Follow our RAGBRAI coverage all week, including a visit to tornado-ravaged Greenfield

The last full week of July looms, which means a Spandex-clad throng of bicyclists are again poised to pedal across Iowa in the rolling spectacle known as RAGBRAI, the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.

Riders will head out of Glenwood on Sunday morning and spend nights in Red Oak, Atlantic, Winterset, Knoxville, Ottumwa and Mount Pleasant before arriving in the end town of Burlington on Saturday, July 27. Look for coverage all week at desmoinesregister.com and ragbrai.com .

Somewhere near the midpoint of each day's ride is a designated meeting town, where riders can connect with their support vehicles, often loaded with family and friends. This year, the time spent in one meeting town in particular may well prove memorable for visitors and residents alike: Greenfield, where an EF4 tornado with winds up to 185 mph killed four people and damaged or destroyed about 300 homes on May 21.

Amid the devastation, some leaders of Greenfield Chamber Main Street, which has spearheaded the town's RAGBRAI planning, harbored doubts about whether they could pull off serving as a meeting town, as Paris Barraza reports in a story that published earlier today . For a town of 2,000 people, that's a challenge in the best of circumstances, let alone with so many people displaced into temporary housing or busy with repairs and cleanup.

But leaders ultimately decided that welcoming RAGBRAI would offer a symbol of hope for residents and an opportunity to show the pride they have in their community. RAGBRAI staff pledged extra help, volunteers have stepped up and more than 20 executive directors of Main Street Iowa programs plan to take on tasks such as directing parking.

The riders and support teams that make up RAGBRAI Nation have often been generous in supporting people and causes they encounter along the route. Greenfield leaders told Paris that fundraising wasn't their main motivation in welcoming riders. Rather, they hope riders will see how a tornado can change life in an instant, but how their community has rallied in the aftermath.

The route has been adjusted to take riders through some of the hardest-hit areas. Here's hoping RAGBRAI Nation is inspired to be extra generous.

Carol Hunter, executive editor, chunter@registermedia.com

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Follow our RAGBRAI coverage all week, including a visit to tornado-ravaged Greenfield