The challenge keeps her coming back

Carol Schnor, a CNA in personal home care from Oelwein, has ridden RAGBRAI 30 times.

During her stop in Fairfield Thursday, she sat down with The Ledger to explain how it all started.

'I was a shy one living in Hawkeye, Iowa, at the time and the pastor of the Lutheran church was doing the ninth RAGBRAI in 1981. I thought, ‘How cool. That sounds like fun. I'll get me a bicycle,'” said Schnor. That was a tough year because Schnor didn't know anything about shifting, but had to learn how really fast. The next year she missed RAGBRAI because she went to nursing school, but returned in 1983 and did it 24 years in a row.

Schnor took a break for six years until a gal she worked with wanted to do RAGBRAI, and Carol said she would help her train. This is their fifth year of riding together. Corbin Barnes of Cedar Falls is enjoying this new experience of the ride with the Alpine Peddlers of North East Iowa.

What keeps a person coming back so many times? Carol says it's the challenge of doing it. What it developed in her is a lot of tenacity. It used to be after the second day, she would be saying to herself, 'I want to quit. This is crazy, riding your bike across Iowa in the heat.” But it did something, and she thought, 'I can do it. I know I can do it.”

She said, 'I know the Lord's in it. He has developed me in the challenge because I was a shy little girl, but the Lord has directed me that way.”

Frequent cycler

Carol has put about 800 miles on her bike so far this year as she rides a big loop – maybe through Hawkeye and back to Oelwein, or go toward West Gate and for a different loop. She takes a lot of pictures while traveling. 'The picture of the sunrise that I took today was just gorgeous. I would print it and frame it.” She enjoys the cool of morning and takes off by 8 a.m. at home, but the bike team starts out at 6 a.m. so their drivers can get out on the road.

'I like that, because I don't like when things get too crowded. You don't know what other bikers are going to do,” Schnor said. 'You got to watch all the time or someone is going to cut in front of you. I've had two accidents. One involved a cat. I didn't get hurt, though. Another one, we were going over a set of railroad tracks and another biker's water bottle fell out of its carrier. Somebody off the side of the road yelled at him, ‘hey, you dropped your water bottle.' And he just stopped smack in front of me and I hit him. He went on the ground, the bike on top of him. I went on top of his bike and my bike went on top of me. I was OK. I was a little sore. He apologized to me.”

Lingo

Of the 30 years she's gone on RAGBRAI, a couple of the days have left a special imprint on her memory and those of many other riders.

'One day they call Saggy Thursday we had strong, strong headwinds. I think we were going into Oskaloosa out of the south. I will tell you a lot of people were sagging-it-in because of those strong headwinds,” she said. 'Then there was Soggy Monday, where it was in the 50s all day. Nobody was prepared. It was cold and rainy and I imagine a lot of people sagged-it-in, too. I remember I wasn't even dressed for it. It was so cold that even when biking you couldn't warm up at all. I don't remember the town that we rode to, but we were at a fairgrounds and in the morning we had to have a tractor pull the campers out because it was so muddy.”

When Carol brings beginners to the ride, she recommends a few things to help them succeed, such as three pairs of padded biking shorts – those are really life changers – and to rinse them in the shower and hang them up to dry outside. You'll need different jerseys for each day. Jerseys allow the air to go through and let your skin breathe. You'll need a change of clothes, too, after you shower. Bring a tent along.

During the ride itself, she says it is courteous to shout out if you're getting off the road, 'Coming off!” And if you are going to enter the road, 'Biker coming on!” If you are going to turn in front of someone, turn your arm out and down, signal that you are coming across. If you're going on the side of someone, 'On your right!” or 'On your left!”

She advises new people to take breaks, but not too long because you'll lose momentum.

'Even going up hills, I like to keep momentum going,” Schnor said. 'There have been hills where you are going so fast down them you didn't even have to shift going up the next one. It's hard to get going again if you lose that momentum.”

Water

Schnor advises riders to keep themselves hydrated; the best thing is water. She adds a power protein energy powder to her water.

'A few years back we were going from Waterloo to Independence and I was feeling pretty good, we went through the Amish settlement in Hazelton that had homemade pies and ice cream,” she began. 'I was still feeling good, but I hadn't had enough water. Then we stopped, and I got off my bike and I was like ‘Whoa! I'm feeling woozy.' So I went over to get the pie and ice cream, and I grabbed ahold of the tent stake they had up because I probably would have fallen down. Anyhow, I sat down on a bale of hay and as I was sitting there, I got tunnel vision and said, ‘Oh this isn't good.' So I ate the food, but I didn't tell the gal that I was riding with that I wasn't good. We didn't have far to go. When we got in at a house where we were staying, I crashed in the grass for two hours. Then I woke up, got showered, and went downtown to get something to eat and then I forced myself to drink water.”

Schnor said she had the opposite problem on the nearly 90-mile trek Wednesday from Indianola to Centerville.

'My stomach was letting me know that I had consumed too much water,” she said. 'You can do that, too. My stomach was starting to act up in those last 15 miles. I said, ‘Oh Lord, your grace will get me through.' And He did.”

Next year?

What would Carol tell someone who is thinking about coming next year?

'Try it! It's not for everybody, but try it,” she said. 'You meet lots of people when you are riding along. One day this athletic guy rode up next to me, and I saw he had a very expensive bike. We were talking, and he had an accent. I asked him where he was from. He said Paris. And I thought of Paris, Iowa. No, he's from Paris – the real one. People come from all over and you may run into them the following year. That's how you do it. You're just biking along and you just talk to people.”