Cedar Rapids man biking up the Rockies to raise money for youth programs

CEDAR RAPIDS — John Schultz has two passions: bicycling and serving his community through his Rotary Club of Linn County.

This summer, he’ll be combining both as he joins the Ride the Rockies tour in Colorado to raise money for the club’s youth programs.

Schultz will be biking a little over 300 miles, and ascending nearly 27,000 feet, between June 11 and June 16.

He’s seeking sponsors to pledge money toward his goal of raising $2,690, or 10 cents for every vertical foot he climbs. The money will go to the Rotary Club’s youth exchange program and the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards scholarship program.

“I’m really involved with Rotary, and we’re always trying to fundraise to help our projects work,” Schultz said. “So, I thought climbing 27,000 feet through the Rockies seems like a great way to draw some attention to a great cause.”

Youth programs

Schultz is the membership chair, youth services chair and past president of the Rotary Club of Linn County.

The youth exchange program, he said, helps pay for students to go on yearlong exchange programs in other parts of the world, which can broaden students’ view of the world and help them be more understanding of others.

The leadership awards program pays for students to attend a weeklong camp in Grinnell where Iowa students learn leadership and personal development skills.

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“These programs provide not only an education opportunity for students to grow themselves and to become stronger leaders, but really to impact our greater communities,” Schultz said.

“When we’re doing philanthropic and volunteer work, the concept for me is, where do you do the most good? And how can you have the most sustainable impact?

“I think few things have more impact than youth because there’s the promise of time and development and paying it forward.”

Ride the Rockies

Schultz started riding bicycles in middle school when he lived near Milwaukee and started racing them in high school.

He’s ridden through the Rocky Mountains multiple times before, but this will be his first trip with the Ride the Rockies tour, which is one of the more popular bike tours through the mountain range.

His last trip through the Rockies was in 2016, when he rode his bike across the country, from the East Coast to the West Coast, in 10 weeks. His wife and two kids came along, following his route in a travel trailer.

Last summer, he rode from Lake Superior to Houston, Texas, for a Rotary convention, using the ride to raise awareness about diabetes.

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“People have asked me in the past couple weeks, ‘Why on earth would you want to go suffer on mountains?’ and, really, it’s for the challenge of getting to the view at the top and knowing that you climbed the way. That’s the fun experience about it.”

Training for a mountain ride can be a bit difficult when you live in Iowa. The winters are cold and there’s little elevation.

Schultz makes do, though. During the winter, he uses a training bike indoors where he races other bikers around the world on the training platform Zwift. Now that’s it’s warm outside, he bikes up and down the hills he can find, over and over again.

Schultz has ridden through most of the mountain ranges in the U.S., including the Rockies, the Sierra Nevadas, the Ozarks and the Appalachians. But the Rockies pose specific challenges because of their elevation and the weather, which can change rapidly.

“To prepare for the grades is really just trying to get your fitness in the highest possible level, and arriving in Colorado a day or two early to try and acclimate to the elevation,” Schultz said.

“Then the key metrics are just trying to stay hydrated, trying to stay healthy beforehand and knowing how to ride up mountains, which takes some practice,” he said.

“You can’t defeat the mountain. You have to sort of work with it. You’re never going to spring up a 15-mile grade by just picking a gear and grinding away for several hours — which is part of the challenge.”

Schultz said his coming Rocky Mountain ride “is a combination of my love for cycling, love for rotary, and trying to pull awareness to these causes, to either raise money or just awareness.”

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