The Iron Butt Rally is held in the United States every two years. Although we have looked into moving the rally to other countries, only Australia offers the wide-open spaces without international borders for the running of this 11 day, 11,000 mile plus marathon.

To completely describe the Iron Butt Rally would take an entire book. In fact, one of the best sources for information is Iron Butt competitor Ron Ayres's book, "Against the Wind" available from the Iron Butt Association. Many other unique stories have been written about the rally and some of the best ones are available on our web site and can be viewed by scrolling through the Iron Butt Stories sub-menu. The Iron Butt first ran in 1984. In 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 the rally started from Montgomeryville Cycle Center near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States.

The Iron Butt was not held again until 1991 when it came under the management of the Iron Butt Association. While the basic format of the original rally remained, two important things have changed; to insure the quality of the event, the rally is run every other year and the starting and ending points are rotated to different sections of the United States.