Shift 7: The Last Shift, The Shell Station and The Finish Line

Shortly after the Hammer took off, John and I quickly got in the truck and made quick work to get ahead and make it to the projected hand off spot. We know we wouldn't have a lot of time, and so it was of the essence. Not long after we posted up and got ready, the Hammer came barreling around the corner and it was GAME ON.

In my last post, I spoke of nervous energy (among many things) and a stoic presence from both The Hammer and I. As soon as I saw him come around his last turn of his pull, any and all nerves, butterflies or anything of the like turned into forward energy. Just like any race when the gun goes off, every cell in my body was focused into going AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.

I was so ready to rip. This was my last RAAM, my last shift, a short one at that, and it was time to close the door on what has been nearly perfectly executed race by everyone on our team. I am so proud and ecstatic about how everything came together over the course of months of intense planning, discussions, training, racing and crewing. This was it!

24MPH 

It loomed. It loomed large. The pressure was on. I was ready.

First pull - 27.2 mph (max 40.8). Game on. I was fired up.

The exchange strategy The Hammer and I fine tuned in the early stages in the race was no longer a factor. It was after 7pm local time, which meant that we had to race under night racing rules, despite there being plenty of sun left. This meant that all exchanges were static. To add extra challenge, the main roads of Maryland that we were riding on didn't exactly offer the best places for rider exchanges. Each time I got on the bike, I knew John would try his best for us to do 8 minute pulls, but given the logistics, I also knew that longer pulls were inevitable. I paced accordingly with intel from the follow van when we were stuck at red lights.

Second pull - 26.6 mph (max 34.4).

Given the logistical challenges of everything I mentioned above, riding towards the tail end of rush hour also proved to present its challenges. Cars were everywhere, and red lights seemed long. Really long. Also given night rules, I couldn't pass any cars, as I had to stay within the lights of the follow vehicle. Merging onto highways was also a treat.

The Bad News

I came up on a red light, and Steve rolled down his window.

"Hey, I just want to give you a heads up. We got a penalty"

"WHAT?!"

"Your light turned green, you better get going".

I was so confused. Did I do it? Did Airey do it? Did John park illegally? Did the Follow Vehicle miss something? Is everyone too tired or too excited (or both) and missed something? Did I break a rule?

I was really struggling, but trying to stay focused. I got another red light.

"What happened? Did I do something?"
"Don't worry about it, we'll explain later, but you do have to stop at the last station to serve the 15 minute penalty"
"DUDE, WHAT HAPPENED?"
"The lights green, Go"

Damn! Was Steve being nice? Did I totally screw up? Shit!

Airey and I did an exchange and I got in the truck and asked John if he knew what was up. He heard about the penalty, but didn't know any details.

We did another exchange, and at yet another red light, Steve confirmed that I wasn't responsible. Phew. I would have hated to have been "that guy". Oh well, nothing I can do now.

Airey posted up for the last exchange, and based on conversations we were having thru John, we decided to roll the last pull together TTT style. Dude! The Hammer put the hurt on me. It was probably one of my hardest pulls of the entire race! Damn! I found it funny though, as from my last pull in 2010, which I thought was going to be my last pull, I completely emptied the tank. It was such an absolute hard pull in the middle of the night. I had nothing but myself (and Outkast) to push myself to the brink. This time, I had my racing partner, who continued to push me to be my best until the last possible part of the race. Unreal.

Serving Time

Airey and I rolled out to the last station without a lot of physical and emotional steam. This seemed like such a bittersweet ending to our race. Total buzzkill. Everyone gathered, and the story was spilled. One of our riders went off course, and turned around while still pedaling, and got back on course. He did this right near a Time Station where RAAM officials witnessed everything. At first, no one from our team thought he was breaking the rules], since the rules have always stated that a rider must never ride backwards while on course. Come to find out, RAAM instituted a new rule in 2012 that said no rider shall ever ride backwards, whether on course or not. Boom.

Ironically for the rider, this was his fifth RAAM for our team. Not only that, he has historically been our strongest rider, and a leader of the team in his preparation, execution and attention to detail. He has pushed other riders to new level of fitness and has been such an asset to our team for years. Was I pissed when I found out that it was him? Not really, and definitely less so than if it was someone else. What he has given our team has been HOURS of speed advantages over just about anyone, and for many, many years - with this year being no different. To be pissed at a guy for selflessly giving for so long would be immature, selfish and short sighted.

Besides, finishing in 5 Days, 5 hours and 5 minutes sounds way better than 5 days, 4 hours and 50 minutes!

We all were pretty mellow after, and shared some laughs while we were serving our 15 minutes of penalty time.

As the time ticked off, The Hammer and I got ready to close out the last mile or so with a few escorted vehicles. We got on our bikes at a literal white line on the road and got to take it in. This was a pretty important moment for me, as I relished in being done with an awesome racing partner surrounded by awesome people and I was stoked to close out my last RAAM, along with The Hammers first (last?) RAAM in such fashion. Toby got this photo of us, right before RAAM gave us the go ahead to meet the rest of the team at the infamous Shell station, before getting the mandatory escort via RAAM to the finish line.

TEAMWORK

The Shell Station

The Shell Station is the second of 3 markers signifying the end of the race.

The mood is always kinda weird here. Everyone is tired, but also excited, in a "I raced more than I've slept for the past 5 days" type of mood. It's also kinda weird because we just sit around in a gas station parking lot while we wait for RAAM officials to give us some talk and then an escort, so in a sense, we are kinda just killing time. People go in and out of conversations like we are all kinda drunk.

During this time, you can see us just kinda sittin around:

Analyzing data that doesn't need to be analyzed at that moment

Shootin the shit while completely taking over a parking lot

Smiling

Telling stories (in fact, I would love to know what story I'm telling that has me waving my arms and making faces like this)

or simply hiding out from everyone.

The Finish Line

The 4 mile escort to the finish line is always kind of funny.

You want to laugh and goof around, but you can't really because there is a truck right in front of you, traffic around you and no one wants to be 'that guy' and make the tired mistake we are all somewhat capable of making at this point. Adrenalin isn't running through our veins anymore, so it's a delicate balance to laugh and prepare for what is one of the most anti-climatic finishes possible.

After we get to the Finish line, there is this kind of confusion as to what is going to happen. We get to the official finishing banner, everyone is standing around, a bunch of cameras are in our faces, and we basically  don't know what to do. Uh, just stand there? General confusion abounds with about 20 cameras in our faces.

