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The Monster Cookie at 50 – Colin’s Best Laid Plans
By Colin Benson, Spokes Editor
Fifty years is a long time for anything to last. With kids playing video games and checking Instagram, with a world full of electric scooters and single wheel, battery powered skateboards, it’s a miracle a simple bike ride would still exist. And yet on a cool Sunday morning—April 26, 2026—the Monster Cookie Metric Century lined up once again at McNary High School in Keizer, proving that some ideas don’t age at all. They just get better at tempting you into doing something reckless.
This year’s Monster Cookie was special. The fiftieth running. A route seasoned with history, including a symbolic stop at the Oregon State Legislature to honor five decades of cookies, community, and quietly heroic volunteers. Riders rolled out not just chasing miles, but carrying the weight of tradition—though thankfully on a mostly flat course.
I came in with a plan. That was my first mistake.
After riding Monster Cookie for the first time in 2025, it immediately became my favorite event on the calendar. I looked forward to it all year, telling myself this time would be different. I’d ride slow. I’d meet new people. I’d linger at rest stops loaded with absurdly good food, including the legendary pies from long‑time Salem Bicycle Club sponsor Willamette Pie Company. I’d admire the farms, the crossroads towns, the open‑handed beauty of the Willamette Valley.
This year, I even made a tactical decision: ride the volunteer version the week before. Empty course. No pressure. No reason not to ride like my hair was on fire. And I did. Full gas. Hammering flats, feathering brakes through gravel‑edged turns, plunging descents at juggernaut speed, easing up only to keep things rubber‑side down or to inhale. I told myself it was about helping the event. Secretly, it was about getting speed out of my system.
So on event day, calm restored, I coasted to the start line having considered my more comfortable gravel bike before settling—predictably—on my carbon fiber Specialized Tarmac. I rolled forward scanning for friends, smiling at familiar faces, soaking in the energy of hundreds of riders clipped in and buzzing.
I crossed under the banner. Didn’t see anyone I knew. So I nudged ahead. Just a little.
The first turn was busy—cars, bikes, choreography. I accelerated to clear it. The road opened. The wind picked up. What started as a whisper grew to a roar. And then it happened.
Like an alcoholic after a sip of whiskey, I grabbed the drops, shifted down, and bolted.
Cycling is many things. It’s community. It’s health. It’s endless arguments about tire compounds and whether Shimano or SRAM is the one true path. But beneath all of that, cycling makes children out of us. No plans. No meetings. No obligations. Just speed and breath and burning legs. A big wheel. A banana seat. Baseball cards in the spokes.
Twice now, the Monster Cookie has unlocked that feeling in me more than anything else.
My average speed in 2025 for long rides was 14.4 mph. On the volunteer ride, I managed 15. After the 100 kilometers of the fiftieth Monster Cookie, windburned and pleasantly wrecked, I sat with my giant cookie and glanced at my head unit.
Average speed: 17 mph.
I smiled. Then I found Monster Cookie organizer Ken Freemen. “I only have one complaint,” I told him. “It was over so quickly.”
And that, I suppose, is the highest compliment a bike ride can earn. |