I just found the website detailing the trip from oceanside to annapolis. Looks like the race starts in a couple weeks. I am a recent college graduate, and was interested in learning more about the race. I am getting pretty tired of sending endless resumes to engineering companies that I probably wouldn’t even be interested in working for. Forty hour weeks, sitting at a computer doing CAD drawings while life passes me by out there. Call me an idealist, but I am looking to do something more worthwhile.
Has anyone on here ever done it, or known anyone that did it? I figure if I start gathering information now, and start putting in some serious mileage on the bike, maybe I would be ready for next year. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for bearing with the ADD nature of this post.
Did the 4-person team last year. It was a fantastic experience!! The logistics and cost are daunting. One of our members will be trying the solo this year. The difference between the Team RAAM and Solo RAAM is huge. You need to qualify for solo RAAM, and I would suggest that you do Furnace Creek or other ultra races first.
I don’t know your fitness level so I am making an assumption here…do you really think a year of training will get you where you need to be to compete?
I have a friend who won the female division. Her fitness is insane. And when I say fitness I don’t mean a long ride on the weekend. You need a ton of mental fitness and a great support group as well. And her rides to and from work are longer than most put in on the weekends.
Here is an example of the lengths people will go through just to keep their heads up.
My fitness isn’t bad. I’m young so I think I can do anything. Probably means I will get myself into trouble, but that’s how ya learn. Thanks for info on the Furnace Creek Race. This crewing concept is new to me. I guess if I decided to actually get serious about it, that and the race fee would be the biggest obstacle.
I’ve been a volunteer at the RAAM time station in Camdenton, Missouri, and the webmaster for our station’s website (www.ts31raam.com) for the last three years. It’s one of the most amazing things to witness. After 1,800 miles, some of the solo riders look like they’re at death’s door, while others look like they started just a few miles down the road. We’ve seen some who we thought could not possibly finish, only to push themselves incredibly hard and cross the finish line. It’s beyond extraordinary what these people do.
The teams are extremely impressive as well. The best of them–especially the 8-person teams–cross the country at an average speed of around 23-25 mph. Incredible.
In the solo division, this year’s race looks to be one of best ever with a number of current and former champions participating. We were REALLY bummed out, though, when David Goggins had to drop out for medical reasons. While we didn’t think he could win it, we were hoping to at least see him.
If you want to see what the race is really about, and have the chance to take time off from work, I would suggest volunteering to crew for a rider or team next year. Crewing isn’t fun, but the knowledge you’ll gain will be invaluable if you ever want to participate as a racer.
I’ve done it twice on a four man team: Team 2Cure HD. It’s an amazing experience, and even the team mileage is not to be taken lightly. RAAM is really a multi-year process. You’ve got to decide which race variant you want to do, and then you have to budget training time, training resources and race resources to make it a reality. The support element alone requires a steadfast crew of friends/family willing to go on the road and play massuese/chef/wrench/driver/psychologist/medic/drill sergeant for two weeks.
There’s so much more I could write about it. Suffice it to say that I place my two RAAMs higher on the personal accomplishment chart than the two IMs I’ve completed. Furthermore, RAAM affords you the opportunity to see the country in a way that is spectacular, inspiring and humbling. You simply cannot imagine the beauty, the diversity and the generosity of our land and its population.
Forty hour weeks, sitting at a computer doing CAD drawings while life passes me by out there. Call me an idealist, but I am looking to do something more worthwhile.
There are a lot of worthwhile things to do but if you are thinking of giving up a career just to do a bike ride, you might want to think about it for a bit. I have a friend that used to post here and he gave me a lot of advice in terms of giving up a career to do other things (he and his wife did a bike tour around the world and now work in an orphanage in India) but he worked hard for a number of years to be able to do that.
There are things you can do slowly to set yourself up but don’t dismiss a potential career like Engineering so quickly. Besides, doing things like RAAM take years of preparation and you will need to work while doing that. There are ways to find a balance without giving up on one thing completely.
I’d also love to do the RAAM relay sometime if I can get the time from work to make it possible (and convince 3 of my friends to do the same - Erik you hearing this?). Can you give an idea of the training involved/required to do it as a relay? Be most interested to hear how it compares to IM training (# of months of build up, weekly hours, longest ride, key workouts, etc). Also like to know what sort of logistics planning + crew support is required. From a distance it seems like quite an undertaking on several levels but could be a pretty amazing experience if done right.
I just went over my log from that time, and I got up to 16 hours/week on the bike (usually 10 hours-12 hours/week for ~6 months), and scaled back the run/swim hours. I did a couple of centuries, with lots of hill work and group rides. The daily mileage for the 4-person relay isn’t impossible (6 hours in the saddle, 100-120 miles/day). Somewhere I saw a guideline that you should be able to do Team RAAM if you can do a century in under 5:30, so there are lots of riders who can do it. We were just 4 MOP triathletes. There are certainly teams that hammer the entire way (last year an 8-person team averaged over 23 mph). There are many strategies for doing the race, but most teams organize themselves so that the riders ride <1 hour per shift. This allows the riders to maintain a higher speed. Our crew support (10 people) was amazing, but it was surprising how exhausting it was for the crew. We did a 24-hour and 40-hour training ride w/support prior to the race, just so that we could get the logistics right. We used two vehicles (many teams use 3) and we lived out of an RV. The 2 person and solo races are significantly more demanding for the riders. A once-in-a-lifetime experience!
