(Radio Iowa) – Five teenagers from the Cedar Falls area are joining thousands of bicyclists on this week’s RAGBRAI. It’s the debut of Cedar Valley Youth Cycling, an offshoot of the Des Moines-based Dream Team, which was founded nearly 30 years ago. The Dream Team takes kids from challenging backgrounds and pairs them with mentors for the seven-day bike ride. Jie Liu co-founded the Cedar Valley team for the same reasons, to build confidence and endurance. “A lot of learning happens gradually during the long time training,” Liu says. “At the beginning, they start with 20 miles and when we finished the last week of training, during the weekdays, they typically go 30 to 35 miles, then the weekend is somewhere between 50 to 70 miles.”

Liu is a laboratory specialist at the University of Northern Iowa, and she launched the team with her husband, Josh Sebree, who’s a professor in U-N-I’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Liu says the five young people on this first team have worked very hard to be able to accomplish the goal of pedaling more than 400 miles to complete the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. “They’re slowly building their endurance,” Liu says. “It’s changing your mindset. It’s like, ‘I can really do long distance if I stick to it and don’t give up.'” Members of the team range in age from 13 to 17, and they started their indoor training for the ride back in March. RAGBRAI offers many challenges, like the weather of late July in Iowa, the daily chore of cycling between 40 and 70 miles, and having to keep up that pace for seven straight days.

“For a lot of them, this is probably their first time to be away from their family for this extended time,” Liu says. “That, plus the heat probably will take a toll after a few days. I’ll guess the first couple of days will be pure excitement, then the third or fourth days it’s tiredness, and the homesickness probably will kick in.” To keep the team’s morale high, Liu says they’re planning for a special event at the end of the fourth day of RAGBRAI along with members from the original Des Moines-based cycling group. “Dream Team planned a Family Night, for all the family to visit team members at Iowa Falls,” Liu says. “All the parents will be able to see the kids and have a nice dinner with them and talk with them and pump them up, ‘You can do it,’ as family support is very important in the program.”

As an additional incentive, each team member that completes RAGBRAI will be allowed to keep the bike they rode, which was donated through the program. While that may’ve been an early selling point for some of the teens, Liu says it’s less about getting a free bike, and much more about completing the enormous challenge — and doing so as a team.