We get up on stage and start the usual Q&A with the race directory. This was a little different than times in the past as we actually had an audience other than our crew. I must say, there was something cool about finishing on a Thursday evening with bars surrounding the area, rather than mid-late morning on a Friday. Things were generally a bit more rowdy.

The Q&A with the RD is guaranteed to have the following:

• Sarcasm
• A bad joke about METAL and/or his hair

While sarcasm was available, it wasn't as much as years past. The RD actually had plenty of good things to say about us.

"You knew they were out there to win, you guys were not talking any smack, you just went out and quietly put together that you were really confident about" (6:10)

(Despite METAL's best attempts to put a hat on, Rick still was able to bring up old jokes from yesteryear).

After the stage presence, we all hung out in the area to share some more laughs, and to see our family and friends who traveled from both near and far to come see us finish, along with a few more photo ops.

Most of us grabbed showers to feel somewhat human again, and went out to some local watering holes for some suds, since none of us have had any in at least 5 days, 5 hours and 5 minutes, and for most - many months before that. Wei, our Team Manager, who made many, many things happen for us, was in a very generous mood, and we promptly took over a bar.

Team 4Mil finished 4 hours after us, and after they did their stage Q&A, a few of us went over to congratulate them on a very good and hard race. To Wane Dowd, Shawn Olin and James Weinstein, you guys are class acts, and it was a pleasure talking with you and sharing war stories after.

Next post, the final post, are some final thoughts.

Shift 7: Prelude to the short and unexpected

Unexpectedly, we were going to be on for a short Shift 7. Even though it wasn't a full shift, it deserves a (long) prelude.

****

Picking up where I left off after Shift 6, I think our truck made the executive decision to actually order breakfast at McDonalds right after we packed up the truck. Mainly, because we were all hungry, and it was right across the street. After eating really good for months on end (the norm), and even eating really good during the race, we all threw our hats into the f&*k it bin, and got some sausage mcmuffins with cheese, hash browns and OJ's - even if it meant farting more in the truck - if such a thing is even possible from 4 dudes locked in a truck for the next 4 hours.

I'm pretty sure I was asleep within 30 minutes of eating breakfast, and was only awoken to a stopped truck so someone could take a leak in the middle of Maryland. After a quick pit stop, I was back asleep, and woke up moments before we hit the hotel in Maryland.

Part of me was curious how are boys were doing, but part of me really didn't care. We were done. The only thing I really 'cared' about though is whether we'd finish before sunset, or while there was still light out. A few weeks before the race, Barrie's projections had us finishing right around midnight Thursday, and that got me pretty jazzed up. In the years I had done it, the race started at 2pm on Saturday, and we always finished Friday mid-late morning. This year, with the race starting at noon, and with our extra firepower, I thought our team was flirting with a Thursday finish - nevermind Friday. Now, I'm debating whether we can finish under daylight. This, would be cool. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about it, so I went about enjoying the rest of my day before the 'ceremonies'.

I think we got to the hotel around noon, unloaded our gear from the truck and just crashed in the room. I was rooming with Toby for the weekend, and even though the race was done, he was still furiously hunched over his macbook working on the latest video and what we could do for the finish. There were lots of high fives, laughs, and story telling, strong possibility of overuse of the words "epic" and "awesome" and the like. A little while later, the Hammer showed up in our room to hang out. Hammer and Toby go back further back than the Hammer and I and Toby and I, and so there was a serious bro down going on (no flat brim hats though).

We were all shooting the shit, reliving some laughs, talking about how this whole thing came together months in advance, and basically 'shut off' from the actual racing part of the race. We were done. Someone even mentioned checking out the jacuzzi. We'll assume that the sleep depravity was a major reason for 3 dudes even entertaining the idea of getting into a jacuzzi together, but whatever. Right after the decision was made to at least go check it out, I got a call from John (our driver). The conversation that ensued went basically like this:

John: Barrie wants us to finish up the race
Me: Whaaaaaat?
John: Yeah, Wildebeest is going to jump in with Truck1 after his last shift (!!!) and ride for about 3-3.5 hours with them. He wants us to take over from Truck1 for what he thinks will be the last 90 minutes of the race. He figures we'll start somewhere around 630 and 7pm. The idea is so that we can keep the average speed up as much as possible by having fresh riders out there.
Me: (speaking louder so that Toby and Airey can here me) Oh shit. Ok, we'll be ready to go for 530pm.

There were 2 sets of very wide eyes looking at me in the room. I summarized what John said to Toby and Hammer. After it sunk in, the conversation went like this:

Me: Dude, I gotta take a shit
Hammer: Dude, I gotta take a shit too
Toby: <bent over laughing>

After business was taken care of, it was time to get down to business. I'm not gonna lie, that was a tough transition. While we had a solid 3+ hours to get ready for the shift, it was actually a very long and hard 3 hours.

I was checking out the race results, and after we finished our "last" shift, where cumalatively we were averaging over 24mph, there was a slow decline towards 24. After a few more time stations, our cumulative average speed actually dropped under 24mph. This was no fault to the racers that were on course - the terrain was tough, and everyones legs were just fried. Immediately, there was a huge pressure on our truck: Keep it at 24mph or above. I thought it was doable, but definitely challenging. I knew we had it on ourselves, but would the outside environment of the tail end of rush hour, congested east coast roads, intersections and highway merging (!!) be enough of a hurdle to prevent us from keeping it above 24mph?

Toby's iPhone never left his hands

Time passed, and it was time to head out. We left the hotel extra early, in case we needed to go on early, Truck1was ahead of schedule, or anything else that the circumstances might throw at us.

Toby was excited about this. He actually saw it as an opportunity, and somewhat timidly asked us if he could roll with our truck. Of course he could! He was stoked, and so were we. The man never stops. He was always playing an angle on how to beef up our social media presence, and saw this as an opportunity to broadcast some live stuff - us racing. Very cool. He is a social media monster, and pulled all nighters in the back of a conversion van in the middle of Kansas. That's the type of people we roll with.

Shortly after we took off from the hotel, I mentioned to the rest of the truck that the pressure was on us to keep the speed at or above 24mph, based on the latest data. Hammer just turned around and looked at me with a look in his eyes like "oh shit, it's about to get f&*king real". He was up to the challenge.

The ride out there was about 45 minutes or so, and I won't lie - I was a bit stressed, but not worried. I don't know why, but I was. Maybe it was thinking I was done, maybe it was because I felt this pressure to keep the average speed up. How the hell did over 5 days of racing gets placed on our trucks shoulders for an average speed metric that would live in infamy? Whatever, this is the shit champions are made of and from.

So, what did I do to prepare for such a task? I fell asleep.

