RAGBRAI

Charles City, Ia. — Shellie Pfohl and Susan Katz cycled into Wednesday’s RAGBRAI overnight town well ahead of schedule, but their day wasn’t over yet: They still had to blog.

The two health gurus are among the 10,000 riders crossing Iowa on the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, but these two carry a message from the Obama administration:

Try something physical. Anything. Ride one day of RAGBRAI. Bike two miles, if you can.

“It’s about being active,” said Pfohl, a Dubuque native and the executive director of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. “Whatever your abilities might be, you can still participate and be active. It really doesn’t matter if you’re a great athlete. It’s just a celebration of movement.”

Their RAGBRAI team will feature several guest riders on RAGBRAI’s seven-day ride, including U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, a Democrat from Waterloo; Iowa Public Health Director Tom Newton; and a regional health administrator for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Katz, who is from Colorado Springs, is a Paralympian.

The team finished Wednesday’s 52-mile ride to Charles City by mid-afternoon. Their blog entries, found at www.fitness.gov, mix personal experience with health advice.

Pfohl posted a gentle warning earlier this week about RAGBRAI’s notoriously unhealthy food.

“As with so many of our traditional favorites, no matter how wholesome they may be, the dishes are often chock full of sugar, fat and other ingredients that eaten too often can have serious health implications in the absence of a healthy diet and regular physical activity,” Pfohl wrote.

Pfohl, 47, always joined the boys in football. In high school, she played softball and volleyball. She studied community health as an undergraduate at the University of Northern Iowa, and led several nonprofit efforts in North Carolina to promote exercise and health.

She later admitted Wednesday that, yes, the 60-mile RAGBRAI stretches allow her to indulge.

She was careful to add: “Every meal I’m eating on the tour includes hearty servings of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.”

Katz was born with spina bifida and lost the ability to walk when she was 10. The 31-year-old continued to do track and other sports through the Paralympics.

She recalled her frustration with hills and high temperatures in a hand-powered bicycle in a blog post that appeared online Wednesday.

“I couldn’t stand going uphill any longer, or I thought that any second I would melt from the heat,” Katz wrote. “But I persevered.

“No matter how slowly I might go, if I kept moving I knew I would reach the finish line,” she wrote.

— Grant Schulte