“For my 6th gravel road century this year my friend Ron B and I set out on an adventure to explore the potential Red Dog 100 Race route.

This was Ron’s first ever gravel century. Earlier in the week I asked him if he wanted to join me on exploring the Red Dog 100 course. It wasn’t till a few miles into the ride that I broke the news to him about it not being 100 miles and instead about 116. (Oops my bad. Haha) The actual race course is shorter.

The ride started out across the Missouri River Bridge then followed the river bottoms to stay flat for the first 10 miles.

The first big hill was on a concrete road, kindle nice to get the climbing legs warmed up. Around mile 37 we entered a beautiful conservation area that had water, bathrooms, and picnic tables this will be checkpoint 1.

The gravel is crushed limestone and stayed fairly fast rolling. The middle section of the route does not have very many big hills. Watch out for some bigger hills toward the end of the route. We where a bit surprised and delighted to get to climbs some long 12% grades 🙂

Ron and I stopped several times to enjoy the vast views of the Missouri River Valley.
To finish up the ride we had about 12+ miles of flat river bottom roads to enjoy and discuss the day of adventure.

The meatloaf and mashed potatoes at Paddy Malone’s where we’ll earned.”

-Josh S.