Iron Butt Membership

The certification package for my first Iron Butt Association (IBA) ride came in the mail last Thursday .  My IBA membership number is  32756.  To become a member of the IBA you must complete one of their endurance rides.

My qualifying ride was a Saddle Sore 1000 (SS1000) ride I participated in on June 9th, 2007.  A SS1000 is a ride of 1000 miles in 24 hours or less.  This particular SS1000 was hosted by the Motorcycle Tourer’s Forum (MTF).  This is a group dedicated to long distance riding and motorcycle touring.  They host many touring and long distance riding events to promote these activities and to provide opportunities for members of the forum to get together and enjoy their chosen form of entertainment.  A really great bunch of people.  They made my introduction to endurance riding a very pleasant experience.

The primary route for the MTF SS1000 was a simple out and back route route on I-90 between Issaquah, WA and Drummond, MT.  The total route mileage was 1020 miles.  I was trying to benchmark my performance and run it at a pace that would be appropriate for one of the more extreme IBA rides such as the Bun Burner Gold (BBG1500).  A BBG1500 is 1500 miles in 24 hours.  That would mean completing the SS1000 in 16 hours to be on the same pace.  This may sound like you have to ride like a bat out of hell but that is not really the case at all.  If you look around the IBA web site you will see they are dedicated to safe and legal riding techniques.  You will also see that the keys to successful endurance rides are planning and good time management, not speed.  This means keeping the wheels turning by minimizing the number of times you stop and amount of time spent at each stop. 

I rode Rufus, my BMW K1200LT, on this run and for planning purposes I used 200 miles as the average mileage range for it.  Because I had to stop at the turn around point, Drummond, MT, that meant I would need two additional intermediate gas stops in each direction.  I picked Moses Lake, WA and Kellogg, ID.  This made the shortest leg about 160 miles and the longest 177 miles.

I left Issaquah at 5:03 AM and returned at 8:40 PM.  This put the total time for the run at 15 hours and 37 minutes .  This left 23 minutes buffer on the BBG1500 pace for the SS1000.  I was happy with my results but other than a couple of construction zones in Montana and one in Idaho, I didn’t really have any challenges to overcome.  If I had a flat or a repairable breakdown it didn’t leave much breathing room . 

I can’t really ride much faster without bending some speed laws so that left scrubbing my off highway time as best as I could.  I fueled up seven times counting the beginning and ending gas stops for a total of 83 minutes with the engine off.  Obviously this is where I need to work if I really want to improve my efficiency .