Race Across America Pictures...

[Veronica]

Our pictures are now up. Follow the link in my sig line.

Veronica

[Tri Girl]

AMAZING!!!! Wow- 6 days. How long did each person ride daily? I'm in awe of the teams' accomplishments. Truly awe inspiring. Pictures are great, too!

[Veronica]

With 8 tandems, if each team rode the same amount it works out to 60 miles per day. At one point, Thom was asleep and one of the racers was driving our van. I asked him what he had done to train for this and his reply was nothing; it was just 60 miles a day in 10 - 15 mile increments - most of the time the racers were doing 30 minute pulls, except in the Rockies and the Appalachians. To be fair the person I asked was Joe Peterson who holds the current RAAM record for both 2 man and 4 man teams. :D

The real accomplishment was getting 26 people across the country, without too many navigation errors and without killing each other due to personality conflicts as we got more and more tired. As crew we were getting about two hours of sleep in the van each day while the racers drove. That means the van was moving and our second set of racers would be getting in and out as we slept. Earplugs are a must for this sort of thing. At least that's what Thom and I were getting, I can't speak to the other crews. We'd also catnap for 10 - 20 minutes when we were stopped.

Veronica

[jobob]

Hey there - welcome back!! Great, great photos. Can't wait to hear all about it. :cool:

[Veronica]

Thom lost 5 pounds during the race and I lost 2 pounds. Poor Thom had to go back to work today.

We're working on the write up. The best day was the day we went up to Manga Pass, the highest point. We had two vans working together (4 tandems rotating) and it was a blast. That's the day with the steam train and the hula pictures.

Veronica

[Biciclista]

you said it was 60 miles a day in 10 - 15 mile increments. That would actually be 150 miles.
Sounds like quite the ride. did you get a feel for what was the hardest state to ride in, and which was the easiest?
congrats!

[Veronica]

The riders went out 4 times a day in 10 - 15 mile increments. That's 40 - 60 miles a day, depending on the terrain. I'm not sure how you got 150 miles. :p

Hard - urban areas were nasty to navigate through both for the riders and the navigators in the vans. Kansas was terrible - hot and humid. It was over 100 degrees the day we were there. Going into Effingham, IL the riders had to slog over a DIRT road in the dark on tires with 170 PSI. Fortunately, they did not get a flat.

Veronica

[Pedal Wench]

COol!!!

A friend of mine finished yesterday - Kevin Kaiser. He was in a battle for 4th and 5th.

What was the word on the route about Robic? It was interesting following the men's race, knowing the penalities would play a major role.

EDIT: I just saw it was a team for JDRF! A very good friend raced for Team Type 1 a few years ago. She was the only woman on the team. Very cool!

[Veronica]

From what we've been able to find out - Robic felt that he was being unfairly targeted with the penalties. He has pictures on his website of things other riders were doing that should have incurred penalties, but the other riders didn't get penalized.

Veronica

[Veronica]

I just want to know when I will be able to wake up and not worry about where are all the vans and who's transitioning next... RAAM nightmares!

Thom woke up in the middle of the night last night, asking where we were. In our own bed honey!

Veronica

[aka_kim]

Great pictures! It was fun following Team JDRF on Twitter and the RAAM site and checking where you guys were a few times a day. Great job! I can't wait to hear/read more.

OK, one question now. I think Howard from BJ said he got 1 shower all week while crewing for Team Type 2 - how many showers did you guys manage? :D

[Veronica]

We got one shower on Monday. I think it was Wed. that a woman at a gas station had a hose set up with soap and shampoo and I washed my hair. We had to take off, so Thom did not get to take advantage of that.

We got home yesterday afternoon and the laundry is almost all done. I still have to wash one of the sleeping bags. Let's just say, the van did not have a pleasant odor.

Veronica

[indysteel]

The riders went out 4 times a day in 10 - 15 mile increments. That's 40 - 60 miles a day, depending on the terrain. I'm not sure how you got 150 miles. :p

Hard - urban areas were nasty to navigate through both for the riders and the navigators in the vans. Kansas was terrible - hot and humid. It was over 100 degrees the day we were there. Going into Effingham, IN the riders had to slog over a DIRT road in the dark on tires with 170 PSI. Fortunately, they did not get a flat.

Veronica

Effingham is actually in Illinois, not Indiana, Not that it matters. Indiana's roads are often equally horrible. :rolleyes: We actually saw some of the riders on Friday driving along Highway 46 from Columbus, IN to Nashville, Indiana and then from Nashville to Bloomington. That's not a particularly safe road (two lanes, no shoulder), so I'm curious as to whether many of the roads are like that.

In any event, I look forward to reading more from you about it. Sounds like quite a journey.

[Veronica]

Thanks! I corrected it.

As you can imagine, much of the week is a blurred jumble in my brain. We did have some nasty words for Effingham. The folks manning the time station were great though.

There's the epic thunder storm that Joe and Brenda rode through, complete with hail.

Roehl and Scott crashing in Gettysburg when Roehl was blinded by an oncoming car's headlights and the confusing aftermath as we raced on, down 2 teams.

A team missed a turn in Kansas and our scurrying backward to get another team on the road where they had gone off course and then trying to figure out where the lost team was, so they could be picked up.


