TOMRV is a 2 day cycling event that starts in Bettendorf, IA, travels through Illinois, Wisconsin and ends in Northern Iowa.

It's a pretty casual ride that is primarily ridden by very skilled and competitive riders, so even though it isn't listed as a race it ends up being just that.
This was actually my first TOMRV ride and when they say that it is the most challenging century in the midwest I know they are not lying.

Whoever designed this ride is either a maniac or a genius. The listed climbing for the ride is 11,280 feet the vast majority of which is within about the last 25 miles of the first day and the first 25 of the second. This isn't really going to be a race report, more of a report of a ride that deserves and commanded my respect.

Saturday - 108 miles

We start at Scott Community College in Bettendorf, IA at about 6:00am. We camped out the night before and loaded all our stuff on the truck that takes my gear to Dubuque, IA.
After about 15 miles I stopped at a fire station along the Mississippi river that was offering an awesome all you can eat breakfast for $4. It was awesome....enough said...awesome

We are in Iowa farm country now riding
over one roller after another. I passed the Elvira Rest Stop and pushed on
to Miles where I reloaded my water bottles ­ mile 44. We join the Preston
riders here (you can start in Preston, IA and have a shorter journey) and continue the rollers until we decent (39.5 MPH) into Sabula,
Iowa.

Sabula is cool. It is an island city. The 650 or so souls live surrounded
by the Mississippi. You enter by causeway and leave by long causeway; which takes you to the old two lane steel bridge thrown across the Mississippi River. This is actually a very nerve racking moment. The bridge is very narrow and is steel grating allowing you to see the river below.The sides of the bridge are less than 2 feet high, throw in the fact we are very high up and the wind gusts are strong and this makes for an interesting moment in the ride. Safely on the other side and its 53 miles completed. I am officially in Illinois.
We ride past pallisades state park and approach Chestnut Mountain. The climb to Chestnut is a challenge for unique reasons. 1) The climb is roughly 3 miles long. 2) I'm currently using a Double with my racing rear cassette, not a lot of option to spin. 3) Going anerobic on this climb would be a mistake since I'm only at mile 69.

Riding on top Chestnut Mountain is wonderful. You feel like you are on top
of the world (you are on top of Illinois actually). It¹s rolling, tree
covered and green with beautiful vistas on all sides. Mile 75 brings a
welcome Rest Stop. Still on top of the mountain, you get catch your breath,
eat popsicles, relax and reload. Everybody is hurting at this point and you
still have 30 miles of hills to go!

The decent from this rest stop is easily the most amazing experience I've had on a bike. More than a mile out from the decent they start the warning signs, not to mention the volunteers at the rest stop giving warnings. It's a 15% grade that has an S-Curve at its halfway point. If you are not a very strong rider you will have serious problems maintaining any form of control, much less be able to make it around an S-Curve. I try to be conservative approaching the curve, but afterwards I let loose hitting 52+mph. a personal speed record.

Mile 91 ­ after another steep fast decent you hit THE WALL. That's right THE WALL, if you have done TOMRV before, know someone who has done it, or have even heard the ride wispered about then you know all about THE WALL. a 1/4 mile out there are two signs, "Right-Country Road" "Left - THE WALL" Frankly there was no option for me, anything with a name like that has to be attempted, and WOW the road kicks up into what almost feels vertical, all the momentium I had from the decent is gone and I am instantly in my highest gear trying to muscle up this thing. My computer shows 3mph for most of the climb and I pass people walking their bikes up cursing and trying to maintain their footing. Simply put, this hill is nuts and crazy fun......well fun to talk about at the next rest stop at least.

Mile 94.4 - the final Rest Stop. This is also the point where the cyclists who chose to take "country road" instead of "the wall" meet back up with us. The pace begins to pick up again. Two more climbs, then a fast decent to another Mississippi River crossing on modern bridge and a very busy highway. I am now in Dubuque ­ 102 Miles.

This part of Dubuque is a little run down. A car swerved in front of me here causing me to clip out very fast and get a foot down. When I did this I felt my cleat crack. The last 4-5 miles of this ride were effectively done with my left leg. You need to carefully pick your way trough a sketchy section of town to get to the college. Then, at mile 105.5 you get to climb the last hill of the day (I'm convinced that the organizers added this hill just to pi$$-off the cyclists). After 105 miles, it's horrible and long. Pound up to the top, make a right turn and YOU ARE DONE ­ 108 miles. Averaged about 17.5 for the ride, which I was happy with especially so early in the season.

Done? did I say done? well you are done with the first day but tomorrow brings another day of riding. 88 miles back home, and the organizers swear up and down that day 1 is the "easy day". I get some beer, a really good all you can eat buffett is included with the ride at Clark College and I go to bed around 9:30.
I was woken up a few times during the night by the lightning and thunder, always a good sign.

Day 2 - 88 miles through hell.

Mile 4 ­ We enter the Julian Dubuque Memorial Park; a densely forested area,
which adds the feeling of peace and tranquility of the morning. I like
riding here. The ground is fairly wet but I watched the forecast in the morning and I need to move as much as I can before the weather starts again.
Mile 7 brings a very fast decent, I hit about 44mph on this which was a little interesting given that the roads were wet and slick, but what a way to wake up at 6:00am.

Mile 8 ­ Left turn on US 52 and into the first big climb of the day. It¹s
over four (4)miles to the top of the ridge. Not soo steep that it can't be done but it does have a good burn to it. The best strategy here is to find your climbing gear, clear your mind and sit and spin. I began to envy the people riding triples. Over the top and another fast descent into Saint Donatus for a Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Kalmes Restaurant.
Everything up to mile 17 was a blast, I was challenged with hills that I had never seen before, been given decents that I had only ever heard about and had mastered them all. That's when the rain started. Nothing bad at first, just enough to get you good and wet and ruin your vision.

