A few people on the forum have been talking about doing RAGBRAI next year. RAGBRAI is a 432 mile journey across Iowa that spans 6 days during the last week of July (2008: July 20 - 26). While you don’t have to be extremely fit, a good training regime to prepare for the 400+ mile trek is essential. The site recommends at least 600 training miles prior to coming. If you think about it, that isn’t too bad; 20 miles a day (excluding weekends) for 1 month will net you around 400 miles. Keep that up for a few months and you are good to go. With 8500 people riding you will be around plenty of folk with varying degrees of experience so don’t worry about lagging behind.
I’m still debating whether or not I will take the trip. It means sacrificing a week of vacation time and while I wouldn’t hesitate to do this if I were single, I’ve got a family and their time to think about. I’d be more inclined to go if I had friends that were willing to ride as well. We’ll see.