Day 3 ride statistics: 12.5 mph average, 56 miles, 2:31 hours train time, 101 average pulse, 154 max pulse, 2473 kcal

As I was entering my statistics above for this day I momentarily wondered how I could ride 56 miles at a 12.5 mph clip and only have 2:31 hours training time. Then I realized that the ride was very easy this day.  My train time watch doesn’t kick in unless my pulse gets above 90, and much of this day it wasn’t above 90.

John drove the van and camping gear to Ames, which was our next overnight town. I rode with Stacey, Joe and John’s kids up to the second pass through town. Everyone else had breakfast there, but not me. I’ve found over the years that my stomach is much happier on these rides if I don’t eat anything before noon.

After breakfast, I rode out with Zach and Ben, while Abby rode with Stacey and Joe. My group stopped next in Ogden, which was about halfway for the day, for water, Gatorade and Kybos.  We stopped again briefly in Boone for water.  Then we stopped again at Beekman’s, about 8 miles from Ames, for ice cream.

The boys did very good on the ride this day. In fact, they both beat me up a long hill outside Boone. We now have to refer to Zach as the “Hillmaster” because he was first up that hill.

In Ames we had our best host home experience of the ride. Our hosts were Don and Evelyn ?. Don is a 30 year veteran of RAGBRAI, but was unable to ride this year.  Our hosts let us use the basement shower and bathroom, gave us lots of snacks and drinks, and visited with us much of the afternoon and evening.

We were told that Evelyn is a micro-biologist and Don is a retired government worker.

Most of us went to the ISU campus to look around.  I hadn’t walked around campus for many years.  After the campus we walkede over to the Pizza Pit for supper, where I had a small pizza and some cheese bread. We walked back to the campus for a bit more sightseeing before going back to our camp.

Mom drove up to Ames and took Josh, Jake and David home for the night.  David ended up not coming back because he had injured his knee during the ride. Diane’s parents had driven down from their home in northern Iowa, and took Scott and Diane down to Altoona for the night.