Mile 27 brings me into Bellevue, IA. The weather takes a turn for the worse, the winds pick way up and the rain is coming hard. The group I picked up decides to pull into a gas station and try and wait out the worst of it. The lightning is scaring a few people riding steel and I am inclined to agree with them. We wait about a half an hour and the rest of the guys I'm with all arrange to have people pick them up in Preston (which is an alternative ending just like it was a alternative start the previous day). I figure I'm just going to tough it out. The rain lets up and we continue on. There are some difficult hills after Bellevue and given the conditions it is fairly painful. We cross a bridge on a climb that a lot of people opt to walk simply because it is too dangerous to ride with the crosswinds. I didn't want to get off my bike because I knew I would never want to get back on so I pushed on.

Mile 30 something. I'm riding on top of a large hill, the rain has pretty much stopped and a wonderful tail wind starts. It was a really wierd sensation because the tail wind would die at wierd times and become annoying crosswinds, headwinds, then back to tailwinds. It took another ride to point out the funnel cloud to me fbefore I figured out that the wind wasn't shifting, it was spinning. The funnel cloud gave me a bad feeling in my gut, I'm from Iowa and I know the area I'm in fairly well. Which does not help my nerves because I am in the middle of a cornfield and I KNOW there is nothing but cornfields for miles in any direction. If it hits before I leave this area I have no where to hide. I push on as hard as my legs will let me.
About 10 minutes later the rain comes back, this time it brought it's friends Mr. Hail with it. The only way to describe this time period is words from Forrest Gump "Sometimes the rain comes from above, sometimes it comes sideways, and sometimes it comes from the ground." This rain was coming sideways and blowing me all over this road and the hail hurts so bad that I can't focus on anything else. One strong gust of wind blows me from the right shoulder of a 2 lane highway to the rumbles on the left, I managed to get a foot out in time to keep myself from rolling in a ditch. A small girl in front of me, no older than 19 or 20 and weighing no more than 100lbs wasn't so lucky. I watched her go down.....hard. The wind must have hit her so fast that she didn't even get her hands down and face planted the gravel on the shoulder of the road. Luckily another rider saw it too and there happened to be a house in distance. We dumped out bikes in the ditch and picked her up and ran to the house in quarter sized hail. No one was home but at least the house had an overhang to give us shelter. The weather had turned so bad that nearly every cyclist that passed took shelter next to us. When we laid this girl down I was able to see how bad it was. A large piece of gravel has taken a large chunk out of her chin, my guess was it was about a 1/2 inch to 3/4 inches deep in her chin. I have some training as a field medic but I was absolutely no good in this situation because I was near hypothermic. One of the other riders around us (now up to about 15 people) had a small first aid kit which had needle and thread but until I could warm up and stop shaking I couldn't do anything. This girl was losing blood, not to mention she was freezing, so I started asking people for their rain jackets, arm warmers, anything I could get. Thankfully people gave anything they could and we were able to warm her and myself up enough for me to get a couple makeshift stiches in her. The hail had stopped at this point and we were able to get her a ride to a hospital (which was about 40 miles away). Post ride update she is fine and a cosmetic surgeon is going to be able to make her as good as new.

Since I'm miles from civilization and the hail has turned to a heavy raid with crazy lightning I decide it's time to push on. Mile 44 brings me into Preston and another aid station. When I hit the aid station one of the QCBC staff (quad city bike club, the club that sponsors the race) who knows me pretty well came rushing over to me and asked for my help. They had 4 people in the back of a covered truck who were shaking uncontrollably. Seeing these people obviously in the early stages of hypothermia it started to actually hit me what this day had become. We got them wrapped in garbage bags to try and insulate and thats 4 more people off to the hospital.

After that stop it was fairly uneventful for me. Luckily, I had left early enough that after Preston the rest of the bad weather was behind me. Other riders were not as lucky. I talked to some friends after the ride who had lightning strike a grain silo about 50 feet away from them, one of them crashed when it happened. (he only had some minor scratches). There were also two tornados that touched done on or near our ride route. Many people that had their vehicles in Bettendorf ended up finding any way they could to end at Preston and get a ride back which was the smartest thing to do.

Other than the horrible weather and events that followed as a result the ride was amazing. The events that happened are so amazing and unique to look back on that even though I wish they hadn't happened I will always remember them as the craziest ride I've ever had. I can't accurately remember back to my mindset during all these events other than just focus, it's amazing what a crisis does to a person, but now that I've had a couple days to recover and think I find it amazing that people ditched their thousands of dollars in bikes right on the road to help a person who went down in a hailstorm. Not to mention the people willing to give up their raingear, arm warmers, jackets, etc without even a second thought. It's things like that incident that make me proud to be a cyclist. We all were looking out for one of our own and giving no regard to our own well being to make sure she was ok. I guess one of the people who stopped after her crash regularly writes for our Club newsletter and is writing a recap of that 15 minutes. When he does I will post it on here.

I am confident that I will do this ride again next year. In good weather this ride is going to be a challenging 2 day journey through some beautiful country. In bad weather I was lucky enough to see the complete and unconditional kindness of strangers. Anyone else on here that might have done TOMRV I would love to hear your experience. I am really anxious to read a report of someone in the tornado, I am grateful I wasn't near it but wow, that had to be something.

Our club has reported that no one was seriously injured during the ride. They also said that about 75% of the riders planning on finishing in Bettendorf did not actually ride there. Pretty much no one that left after 7:00am made it to bettendorf.

I just realized that this is the longest report ever for something that wasn't a Tri or even a race for that matter, but to me it was one of the most important endurance events of my life. And here I thought this was just going to be a casual training weekend.