Game Face. At least they don't have to worry about a backseat driver.

Flat out, in the back of the truck, neck crooked and everything, I completely zonked for almost 30 minutes. Toby was in the middle seat creating a ustream account, and doing test videos. He asks the Hammer to do a quick little audio test, then pans to me to say something, but I'm lights out. Hilarious! I finally woke up and everyone was laughing at me saying "Dude, you were totally out!" Dude, I know...

After I woke up, I started keeping tabs on our time, but also our racers out there. I was thinking that I was going to take the first pull, but after driving on the course backwards, I just kinda non-chalantly mentioned to Hammer "Hey Dude, I think you should take the first pull on this one", patted him on the shoulder and enjoyed his laugh, whose tone wreacked of "thanks buddy, I mean, asshole". We arrived at the spot, scoped it out for the best possible exchange place, and parked it for a few minutes. Based on the information I was gathering, it seemed like we were almost an hour ahead of time. We almost didn't know what to do, since we had never bene so early to an exchange. I then made a very strategic, calculated decision on how best to proceed, and announced it to the truck:

Me: Guys, I gotta take a shit. There's a gas station a couple miles down the road. This is non-negotiable.

The truck bursted into laughter!!

We made it to the gas station, and all the sudden, it was like a location-based laxative - everyone in the truck had to take a shit. After having lightened the load, I felt a lot better, and was ready to focus on the task at hand. I quickly downed some caffeinated gels to clear out the cobwebs, and was READY TO ROCK!!!

It is possible to stand in this position for
20 minutes straight without moving

We made it back to the exchange spot, and within a few minutes, Truck4 + some of our media crew rolled up to hang out for a bit. Everyone was chatty, complete with stories on how everyone was killing it out there, war stories, laughs and the whole 9. This immediately lightened the mood.

Meanwhile, Hammer took on this stoic presence that I had never seen before. He's always been cool and collected, but never like this. Dude was just stone cold sober and focused. He stood over his bike for at least 20 minutes without really moving, or even talking to anyone. I knew what was going on in his head. I mentioned to him how I had MAJOR butterflies in my stomach. He looked at me and just said "DUDE". That was all I needed to hear. He was in the same boat. The pressure was on. But why? There's only 90 minutes left. 30 some-odd miles. We got this. We both had razor sharp focus because we knew it was on. We all knew of the stature of Truck1 and its riders, but Truck2 was being given the ball in the bottom of the ninth to close out a near perfect game and make it lights out.

Beest

Eventually, the beest came around the corner, handed off the figurative baton to the Hammer, and off he went. There were lots of cheers after WB finished his last pull, for many reasons. One, for doing an amazing job in his first RAAM, but also because everyone knew this wasn't going to be his last RAAM.

This post is long enough, and so our last 90 minutes (and maybe even finish) will be chronicled in the subsequent post...

Shift 6: The last shift ever?

Introducing METAL's, Hammer's, and Slayer's blogs. METAL tells a story like you have never read before, and usually has me laughing in tears with his big word and run on paragraph antics. He goes into excrutiating detail, as seen by a rate of one post per pull so far. Maybe it's because we won this year, but there are a tad less fluff than in years previous. While unfortunate, it always makes for good reads. Hammer's writing style is very descriptive and helps paint a picture that I simply can't. This is Slayers first foray into the blogosphere whose perspective is also descriptive, enlightening and equally complimentary to all the other blogs.

*****

I woke up around 11pm for a 2am start. I'm not sure if the alarm woke me up, or if it was the Hammer, but it was obvious that as soon as I opened my eyes, the Hammer was wide awake, and a bundle of energy. Normally this part of the race for me is reserved for some sluggishness. Despite the lack of sleep catching up, I'd wake up a little earlier so I could have more time to wake up. Not for him. I'm pretty sure his fists were clinched and he was throwing out some words making it painfully obvious that he was AMPED UP for our upcoming last shift. Fortunately, his energy was contagious.

I quickly wiped the cobwebs from my eyes, went to work on my quad/ITB and we starting chatting up the next few hours. Of course, we were checking on our teams progress who continued to put time into the competition, and that alone is enough to get us pretty pumped up about closing the book on this years race.

The next few hours before our shift were pretty mellow. We packed up the truck, made our way to the projected hand off, which was further east than originally predicted (as usual), and we made it to the spot with about 10 minutes to setup (also the usual).

On-Time

For those who are not familiar with our unofficial team rule of "DON'T BE LATE", being early is on time, and being on time is late. Being late is like giving 2 of your teammates a death warrant for your truck. You see, 5 hours is a long time to be doing gut wrenching intervals, and each racer 'budgets' the amount of energy to expend over their shift. Until they hear from the oncoming team when and where the exchange will happen, they keep expending their energy to be done by the time 5 hours are up. A smart racer might even keep a little in reserve in case shit happens.

I was proud to say that our truck was setup and rider no earlier than 10-15 minutes for every exchange. This meant that 20-60 minutes out from an exchange, we communicate to Truck1 that we are ready, which means they can empty their tanks for the 5 hour mark. It's also a huge sense of relief for any rider that they don't have to go longer than the 5 hours. Going longer than 5 hours usually summons dark energies and negotiates the sale their soul to the devil just to make it through another few pulls. Truck1 has the honor of being our A-racers, and our truck did everything to keep up with them in all senses of the race, which also meant being on time.

Into the Night

Temps in the West Virigina night were comfortable as ever. The Hammer and I both started out on our TT bikes, but about 2 hours in, I switched over to my road bike.

Recently, Slayer and I had a conversation the other day about the benefits of switching bikes mid-shift. While the mechanics of pedaling the bike are very similar between TT and Road bikes, there's something that's just a little different. Whenever I (or Slayer) would switch bikes mid-shift, it almost was a sense of relief because different muscles were being used, and thus, we were able to side step certain muscular fatigue and keep producing watts at high levels.

The bike to use due to the terrain was not clear cut like it was for earlier parts of the race. The rolling foothills of the appalachians weren't very tall, but were couple hundred foot steep suckers that were just a little too tall to hammer it at the bottom, and let momentum and speed carry over to the top. This is evident in the below photos:

With the roadie, I could climb better, but with the TT bike and aero wheels, I could descend faster. Knowing that Graf gave us the talk back in April that the race can be won up the hills, I opted for the roadie. That, and because my hip bothered me on my TT bike, it was offered relief on my roadie. This gave me 2 aspects of producing more power for this menacing section. Win-win.

