Death took a bit of a holiday, but it came back with a vengeance.

The Flint Hills Death Ride – a grueling, sweltering cycling sufferfest that bills itself as one of the toughest one-day cycling events in the country – started in 1993 and was held for nearly a decade until it went away, the victim of mismanagement or erosion of the mountain-bike ethos, depending on who’s doing the telling.

A week ago Sunday, it returned to Madison, a tiny burg about 20 miles south of Emporia.

“Nobody died,” joked Lawrence’s Jim Turner, one of the event’s organizers. “It was wonderful. It was 106 degrees in the shade, so it lived up to its billing.”

Back in its heyday, Turner said, the Death Ride drew more than 400 riders. Interest waned, however, and there was no Death Ride the past few years.

Enter the Hog Back Ridge Bicycle Touring Co., Inc. The Lawrence-based group of Turner, Jim Baze, Randy Breeden, Paul Corcoran and Tim Timmons also organizes the Border Raiders, a 500-mile road tour of Civil War points of interest.

The five had plenty of experience organizing road rides – like Octoginta and other regional rides – but the Death Ride was a different beast.

“We all were a little tentative doing it,” Turner said. “It was a different event than we had put on before. It was different enough we were a little goosey about it, but we did it and had a little debriefing, and there were not any real negatives to it. We had the caterer, the food, the riders : everything came together. I didn’t even have to pass out a Band-Aid.”

‘A bunch of weird people’

John Hobbs invented the Death Ride in 1993.

Back then, it was as much a celebration of mountain-bike counterculture as it was an endurance challenge.

“When it first started, just scads of people showed up, just the squirrelliest group of people,” recalled Michael Combest, a Death Ride veteran who rode it in 1993 and again this year and at least a couple of times in between. “They’d party all night long, get up and do the event. In the past, it was a bunch of weird people with tattoos. This group this year was more staid. These people were just nice folks, just workaday people.”

The ride itself has changed, too.

In its first incarnation, the Death Ride was 80 or so hellish miles.

This year, about 100 brave souls set out to complete “just” 58 miles. Of the 100 who started, 63 finished.

“That’s pretty close to what it’s been in the past,” Turner said. “Everybody starts, but not everybody finishes. There’s no shame in that.”

The challenge of the Death Ride comes from the distance, riding surface and the elements.

Riders averaged around 10 mph over the 58 miles.

“I felt like I sat on a belt sander,” said Combest, 39, a veteran of road-bike centuries – 100-mile rides. “This is much harder than a century. There are a lot of ways to measure it. If you go by calories, a road bike is about one-third the exertion of a mountain-bike ride. It’s just much harder on a mountain bike. It’s like riding a wet sheepdog. They’re not responsive.

“There are some areas that will throw you. There are some steep hills. On a mountain bike with 24 speeds, you’ll use ’em all. The roads are not smooth at all. They’re not like the gravel roads like we have around here. They’re like flint-rock-strewn car paths. It’s a battle. You have to fight for every inch when you’re going slow. And this year it was quite windy, that good old Kansas wind. We left early in the morning and finished around 1:30, so even though it was shorter than in the past, it was still an all-day sucker.”

‘The cow has the right of way’

Turner said the first 14 miles looked like a typical Douglas County gravel road. Then riders crossed a cattle guard for 30 miles of open range.

“You share it with thousands of cattle,” Turner said. “One of the rules – John Hobbs called them the rules of engagement – is, if you chase a cow, your ride’s over. He makes no bones about it. The cow has the right of way. Once you cross that cattle guard, it’s just beautiful skies and horizons and hills. People just love the route, and the scenery changes dramatically. It’s green grass and beautiful, wide-open country. And, of course, there’s no shelter from the sun.”

Organizers had approximately four gallons of water for each participant at well stocked SAG – Support And Gear – stops along the route.

“They could take a bath if they wanted to,” Turner said. “We’re not stupid. We made sure there was more than enough water.”

Waving a red flag

But why? Why would anyone saddle up for six-hours on a belt sander under a sweltering sun?

“I’m going on a ride later called the Hotter than Hell 100,” Turner said. “You hear, ‘Hotter than hell,’ and think you have to be crazier than hell to want to do. You hear, ‘Death Ride,’ and think, ‘Why do I want to go on a Death Ride? Why not a Life Ride.’ It’s like a red flag in front of the bull. John Hobbs hit a niche with people. At first, it was the Matfield Green 62K. It got nicknamed the Death Ride, and that just stuck. They’ve got some, I guess, rural legends about how tough it was. It’s human nature. You don’t talk about the time you were pampered and went down the road at 50 mph. You talk about the time you fought the wind for 11 hours and just killed yourself. Just want to test yourself with something that might be a little beyond your grasp.”

Combest answers the question with another. Why ride it? Why not?

“It’s the closest thing we have to Mount Everest,” he said. “Why do it? Because it’s there. I did it in 1993, when most of the people didn’t finish it. It can be truly awful. I’ve never done the ride without seeing some actual spilled blood. You can get into trouble. There were some new people on it, asking me about it, and I told ’em the ride starts at noon, even though it starts at 8. The Death Ride starts at noon, because that’s when the sun is right above you and it’s really expletive hot out. It’s a challenge. That’s the allure.”