Iowa Gravel Series

…Welcome to today’s In Touch with southeast Iowa program on the one to count on for today’s news and local information, AM and FM KCII. I’m Connor Harbott with KCII News. On today’s program, we’re talking with Caleb Wilson. He is the race organizer, the local coordinator for the Kalona Horseshoe Race coming up here in Washington County as part of the Iowa Gravel Series, a bike race, a series of bike races across the state of Iowa. But, Caleb, thank you so much for joining us here today and talking with us about this upcoming race.
Again, happening in May, May ninth. So a little bit of ways away, but still coming up real, real soon. But, again, thank you so much for joining us. Connor, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
So So let’s go ahead and start by talking a little bit about the Kalona Horseshoe race in your own words. How would you kinda describe this race…
So the Kalona Horseshoe is really just intended to be an experience of all things that are great Kalona…
We we try to make it I mean, obviously, it’s a fitness event, and it’s something where people come out, and many people choose to race the event, and to challenge themselves and to try to go fast. But many people come out, and they just wanna do something that is a challenge to them physically and the accomplishment of finishing a race of this distance, which there’s two distances, fifty k and a hundred k, so around thirty miles and sixty miles. And those are just to ride that distance on gravel roads is a challenge in itself. So many people come out…just for the challenge of finishing that day. And how we make it a Kalona experience is we incorporate many different things about the area that make Kalona unique, including, obviously, our beautiful gravel road area that has a lot of Amish community on it, but also including foods from the area, like pie from Golden Glide Bakery and donuts from Golden Glide Bakery.
Some of those kind of treats are actually out on the race course at aid stations where people can stop and have them. But at the end, at the finish…
we give people that that treat as well when they come in to kinda help reward them for working so hard out there that day. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Sounds like a great time.
And, of course, how many years has the, Kona Horseshoe been held? This is the third year. so twenty twenty six will be the third year, and we have…each year, we’ve chosen to partner with the Kalona Historical Village, which has been a long time fixture of Kalona. You drive through on the main street in Kalona, and it’s very visible there and a very unique, place in Kalona as well with so much history. And it makes for a really fun race experience having it be hosted at the Kalona Historical Village.
There’s a brick road a brick path that goes kinda down the middle. Anybody who’s gone to the Kalona Fall Festival before where you walk in and experience all the vendors and everything that’s going on there, we try to make it feel like a, you know, kind of an outdoor neighborhood party at the Kalona Historical Village. So we have food tents set up there.
there’s actually a top link Goliath from Decorah is gonna come down and sponsor this year, and so they’ll be there providing drinks to anybody as well who, is able to have those, and then various other providers as well. We’ve been blessed with really good weather. the first two years, we were blessed with really, really good weather both days. And so, having people hang around after the event and get to experience the food of the area and the whole atmosphere of being able to celebrate doing something so hard together has been really, really fun. We actually have…
a well known pizza truck that comes in…and will serve up pizza to everyone after the race, and they will be here, again this year, a a brick oven pizza company…
Yeah. Alright. Sounds like yeah. Again, sounds like a great day, and, hopefully, the weather will hold up. I know it’s been a bit roller coaster y as of late, but May ninth could be completely different.
We’ll kinda have to wait and see there. So tell me a little bit about the route itself. I know it begins and ends at the Kona Historical Village, but, tell me a little bit about the route, what that looks like, and, is it the same as previous years? Well, we actually try to change it a little bit every year, to keep showing off different areas of Kalona. So most of the route is gonna be based on gravel roads in the area as it is a gravel bike race.
so you’ll see it out. and we try to keep people off the paved roads as well, a lot of it just for safety reasons. Mhmm. When the race starts, we the Washington County police actually help us with traffic safety as people are going on the paved roads. And then once they turn off on the gravel roads, it’s kind of self administered from there as those roads are much lower traffic.
So we try to show off,
the really nice, areas of the Clone community. Obviously, we have a lot of beautiful farmsteads and a lot of neat, areas out there and unique roads, and we try to incorporate those into the race each year. So this the route is not completely finalized yet for twenty twenty six. in twenty twenty five, we had the route actually routed to go south, and we actually ended up going through, the Southtown community, which is a new subdivision of Kalona, south of town, where a lot of new amenities are being built out for the city. And we do plan to route it through Southtown again this year and ride through trails in there as well.
So we go down a mix of gravel roads, dirt roads, wooden trails, all kinds of different things like that, and we try to make the route approachable to…even even beginner riders. We try to make it challenging enough where experienced riders will still be challenged, but approachable enough where beginner riders would be able to ride it safely. That was Caleb Wilson, race organizer for the upcoming Kalona Horseshoe Bike Race right here in Washington County. This is the first part of a two part interview. You can listen to the second part tomorrow on AM and FM KCII and kcieradio dot com.
I’m Connor Harbitt with KCII News.

Welcome to today’s In Touch with Southeast Iowa program on the one to count on for today’s news and local information, AM and FM KCII. I’m Connor Harbott with KCII News. On today’s program, we continue our chat with Caleb Wilson. He is the race organizer for the upcoming Kalona Horseshoe Bike Race this May. This is the second part of a two part interview.