Most of the shift was pretty uneventful, or at least the first 3 hours. Go up a hill on Route 50, descend a hill on Route 50. The highlight of the course was going up a hill and seeing dear on the side of the road, and having to back off because I didn't want to startle them, and then crash the Follow Vehicle. That would have supremely sucked.

External Motivation and The Tipping Point

I am not one who is motivated by external factors all that much. It's not to say that I'm not motivated at all by my external environment, but the internal fire burns stronger. This can be seen as a spot of weakness to some who are much more externally motivated, but I could really care less.

Things were going pretty well for me, all things considered. Yeah, I was pretty fatigued in the middle of the night, but I was humming along at a nice clip. Somewhere around hour 3, we passed a time station. I didn't really think anything about it, but I happened to check our teams projection sheet, and the results hit me like a ton of bricks.

Barrie, our amazing crew chief, made a fairly robust projected exchange spreadsheet that we used throughout the race. The projected times were based off of old times + x factors, and then we posted actual times/speeds as we passed through time stations. It's pretty nerdy, useful and intuitive.

For the first time, our truck didn't meet the projected time for the prior time station. I took this to heart, and I was pissed. I took a minute to think through this. Maybe the projected time was during the day when we didn't have to do static exchanges. Maybe the missed turn we had made for significant time loss. Maybe something else.

Maybe it was time to find another gear. A fire was lit under my arse, and it was game time more than ever. I checked the clock, and I had about 2 hours left in my RAAM career. Game on.

Each pull after this point was an all out time trial, rather than just sustainable, hard-ass tempo. When I would approach the Hammer for an exchange, I was out of the saddle for full on 20s sprints. He picked up on this too, and we basically started attacking each other at every exchange. With the Hammer being a former State Crit champion, this meant all out WAR on each other (in a friendly way of course). THIS was a very awesome part of the shift, and one that really set the tone for the last few hours.

About 2 pulls later, I knew the Hammer was going to have a long pull, and for whatever reason, I knew it was time to switch out my climbing wheels for my Zipp 404's. The section in front of us was definitely rolling, and while some would go for their TT bikes, I stayed with the roadie, but chose the aero wheels to bridge the gap. A toss up really, but using the above mentioned logic, I knew this would be a good choice. My first pull on the 404's was like THUNDER. Let's face it, race wheels sound bad ass, and when a racer is fired up, it only stirs the pot. On said pull, I dropped the follow vehicle. Twice. I also arrived at the next exchange point faster than expected, and then dropped our truck. It was full-on Animal mode, and I had a shit-eatin' grin from making good problems for our team to have. I was amped up, and even though I was pushing really, really hard, I felt like I could have kept going for a few more hours.

2% almost feels like 10%

Despite the fog, we could tell that the sun was going to start coming up, and the last section of our shift had considerable climbing. Climbing at this stage in the race is almost comedic. I admit, at a 2 % grade, I'm practically out of the saddle. I don't really care - anything to get up the hill faster is what I'll go with. There actually is a video of me climbing like that, and the grade is so little, I looks like I'm on a flat. Even I thought "What am I doing?", but then I remembered. Whatever.

The Hammer and I exchanged out for the last pull of the shift, which I got. I was pretty happy about this, and thought it would be a great finish to my RAAM career. Even better was that I was going to finish a climb, and then get a fun descent down to where Truck3 was waiting for us.

As I crested, a feeling of happiness came over me. That feeling of "it's over" that any endurance athlete has felt in a long ass race. As I crested the hill, I could see the downhill, and naturally, I kicked up for a very fun descent.

Then I was greeted with a little surprise.

Parked on the side of the road was 4Mil's bus. I couldn't believe it. This was my last pull, and here I got to see our competition, parked on the side of the road, maybe even sleeping. If they were awake, even better. If they got to see Team ViaSat blowing by them, well then, damn. I instantly got a shot of adrenaline, and attacked a downhill like I've never attacked before. It was so completely freaking awesome, I can't describe it. It might sound absurd, but in the thick of everything we have been through, I couldn't have scripted a better way to round out my last RAAM.

Scripted

At this stage, anything is bent over hilarious

The funny part was that there was a red light waiting for me at the bottom of the hill, and Truck3 was on the other side of the intersection. I was having a party in my head, the Follow Vehicle was cheering me on, and there was a flat out party where our truck and Truck3 were setup. It was like we took over the intersection as 3 disparate parties.

These never stopped

I soft pedaled through the intersection got off my bike, and it was like pandomonium!!!!! I was all jazzed up, describing my descent in full detail, everyone was high fiving, and it was a bigger celebration of finishing in a random parking lot than any RAAM finish might be in. It was the longest we've ever taken to get all packed up after a shift but it didn't matter, we were done!!! Barrie and our crew confirmed that we wouldn't have to ride again, and so it was off the Annapolis for some serious celebrating!!!

Truck3 started their RAAM finish with these views. Also scripted!

Shift 5: No Bueno

** No photos in this post. That's the drawback of riding the graveyard shift, 4am-9am: No Media Support **

Greenville, IL to Sullivan, IN. Hardest shift ever for me.

It wasn't because of the weather. We actually had really nice weather. I believe our shift started at 4:00am (local) time, and so the temperatures were nice. Temperature range for the shift was 66-89, with an average of 73, which is pretty cool by this years standards.

It wasn't because of the traffic. Not many drive at this time of morning (thankfully).

Yeah, I was a little fatigued. I hit a max HR of 165 (drown from 186 on Shift 1, showing that even the heart as a muscle does get fatigued this deep into a race), but I was at least consistent during all my pulls, averaging just under 25mph.

Groggy? Yeah, a little.

Motivation: Still high, but who is exactly amped at this hour?

I took the first pull of the shift, and wanted to ease into things. In other words, not floor it out of the gate. The first pull was exactly that. Eventually we made our way onto the frontage road of I-70, and it went on for a very long time (couple hours). Things were OK for me, but my left hip was 'noticeable'. It wasn't until we took the right at Effingham (no, I'm not cursing Ham, but Hammer does say it kinda funny), which provided a nice, flat stretch of road where I should have been absolutely ripping, where things started falling apart.

My left hip went from noticeable, to absolute freaking pain. I was literally screaming out loud in the middle of the night because of it. Now, screaming out in the middle of nowhere in RAAM (and in training) is not something new to me. I admit, I do it when necessary, and it makes me feel better. Somehow. But now, it wasn't helping. This was a different kind of pain.

I hadn't mentioned any of this stuff to John or really anyone really, but after doing an exchange, he said to me "Is everything alright? Your pedaling didn't look all that great, and the Follow Vehicle called and said they could hear you screaming." The cat was out of the bag.

