RAGBRAI

RAGBRAI participants celebrate the end of each event with a ceremonial dipping of the front tire of their bicycle in the Mississippi River. Photo courtesy: Telegraph Herald)

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RAGBRAI. The marathon noncompetitive annual bicycle ride was first sponsored by the Des Moines Register in 1972. The "Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa," has been acclaimed the largest bicycling event of over one day in the United States. (1)

Riders visited Dubuque in 1974, the second year of the ride, and one year before the now nationally known event was formally given its name. The route that year began in Council Bluffs and ended in Dubuque one week later. The final day saw 1,800 of the 2,800 riders completing the trek. (2)

The event also ended in Dubuque in 1983 and 1993 when an estimated 15,000 riders completed the trek. (3)

RAGBRAI returned to Dubuque in 2010 when riders were scheduled to enter the city on July 31st. The end of the cross-Iowa ride was planned for the American Trust Rivers Edge Plaza. (1) By the end of April, records indicated riders from eighteen different countries and nearly every state would be represented in the event. (4)

Award-winning Telegraph Herald photographer David Kettering caught some of the thousands of riders coming east down Pennsylvania Avenue only to meet one of the steepest hills in the city. Photo courtesy: Telegraph Herald

Up to 40,000 participants in the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, ended in Dubuque this year on July 25th for the first time since 2010. The ride began in the western Iowa town of Onawa, near the Missouri River on week earlier.

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Source:

1. "Chronology," Telegraph Herald, January 1, 2010, p. 38

2. Ibid.

3. Eller, Donnelle Eller, "Wheels Spin In," Telegraph Herald, August 1, 1993, p. 1

4. "Chronology"