then, after the revelation of the cheating scheme, I had a chance to think about this new development. Or.....was it really new? How long had this been going on? I remembered being pretty struck by how fast riders at the front were getting to the first checkpoint along about v10 or so, and around about that time I decided to shorten the cut off time to that checkpoint. Maybe riders were on to this by v10. I know they were for v12, and I would assume that wasn't the first time that trick was played. 

CX Mag ran unauthorized images from v13. (This was from v14)

This process of mulling over this development put a further distaste for continuing on into my mind. I was also very angry at myself for being so naive. 

Trans Iowa, as I have stated before, was an 'old soul' in terms of events. Technology was too tantalizing, too much of a temptation to use, even though I stated that it wasn't in the spirit of the event. Riders still were willing to cheat, even though the event didn't have a prize purse, benefits to winning outside of personal pride and accomplishment, and despite of my pleading with them to honor the event and my work by not using technology like cell phones and GPS. 

Again- not everyone was doing this. I know that. However; the few that were had punctured my desires to keep up the good fight and to keep doing this exhaustive work every year only to have a few throw me curve balls like the GPS thing. There were other factors that added to this. Like the unauthorized use of my images for a Facebook page about T.I.v14. Unauthorized use of information and images for use in magazine articles which were written up to make it sound as if the writer had attended the event. Of course, the details were often wrong in those stories, but they got their 'clicks' and content for their physical magazine for free. There were newspaper photographers taking images without permission and writing stories up as well. All without my knowledge. And it was very frustrating that I was doing all this work and getting disrespected in that way. 

It was tiring. Riding herd on all the people trying to cheat, take shortcuts, and trying to spectate, or benefit from Trans Iowa. It would have been nice to have been asked, but when people and entities just take without asking, it grinds my gears and this had pushed me over the line by v13's end. That I decided to end Trans Iowa was, in large part, motivated by these things as well. 

Next: How Do You Do This?