Subsequent pulls were done with my left leg being a passive stowaway on a battleship that refused to go down. It was there for show, comraderie, physical balance and minor work output, but other than, it wasn't doing much.

I learned a few things about myself in 2010, when I went into the race injured, and actually developed another injury over the course of the US of A. I mentioned the issues I had during the race to people, but I didn't complain. I gutted it out across the country because there was no other option (in my mind anyways) when the team is counting on you and your friends and family are cheering you onthousands of miles away. This year would be no different, and I knew this would be a test of mettle.

I started learning how to pedal differently. When I engaged my glute muscles, my hip hurt a lot. When I didn't engage them, things were a lot less bothersome. So, I started pedaling more with my quad, hammie and calf without my glute. Admittedly, this produced some conflict. Part of my PT in 2010/2011 revolved around re-engaging my glute muscles when pedaling because over the course of time, they basically turned off when cycling. I was a total leg masher at the time. I put those thoughts aside for the meantime, and just focused on what I could do go as fast as possible. Learning a new cycling movement. Engaging different muscles. Keeping my head a little lower. Focusing on right leg strength, while not overburdening it. Keeping a positive mindset.

Fortunately, Airey was feeling like a rock star and did more than his fair share of pulls (it ended up being a 60/40 split). His claims of riding endurance pace at 28mph took huge pressure off of me to just focus on doing the best I could, without worrying about average speed dropping.

The end of the shift came, and it was a little bittersweet. The sections of road we were on were built for speed. Of the 48 miles I road, I gained a mere 646ft. It was borderline Fiesta Island flat. I was a bit ticked that I couldn't just floor it, but there's nothing I could have done better. Fortunately, even our competition was a full 1mph slower than us for that stretch, which gives a lot of credit to the Hammer for carrying the load when his wingman was down.

My thoughts post-shift went immediately into figuring out how to solve this problem. I wrote some emails to Ryon and my former coach, and also talked about options with our crew chief. Admittedly, there were a few times where I had 'resorted' to thinking about how the team would take it if I asked other riders to ride more.  Not my first, second or third choices, but to be objective, we had to consider all possibilities. Barrie fortunately, was already one step ahead of me, and drawing up scenarios using that idea.

Ultimately, we decided it was best to contact my ART doc and get some guidance. After a 10 minute conversation, her sage advice was to focus on rolling/massage my left IT band, rather than focusing on the hip. It instantly clicked. She wanted me to focus on the likely cause, not the effect, that I had been focusing on. It was a lesson learned over the course of PT a few years ago, and it instantly made sense.

In the back seat of our suburban, I would do 15 minutes "on", and about 45 minutes "off" when it came time to rolling it out with The Stick, and using a lacrosse ball (ow!), which went on for about 6 hours. The effort didn't stop once we got to the hotel room, when I was eating my obligatory Cheeseburger and Fries. I even woke up extra early before my last shift to try and loosen up the muscles.

I was hell bent on being as best as I could for what might be our last shift, my last shift in RAAM.

Shift 4: Run for the border!

When Dorothy said we're not in Kansas anymore, she really meant she couldn't see these anymore.

Remember that blurb about those occasional hotels that are kind of suspect? Yeah, that was our Kansas hotel. After walking in, looking around and saying "hhmmm" in a rather glum tone, we focused on just getting some rest. But before we could do that, we need to have a conversation about the 800 pound gorilla in the room - the "good problem to have" conversation.

While we expected 20mph tail winds in Kansas before the race, we got 20mph cross winds throughout the state. Despite this, our team was still cranking along, but we still needed to estimate about where we were going to do a shift exchange. We knew the time (7am local), but where? Before going to bed, we realized we probably stayed one town further east than we should have, and would likely have to backtrack a little more than 'ideally' in the morning. I usually like to get up about ~2 hours before a shift start, but we were going to have get up a little earlier than normal. Now, backtracking is way easier on everyone (current and oncoming team) than trying to play catch up, but its still part of the game.

Fast forward to the next morning.

• 1st order of business: moan and groan and damn the alarm clock
• 2nd order of business: Check our updated projections, based on updates from our crew (we had to drive a little further west than expected)
• 3rd order of business: confirm said projection with Truck1

The confirmation text message was pretty clear: Truck1 was projected to finish 45 miles west of the crew's projection, for a grand total of nearly 90 miles of backtracking. We had two hours before our shift start, had done no packing or prepping, and were still wiping the cobwebs from our eyes. No coffee, water bottles, food - nothing - had been made. I immediately got on the horn with John, started coordinating with our crew, emailing everyone to lift the inertia. While the immediate stress of getting out the door was paramount, the underlying reason also needed attention: weather. Our strongest truck wasn't meeting projections, not for lack of effort, but more for the weather cards they were dealt. In other words, the winds were stuff, and they were slowing us (and everyone else) down. I immediately started preparing for a tough shift (not that any shift is easy, but the challenges can be dynamic).

Fortunately, when we were on the road, I received a phone call from our crew member, the projection from Truck1 was off, and that the original projection place was a pretty good spot to shoot for, and that subsequent updates would be made as they got close. PHEW.

Fortunately, this got us to the exchange point in plenty of time. What was odd was that I feeling cold. After having 3 straight shifts in triple digit temperatures, the 72*F, humid and windy conditions made me cold. Hell, I had goose bumps and was shivering! Weird.

We got wind (no pun) that Truck1 was approaching, and that where we were for an exchange was perfect. It was also time in the race where I had a sinister laugh.

METAL was taking the last pull for Truck1, and Hammer was starting our shift. Hammer was positioned after the right turn, and halfway between the turn and a stop sign. Total Distance - quarter mile or less. METAL can roaring around the corner, and Hammer did his thing of getting up to speed. METAL started flooring it to catch him, but appeared to have some trouble. Next thing I know, METAL screams "SLOW DOWN!!!!", finally crosses wheels with Hammer, and off he goes. Funny part was - no one knew a stop sign was 100ft after an exchange. Whoops.

My thoughts were "Welcome to my world, METAL".