The first part can be found by going online at kciradio dot com. Absolutely. So how many people do you expect to participate in this race? Has that number grown over the last few years as people have kinda become aware of this? The word’s gotten out.
So how many people are we expecting to compete in this race? Yeah. You never quite know. A lot of it is weather dependent, because…some people will wait to register until it’s pretty close to the start of the race to kinda see where the weather is gonna come in. The first year of the race, I think we had around a hundred and fifty people,
that participated. We actually had a run, the night before the gravel race, and then we did not do a run last year. And then last year for twenty twenty five, we had about two hundred riders, actually, maybe, like, two twenty five. This year, we would expect probably a similar amount as that. We’re not trying to make it a huge event, beyond that.
But as I said, we never really quite know till it gets to the race. But I would expect probably at least two hundred, participants. And then there’s always a lot of family and different people who come to support the competitors as well. Sure. And so let’s talk a little bit about registration.
Is there a registration deadline? I know you mentioned that some people will wait kind of until the, weather kinda shows its hand a little bit there, but is there a registration deadline, and, is there a cost to kind of involved in that? Yes. There is. So the,
registration, if you’re interested in checking that out, you go to the iowa gravel series dot com website. There’s a link, for the Kalona Horseshoe specifically where it says sign up, and you can go to register there. The deadline is, I think, the Wednesday before the race. We encourage people to sign up earlier than that, but I think it’s May sixth, if I remember correctly. And, I believe the cost is…sixty dollars per participant, And that includes, actually includes a t shirt and a post race meal from our Stonewall, brick oven pizza provider.
Alrighty. And so, I got one last question, and that’s kind of about you. I know you’re the local race organizer here, and, of course, you’re from the area a little bit. And so, tell me how you kinda got involved, as the organizer or the coordinator for this race…
Yeah. That’s a great question…
So I, I got into bike racing in twenty twenty one…and was originally just doing mountain bike racing, and that’s obviously on single track trails that are not on public roads like gravel roads. I got, started on gravel racing in that same year, and gravel racing has become the fastest growing and probably largest…format of racing in the United States now for for, bike racing. And, the Iowa Gravel Series has been around, a similar similar amount of time from when I started racing. And, so I was doing gravel races all across the Midwest, with a lot of those being in Iowa and just absolutely loved the experience. my son is seventeen years old, and he’s gotten into racing all across the country as well.
And…we were had talked about it and agreed, like, Kalona…is just a really beautiful community and something that, obviously, we’re biased because we live here, but we just love it so much and think that we have, like, some of the best gravel roads of any of the places that we’ve gone and raced compared to many different areas, whether it’s,
one of the things that’s really cool about our gravel roads is they don’t have a ton of cars on them because it’s such a prevalent part of our community is is, Amish based. And, this might sound a little strange, but the Amish, buggies, the way that their wheels are, they actually kinda grind up the gravel, which I’m sure is a is a lot of work for the secondary roads department, which does a great job. But, it actually makes the roads smoother for bikes because there isn’t, like, big chunks of gravel. And so it ends up being, like, really good bike riding on these roads with the low traffic and the way the roads are compacted. And it and, and also the farmsteads and everything are just beautiful in our area.
So it just makes a great like, we we would ride these roads every day and just think, gosh, this is such a beautiful place. It’d be really fun to have a race here. And so we said…
we should start one. And…I knew, Chris McQueen, who started the Iowa Gravel Series and, continues to run it today. And I reached out to him and said, I’m considering starting a new race, in the Kalona area. I’ve never run one of these events, and I don’t know that I wanna run it independently. Would you be interested in adding it to the Iowa Gravel Series?
And so we did decide to partner together and, have had it on Iowa Gravel Series all the years it’s been around so far. They’ve been a great partner. They take care of a lot of the different facets of the event and allow me to focus on what makes the race unique from having a local representative and what makes it kinda special in the Kalona area. And so, it’s been really fun to be able to I’ve actually been able to race both years myself too because the series coordinated, so I actually get to participate as a as a competitor those days, which has been,
really fun as well. So, yeah, I think that’s kind of how we got involved, and it’s something that the community has really embraced. Ryan Slava and Tanya Poole and other people from Kalona have been helpful in supporting it, and they like to have cool events here that bring people into town and show off things like the historical village too, which has been just a really great partner for this event. It’s a good kind of home base for the race. Absolutely.
Well, tell you what, Caleb. Thank you so much for taking the time talking with us here today about this event. Again, it sounds like it’s gonna be an absolutely fantastic time. Hopefully, we can get some good weather for this race. Hopefully, we can have ourselves a large turnout, and, yeah, hopefully, it’ll be a good old time.
But, again, thanks for joining us today. Thank you very much. Yeah. Come out and check us out. Appreciate you having me on.
Again, that was Caleb Wilson. He is the local organizer for the Kalona Horseshoe Race, part of the Iowa Gravel Series. Again, the race coming up on May ninth. Registration deadline, May sixth. I’m Connor Harbott with KCII News.