You might be able to find some links in the RAO site… Terri and George are the organizers for the Race Across Oregon and the Hill Country in Texas which are qualifying events for RAAM.
Before you quit your job, be aware that it is an expensive and complicated logistical event and cash sponsorship is rare. My wife did RAAM quite a few years ago, and it cost us over $15,000. About half of that was raised through fundraising (which in itself was a lot of work) and half was out of our pockets. We did get good equipment sponsorship, including a bike and plenty of clothes, tires, wheels, etc. She did get a very modest amount of cash and product at the end.
It was a 3 year process of competing in various ultra events, building up a results resume, training, and gaining confidence through accomplishments such as riding over 4 centuries in 24 hours without drafting. She works 2/3 time but took a leave of absence from work for the last couple of months. Because we live in a northern climate, she did a ton of trainer work in the winter, including indoor sessions up to 10 hours. She rode 600-800 miles per week in training before the event. The race itself was extraordinarily difficult physically and involved a great deal of suffering. It was also a very challenging experience for the crew, some of whom held up better under the sleep deprivation and stress than others.
With a few exceptions, for most RAAM riders the first crossing is a learning experience and the second is for reaching your performance goal. We only did it once, and tried to do both at once, not completely successfully but as well as could be expected.
In other words, not for the faint of heart. Good luck if you decide to pursue it.
People are strange, give em a f…ing t-shirt and they will pay a small fortune to MOP, ask them to do a 140.6 for the hell of it and they drop like flies.
I just went over my log from that time, and I got up to 16 hours/week on the bike (usually 10 hours-12 hours/week for ~6 months), and scaled back the run/swim hours. I did a couple of centuries, with lots of hill work and group rides. The daily mileage for the 4-person relay isn’t impossible (6 hours in the saddle, 100-120 miles/day). Somewhere I saw a guideline that you should be able to do Team RAAM if you can do a century in under 5:30, so there are lots of riders who can do it. We were just 4 MOP triathletes. There are certainly teams that hammer the entire way (last year an 8-person team averaged over 23 mph). There are many strategies for doing the race, but most teams organize themselves so that the riders ride <1 hour per shift. This allows the riders to maintain a higher speed. Our crew support (10 people) was amazing, but it was surprising how exhausting it was for the crew. We did a 24-hour and 40-hour training ride w/support prior to the race, just so that we could get the logistics right. We used two vehicles (many teams use 3) and we lived out of an RV. The 2 person and solo races are significantly more demanding for the riders. A once-in-a-lifetime experience!
If you want to be remotely competitive in team RAAM, you’d better be a lot faster than that. 5.5 hours is setting the bar pretty low.
I’d imagine that the riders for the faster male teams are generally capable of doing 4 hour or less solo centuries.
Although the knock on RAAM solo riders is that they’re not fast, at the end of her RAAM training my wife did a test on a local TT course and was within a couple of seconds of a well-known female triathlete who was the short course world champion that year, and subsequently won Kona.
I had the opportunity to hear a participant speak about his experience. In his opening I remember him saying that he spent 36 hours on his trainer in the basement. Only stopping to simulate nature breaks that would happen on the road. This only was to simulate the first 36 hours of the race, knowing there were 91/2 more days of racing to follow.
After that statement he had the undivided attention and respect of everyone in the room.
Try it and see what you think!
Rick
Although the knock on RAAM solo riders is that they’re not fast, at the end of her RAAM training my wife did a test on a local TT course and was within a couple of seconds of a well-known female triathlete who was the short course world champion that year, and subsequently won Kona.
Indeed. Most cyclists who have never done ultramarathon events don’t understand how speed works there. They look at Pete Penseyres’ record (15.3mph for RAAM) and think “how hard can this be?”. The slightly more attuned realize that this includes sleep time, and understand that its a bit harder to beat that than it might at first appear. But even they frequently don’t understand that to average 15.3mph all the way across the country actually means riding at a fairly respectable Ironman pace for the vast majority of the flats and downhills. Hauling a body and a bike up and over the big long passes out west, and then the many short hard passes in the east represents a type of riding that few TT’s let alone triathlons bother to include, and they have an enormous “slowing” effect. I don’t know what speed Pete was doing on the flats when he set that record, but it would not suprise me in the slightest to find that he spent a substantial fraction of the 8.5 days riding at close to 23mph just to compensate for all the 6-8mph sections (not to mention a few hours sleep on 5 of the 7 nights).
I used to ride ultras and I don’t think that anyone who did that kind of thing would imagine that you were ready for RAAM if you couldn’t relatively easily ride 200 miles in 10hrs (and that’s clock time, not rolling time). Not that this would be a sufficient indication, but it is a necessary one.