It turns out, the highest wattage, 579W, METAL put out for the entire race was at that exchange. This echoes my feelings. The hardest part of any pull for me is not the beginning of it when I'm getting up to speed, it's the end part of it when I'm just digging to catch up to my riding partner! I admit there was one time where I also got pissed and told him to slow down. I also realize that was probably some payback from the little incident in Monument Valley. hehe

Not as easy as it looks

This shift was wicked (note the Massachusetts heritage), and definitely unlike any shift I've done before. The wind was unrelenting in its battering against our right sides. I tried running my 404 up front, but that lasted all of one 3 mile pull, and that was with some tree coverage to my right. I opted for my most shallow wheel, an AC 420. Even then, it was like wrestling a bear on my bike. This image gives you a hint as to how slanted we rode:

Wind makes for ugly pedaling

I must have spent about a third of my time on the bullhorns, rather than in the aerobars because it was blowing me all over the place. Asking me to hold a straight line was akin asking a college student to do so while walking at 1am on a weekend night. I was all over the place! Just gnarly. There were times where I was really exposed that made it tough, but occasionally, there would be trees or hills to my right to provide some respite. This allowed me to relax a bit, but as soon as the coverage was gone, getting hit with it made me brace myself every time. Even passing our truck caused this on every single pull. It was truly "the gnar". 3 hours into the shift, the right side of my desk wheel was basically brown from all the dirt, grass and other crap that was blown from the Kansas plains onto it.

Waves of pain

After all that description, you can basically see all of that with a not-so-horizontal horizon in almost all of the ANIMAL CAM video, put together by our genious media team. Turn up your speakers!




Somewhere around the middle of the shift, we must have seen 5-6 solos out on the road, all within about 75 minutes of one another. It was insane. I somehow (was the asshole) that passed just about all of them, and while it was great to see them, I felt a tad 'odd' ripping by them at a speed that was likely more than double what they were doing.

Guilty

About 3 hours into the shift, my left hip started feeling a little funny, and progressed to 'mildly bothersome' by the time the 5 hours were up. It basically felt like someone was jamming my femur into my hip socket. It's about as comfortable as it sounds. I was dealing with it pretty, starting to do a little bit of dynamic stretching off pull, and a little self massage. I wasn't about to let that get to me, because we were on the brink of something big.

Going to war with mother nature

Everyone thinks Kansas goes by fast because it's so flat. And while it does, most people don't recognize how long it is. Every year leading up to this year, it has taken our team more than 20 hours to cross the state. That means one truck gets more than one shift in Kansas. This year, that trend was not happening. We received word about 90 minutes before our shift change that it was possible to get to the Missouri border by the end of our shift. Not that we were sandbagging beforehand, but that fired our truck up! I took my last pull through some little town, and with the help of some locals, totally got the green light and just ripped through some brick-laden streets with plenty of cheering. I then handed off to the Hammer, who crossed into Missouri on his last pull of our shift. High fives and cheers were a plenty, and a lot of credit goes to our crew for helping us get there so efficiently.

The Show Me State!

Team Escort

In what seemed to be a daily tradition, Ryon chimed in with another gem of an email. Hypothesizing that our glycogen stores were getting low, he recommended to the entire team, even the crew, that we start getting more fat into our diets. For me, this is not a big deal. I usually get at least 50% of my daily calories from fat, and have always believed that "animal fat makes everything better". Ryon went on to say that he "didn't care if we were eating cheeseburgers and fries" - we just had to make it happen. Simply reading "cheeseburgers and fries" turned me into a new man. I immediately became fixated on having some. We scoped out the nearest Hardee's and everyone in the truck inhaled their meal.

From that point on, I craved a burger and fries after every shift, and made it a point to have some too!

We hadn't crossed the Mississippi yet, but the fatigue from the race was starting to set in about now (on schedule), and all the sudden sleeping in the truck became a hell of a lot more easy. So, take one tired racer, feed him a burger and fries, and within 30 minutes is guaranteed slumber in the back seat. This marked the point in the race where sleep was amassed more by naps in between shifts, rather than a standard 4-7 hours in a hotel bed.

We headed onward to Indiana, for what was one very tough shift for me...

Shift 3: It's mostly downhill from here

This shift essentially marked the slow 600 mile very gradual decent from the Rockies at nearly 10,000ft down to the great plains for Kansas. It was a shift I was looking forward to quite a bit, since the terrain including climbing the beautiful Cuchara pass, and heading into the flatlands of eastern Colorado. It was a shift that tested not just our climbing and time trial prowess, but also our bodies ability to deal with quite a bit less oxygen.

*****
After trucking through the night, we arrived at our hotel early Monday morning. It wasn't really a hotel, it was the La Veta Inn. It deserves it's own paragraph.

One of the challenges of RAAM is simply finding a decent place to stay in. The country is littered with quite a few Motels - some questionable- and occasionally I've stayed at some during the race. It's not ideal, but since you're so beat, you just deal with it. The La Veta Inn was not one of those places. We got in the room, and it basically was an apartment - full kitchen, nice beds, couch - but it had a touch of "mountain getaway" to it. Waking up the next morning, the courtyard was basically a cafe, and they served, good, free coffee. Now, I am a snob of very few things, and coffee is one of them. Free coffee 15ft from my bed - saaaaaaaweeeeeet! We all got a bit comfy hanging out in the courtyard, ordering breakfast, and sharing a few laughs. The service there were awesome too. Completely acknowledging that you will likely never be in La Veta, CO (pop. 777), but if you ever are in the area and need a place to stay, definitely check this place out!

After we cleared the cobwebs in the morning, John did his mandatory, thankless duties of grabbing water and any other random supplies we would need for the shift, and for the inevitable "drive through the middle of po-dunk eastern colorado before we hit civilization in Kansas". This cued the Hammer and I to do mandatory bike maintenance.

I was stoked for the day. Of the second section of RAAM I wanted to ride, this area - with Cuchara Pass (9,989ft, which were staying at the bottom of) - and the road leading to the top - locally known as the Highway of Legends (ahem) was next on my list after Monument Valley. When I rode it in 2010, I really loved the area, and felt like Colorado left a (good!) mark on me and I was excited to return to what I think is the most beautiful area in RAAM.

1,000 words of METAL

Shortly after starting on the bikes, The Hammer was making claims of not feeling too well. The frequency of such statements was increasing, and I started having an "oh shit" moment, having flashbacks of my riding partner getting sick in 2010. I quietly was dropping f-bombs in my head, but also recognized that it wouldn't do me any good to get all worked up about it and expend energy. He did the best he could to get rid of the nausea, but elevation sickness was already settling in a little bit. It threw a small wrench into our morning mix, but fortunately, having been in the situation before, I knew I had to step up my game a bit for climbing the pass. I also know that if I was ever in a bad spot, he'd back me up, and that eventually became the case east of the Mississippi.

We arrived at our exchange spot on time (again!), and METAL, in usual fashion, approached with maximum ferocity. In his approach, he screamed the expected "GO GO GO!!!", and I put so much torque on my first pedal stroke that I actually popped a wheelie!

