The GTDRI Stories: The Lead-Up To The Seventh One

Craig Irving (L) and Robert Fry joined me on a 3GR in June of '12.

"The GTDRI Stories" is a series telling the history, untold tales, and showing the sights from the run of Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitationals. This series will run on Sundays. Thanks for reading!

As 2012 got on I started to formulate a clearer idea for what would become the seventh Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitational. One of my desires at this point was to experience the ride as I had seen others do in the six previews versions of this ride. That being as a newcomer to the territory. That wasn't possible if I reconned all the roads. So, I made a course that was, for the most part, an unknown to me. 

It was a course that had some previous Trans Iowa bits to it, but since we'd only run three T.I.'s out of Grinnell by this point, there were still a lot of unseen roads for me in the area. Not all the gold had been mined, so this route was going to take in things I'd seen on the map, but had never ridden. Originally I was going to leave Grinnell via the T.I.v8 route, but I nixed that idea and did a completely unknown to me route to Brooklyn, Iowa for the first leg.

 I was riding decent distances weekly all throughout 2012 leading up to the GTDRI.

Instead of recon, I rode gravel. Mostly every week, although there were breaks for Trans Iowa and trips out of town at times. The majority of my gravel rides were "3GR" rides on Friday evenings or Saturday mornings. These were done in an effort to get my gravel fix, but I also wanted to grow a community of gravel riders. 

Sometimes my only companion on the 3GR wasn't a cyclist.

Getting a community of gravel riders was not easy in my area. For whatever reason, most cyclist around here at the time ignored my efforts to get a gravel group ride up and running. But despite that, I rode anyway, even if no one showed up to join me, and that happened more than a few times. 

But more importantly for me, I was getting some really good base miles in under my wheels and this would be a boon to me in this year's GTDRI. It was hot, humid, and usually pretty Sunny all through May, June, and into July as the GTDRI date approached. A date, which due to lots of rider pressure, was moved off the RAGBRAI weekend. I was getting told that more people would show up to my ride if I made it earlier or later than RAGBRAI. So, the seventh GTDRI was set for mid-July instead of during the last day of RAGBRAI. 

The Fargo Gen I- Re-imagined after four years and readied for the GTDRI in 2012.

After I had pulled a bunch of parts off the Gen I Fargo and let it sit for quite awhile, I decided that it was high time to get that thing back together and use it as a gravel bike. Once I had it up and running, I used it exclusively as my gravel bike to get ready for the GTDRI. 

I trained on hills like these to get ready for the ride.

The route I had concocted was going to be a doozy. There would be lots of BIG hills and big mileage, of course, which would conspire to make this ride on par with the 2010 version of the GTDRI. That was a route which gave no quarter in terms of climbing once the first 25 miles were behind you. 

This one wasn't quite that bad, but as you will see next week, it was no picnic! I was ready for it though, so I wasn't worried about that. My only concern was how many people would actually show up at this one. 

Since the ride start was in Grinnell, and there was no camping close by, I rented a room at the Super 8. It wasn't my first choice, but since NASCAR had a Craftsman Truck Series event in nearby Newton Iowa the same weekend, all the good rooms had been spoken for. Oh well! At least I had a place to stay.

Next week: The Seventh GTDRI