Veronica

[Biciclista]

The riders went out 4 times a day in 10 - 15 mile increments. That's 40 - 60 miles a day, depending on the terrain. I'm not sure how you got 150 miles. :p

Hard - urban areas were nasty to navigate through both for the riders and the navigators in the vans. Kansas was terrible - hot and humid. It was over 100 degrees the day we were there. Going into Effingham, IL the riders had to slog over a DIRT road in the dark on tires with 170 PSI. Fortunately, they did not get a flat.

Veronica

haha. sorry.
"The riders went out four times a day, doing ten fifteen mile increments"
you meant "ten to fifteen mile increments"
it was early, sorry.

wow, how come a dirt road in Effingham?!?

[Veronica]

The dirt road was to avoid a nasty road construction area. It also had a loose dog on it and was a pretty small road, maybe a lane and a half wide, but with lots of traffic. The guys at the time station said it was the quick way out of town.

Veronica

[Veronica]

I've been reading JulieB's comments over at BJ. It sounds like they had a much different experience than us. We had 5 vans, four of them with 4 riders and two crew people each. We also had a follow vehicle with two crew people each, for a total of ten crew members and 16 riders. I was wondering how Julie had gotten time to do any posting during the race. Now I know. When I wasn't navigating, I was sleeping, not posting info. :rolleyes:

Our plan was that one team from each van would go out for a 30 minute pull, so the riders were going out every two and a half hours, but the crew was on the entire time. We only had one 3 hour section, Monday night I think, when our van was not moving forward on the course. The only time Thom and I got to sleep for more than twenty minutes was when we put racers into the driver's and navigator's chairs.

I've slept 26 of the last 48 hours. :rolleyes:

Veronica

[Veronica]

And then there was the cat in the road...

Just after Roehl and Scott's crash in Gettysburg, so my nerves were already frayed, I saw a cat in the road. I said, "Cat!" Thom slowed down, the cat moved out of the way, but the stupid thing changed it's mind and went back into the street. Thom slammed on the brakes and I heard this swooshing noise. I screamed a bad word sure that we had gotten a cat. But no, the swooshing was the ice moving in the cooler as Thom hit the brakes hard.

We did manage to take out two birds in Kansas.

Veronica

[Biciclista]

It really sounds like you had the adventure of a lifetime. And i'm glad you didn't hit the cat. :cool::p

[Blueberry]

Thanks for sharing!! RAAM is one of those things I hope I have a chance to take part in, in some way, one day!

Hope Ann Wooldridge is still moving forward. I know she won't officially finish - but wow! To keep riding after that crash. The women this year were really amazing - Janet the Osprey is amazing!!

[Blueberry]

And Ann Wooldridge did finish! And set the record for an over 50 woman (though she wasn't fast enough to be an "official" finisher). Go Ann!!

[aka_kim]

OK, time for more questions :).

So you've covered sleeping and showering, how about eating? A video of another team showed the crew setting up a meal, and they apparently had a dedicated "chef". If you guys were always scattered around in 5 vans and always in rotation, what did you do for meals, and how did the riders get fed?

How old are the two Skipper kids? They look really young in pictures on the web site.

Is Jerry really 110? :)

The logic of the rotation. I know other teams employ the same or similar, with one bike on the road for a short period and then rotating through the whole team. But... but, isn't this a sure way to have the whole team, most especially crew, exhausted very quickly? The strategy of TT2 (and maybe others) with 8 bikes and 2 separate "shifts" would seem to offer both riders and crew some sort of extended rest each day. Since Team JDRF had so many experienced RAAM veterans I'd guess they chose the system which they knew worked, but I still don't understand it. :confused:

Did you get a JDRF jersey?

OK, OK, I'll wait for the write up. :D

[Veronica]

Eating? We made sure the riders ate what they needed, but both Thom and I lost weight over the week. While the riders were eating, we were often running other errands. We got probably one fast food meal a day. Thom was living on chocolate milk and I was downing Red Bulls and red licorice at night. The sugar high kept me awake through the dark, but when I crashed, I crashed HARD.


Matt and Scott are both 15. They also have a sister who is 15. Triplets! They are the youngest riders to have done RAAM.

I'm not sure how old Jerry is, but he is definitely one of the pluses of RAAM. He was one of the racers in our van and at first I thought he was going to drive me crazy, lots of corny jokes and endless chatter. But he grew on me like a weird old uncle.

I'm not sure why we did the rotation the way we did. We did do 3 rotations early on with just two vans. Communication between the vans was really poor and we got bad intell on where the other two vans had gotten to while we slept. Based on what they told us, we went about thirty miles further up the road than they had actually gotten. In retrospect at the time I should have questioned the report harder. It was early enough in the race that I was still doing math accurately and it didn't seem likely that they could have gotten so far, so fast. But I was assured that they had reported their position correctly.

We did not get jerseys yet. If they do a reorder we may.

Veronica

[Tuckervill]

Hey, I think that Asian couple in your pictures were standing outside the Today Show this morning! They were interviewed at the fence...and the man had broken his arm.

Karen

[Veronica]

Hey that explains the early morning text we got that someone was on the Today Show.

Veronica

[TxDoc]

Cool photos!

[Veronica]

We have now posted our official report on our website.


Veronica

[jobob]

Ouch, what a demanding week you had.

Look at the bright side, it could have been even worse (you know what I'm talking about here ... :D)

[aka_kim]

"Ouch" is right. Well, an unforgettable experience at least. Thanks for the report.