The climb was as tough and beautiful as I remember, but fortunately, I was firing on all cylinders. The Hammer, not so much, but even when he is at 60% capacity, the man can still rip! I was taking longer pulls than he, and was going to take over from him at the summit. Naturally, I had to do a photo op:

Not 2 seconds after this photo was taken, The Hammer comes barreling up the road, catching me off guard (again), and I ran to get on my bike.

Now, here's where the FUN was - the descent off of this peak! YEEHAW!

Open Road Descent from nearly 10,000ft. Winning, literally and figuratively.

I was descending for a quite a while, and eventually came around a corner to find Hammer and John waiting for me. I was coming in pretty hot, but was telling them both that I was good, and that they needed to focus on getting the Hammer down the mountain to a lower elevation so he could get back on 8 cylinders. That, and of course, I selfishly didn't want to stop descending :)

Living

Eventually we got to the bottom of the descent, banked left towards Trinidad, and swapped out the roadies for the TT bikes. I was also looking forward to this section, since its flat/rolling, typically with a ripping tail wind.

Hammer doing what he does best - making John and I  look slow. Me saying "sorry dude, but you'll have to keep going"

 Ripping it was, but the ultimate buzz kill came about halfway to Trinidad:

Impatience

I was stuck at this light for what seemed like an eternity due to road construction closing an entire line. Rest assured that when that light turned green, I basically dropped all the traffic behind me.

After passing through Trinidad with our Media Crew chowing down on steaks and cheering us on, we headed out to the eastern plains of Colorado.

Lunch for me. Hard to say if a steak would have been better.

Temperatures quickly raised from the 80's on the mountain, to over a 100 out here. The road was generally straight, and false flat downhill. In other words, time to RIP! The Hammer was back firing on all cylinders, there was no traffic, and we basically had the road to ourselves. Well, and the wind.

What was a tailwind west of Trinidad, somehow turned into a crosswind east of it. It was a consistent 15-20mph right at our right side, with the occasional gust of about 25. It was difficult, but we were both running our disks and deep front wheels. At times, it made handling the bike a tad difficult, but with such little traffic on the road, it really wasn't an issue if we were getting blown around a bit. The objective was speed, and we used all of our resources to maximize it.

We also started really fine tuning and honing our exchange strategy. The greatest part is that it took just about zero effort for our 3 man truck to be in sync with one another. While our basic team strategy is '15 minutes on / 15 minutes off', we had migrated to a '8 Minute on / 8 minute off' Strategy that was working really, really well. Not only that, we were orchestrating our exchanges with minimal speed loss. John was in tune with how we were feeling, and he was on top of things, as usual. BOOM. Things were clicking in our truck, and I couldn't be happier.

Check out a video our media team did of us through this section:

This section of the country also marked the first time our team was going to be passing some solo's. I think I saw 2 or 3 out there, and fortunately when I saw them, they and their crew seemed to be in good spirits.

The shift ended just east of Kim, CO, quite possibly one of the smallet towns in existence. Population: 72. Damn. Eric and Rich showed up on time as usual, and we handed off the reigns to them to make it to the Kansas border. It was time to rest up, because the winds weren't done with us yet.

While the shift was over at this point, I was beginning to feel really good about the race and its potential outcome. We were about an hour up on 4Mil at this point, and a bit more on Strategic Lions. Ryon, resident number cruncher on the team, chimed in with an email to the team saying that the competition was going to have to increase their power by about 10% over the next day and a half just to catch up to us. Having used a power meter in training, I can appreciate this. 10% more power when you are already racing doesn't just come out of nowhere. In fact, it may not even come out at all. It is a HUGE thing to ask of yourself and your teammates to go from, say, 300W to 330W . Even then, at the speeds the top teams are racing at, so much energy is going into overcoming air resistance, that it's almost sad how much little speed you can get from 10% more power, whereas the energy expenditure would go way up.

Out of the aerobars only for turns

It was at about this point where I started thinking that this was our race to lose. It was a bold thought, and admittedly, one that I was a little bit uncomfortable with, seeing as though we were only about a third of the way into this race, and that real racing starts east of the MississippI river. I was slightly excited with the idea, but really, it was totally back burnered, and it changed my perspective a little bit. I didn't downshift into risk mitigation mode (yet), but it did make me focus on the race a little differently. Kansas isn't really a logistical challenge, but if we weren't careful, we could screw something up, and lose precious time. I refused to do anything of the like. Because everything west of Kansas is wide open roads where you can really rip it and focus on just about nothing except for pedaling, Kansas starts the trend of increased congestion as we continue east, and the need to not miss any turns.

I kind of kept these thoughts to myself, and nonchalantly mentioned to The Hammer "Hey, did you see Ryon's email?" but it didn't go much further than that. It was time to relax, reflect, and share some war stories and laughs amongst the truck, and with our newest crew member. The post shift adrenaline rush/crash and bullshitting with everyone else is always one of my most favorite parts of the race. It was time to kick back and plan for a very hard, windy next shift.

Shift #2: A Monumental Effort

Quite possibly, my most memorable shift in all 3 RAAM's that I've done.

Memorable is about the best way I could put it. Airey asked me what was my "favorite" shift of the race. I'm not sure I could put my finger on a favorite per se, but this shift sticks out the most. The combination of anticipation, pulling away for good, temperatures, average speed, challenges, teamwork, terrain and topography embodied all that was RAAM.

*****

I don't remember much past getting in the truck after finishing our first shift, other than getting to the hotel in the Navajo Indian Reservation before sunrise (I think?), which is the farthest I've ever stayed up the course for a second shift. Pretty cool. I woke up to the Hammer about ready to eat his arm he was so hungry, whereas I pulled the pillow over my head for an extra 45 minutes worth of z's. I ended up walking outside sometime around 10am, and BAM: 100 degrees! Haters would say "Oh, but its a dry heat", and while 10% humidity is WAY better than 90% humidity, it's still freaking HOT. It was like being in a hair dryer, because the wind was definitely up. Oh well, better start drinking and taking in salt.

The wind ended up being a topic of speculation for quite sometime. Like most racers, we were keeping tabs on the weather at least a day ahead of future shifts, and of course, what the weather would be like when we would be riding in a few short hours. Historically, we would get some cross/tail winds through this section, but mother nature, or at least the top 4 weather sites from google, were saying something different. The forecast was calling for 20-30mph winds out of the east-southeast. In other words, 20-30mph winds straight on our sides. Damn. The day, it seemed, would be a character building ride. Little do we know how familiar we were going to get with said winds.

Unofficial standard protocol states that whenever you wake up (or really, whenever you aren't sleeping), to check on race results. It looked like our guys had some trouble with our competition overnight. By trouble, we were still ahead, but it looked we may have lost a few minutes. Not a big deal honestly, because the race was still young and our best riders, and climbers, were out on course climbing through Flagstaff, and en route to us. Here's a little video our media crew made of their shift through Flagstaff:



This mindset actually marked the biggest difference between this year, and shift, than any other in the past. In years past, we were always trying to play catch up, usually in second place by the CA desert. The pressure of chasing is a lot harder. But this year was different. We were ahead, and I just felt confident that we would stay ahead. Of course, it seems easy for me to say that well after the fact, but that "stress" of prior races wasn't "there" this year. I was confident in my training, riding partner, our crew and our other riders.

We were communicating with the follow vehicle and Truck1 on an exchange spot, and we got there with about 30 minutes to spare. No worries, it was probably good to acclimate to the heat and be ready in case we needed to move. As I was standing outside, the wind was all over the place. But, slowly, and surely, it changed, and it stayed consistent, in the best possible direction: at our backs.

God Bless America

As METAL approached, he screamed at the Hammer, who immediately took off like a bat out of hell. Our truck then took off, and as we approached him, seemingly a mile up the road already, John said "I wonder if Airey knows that he's going 40mph". DAMN! Dude was FLYING. Next it was my turn, and fly I did.

The next few hours flew by, literally. While it was hot, the wind kept things reasonable, our legs were fresh, Truck1 put time into the competition, and we were amped TO DO WORK! Our media team, showed up sometime shortly after we started, and it was a blast to have them around. Now, when I saw we were flying, I wasn't BSing you. Here were the team splits from Tuba City to Kayenta (71.83 miles):

Team ViaSat:  30.57 mph (!!!!!!)
4Mil:                27.81 mph
Strat Lions:       25.2 mph

The stoke was easily seen at 3:00 in the video at the end of this post.

A few exchanges later, John and I posted up towards the bottom of a small hill. This is normally a Faux Pas in RAAM, since the oncoming rider likely can't get up to speed in time for the active rider, resulting in a total loss of speed. So, Airey comes over the hill, and John says "You know he's gonna come flying in at over 40, you should get going". I couldn't argue, so I started off in earnest. About a minute later, he was still back a ways, so, I just stopped pedaling. No big deal.

Now, for those of you who don't know the Hammer, he is a mild mannered, cool, calm and collected dude. He's doesn't get pissed off easily or often, but when he does, look out. Well, for whatever reason, he was picking up a headwind while he was catching up to me, and my pedaling just kept on extending him. He rolls up on me, screaming, swearing, and swinging his arms. Basically, he went way into the red to catch me at the end of a long pull. I thought "Oh shit, I'm gonna be out here for like 30 minutes" and paced accordingly. This is partially documented in the video at the end starting around 1:10. Now, it's also worth mentioning, that I was having my own problems on this exchange, because our media vehicle literally ran me off the road as they passed me. Dude! Fortunately, the Hammer's temper was short lived, and his perspective was easily taken over by the beauty that is Monument Valley.

I was SO STOKED to ride this part of the course. I drove it in 2009, and was amazed at how cool this place was. Incredible!!! In 2010, I rode through at night. Boring. Now, we were riding it as the sun was dropping on the horizon. Awesome.

Doing Damage

The stage was set for our media crew to take advantage of "The Golden Hour" in a great place to be, and that they did. It seemed for a while, that every time I was on the bike, about a mile into my shift, there they were posted up on the side of the road with cameras and video. For every pull for well over an hour. I felt like such a rock star, and so naturally, I dubbed them "The Paparazzi".

With the long stretches in Monument Valley, the Hammer and I started refining our exchange strategy without really even talking about. All that geeking out about efficiency before the race was starting to pay off. You can get a taste for what we started doing based on the below video, THE HAMMER CAM:


BIG props to GoPro (one of our sponsors), and our media team for putting this together!!!

Monument Valley wasn't without its hardship though. After 4 hours of 100+ temperatures, and not staying on top of my nutrition, I yakked three times on a pull, and told the follow vehicle to call John and have Airey ready to go on short notice. Fortunately, both of them were ready, and after a few pulls, I got myself better to finish out the final hour. Fortunately, the Paparazzi didn't catch any of this!

It's funny, as incredible as Monument Valley is, I don't really remember leaving the valley of massive buttes and towers, I just remember reaching the point where it was time to get the roadie out instead of the TT bike. The terrain had changed to rolling and hilly, which was a both welcome and unwelcome change to the past 4 hours.

The amount of explosive energy at exchanges can't be captured with a camera

We both finished off the shift on a great note, with me taking the last pull on a descent, and handing off to Truck3, literally, at the same spot I took over as Truck3 on our second shift in 2009. Big props to Truck3 for showing up early and becoming the Follow Vehicle so the real FV could get gas.

For any of you who haven't been through monument valley, it's one of those places where photos and videos won't do the justice.

You might be able to get a taste of it from this video, which was masterfully done by our media team (which still gives me some goose bumps when I watch it):



As we handed off to Truck3, we kicked back to relax, laugh and share some war stories from an EPIC shift...

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.

Some more photography of our shift

Shift #1: The California Desert

In another minute or so, I was well into the 180's for HR, but I didn't need a HRM to tell me how much this hurt. Ouch. Totally expected though. Fresh legs ("Supple" as the Hammer would put it) and adrenalin will easily make for unsustainable pacing. The second pull was no easier, and in fact harder, and I think by the third pull, I just changed the view of my Garmin so I wasn't even bothered with it. This ended up being a subtle, yet crucial decision. I admit that sometimes I can get carried away with the quantitative aspects of technology and training/racing, but falling back on my laurels and relying on Perceived Effort in a race always puts my mind at rest, and allows me to focus inward. Save the brainpower and geeking out for after!

Hammering out 350W per pull

The first third of this shift was kinda boring honestly. I spent more time dodging debris in the swirling winds in the "bike lane" that is the break down lane of CA-78E. Of course, the fun part was hearing how the Hammer was doing. This, mind you, was in two word spurts during exchanges, or better yet, through John (our driver). Needless to say, he was having fun, and killing it!


Then we hit a wall. It wasn't a real wall, but I've never felt anything like this before - even having done this shift 2 years prior. I can't remember the exact point, but it was somewhere just east of Brawley. I'm in the middle of a pull in the hot and arid CA desert, and then all the sudden I hit a wall of humidity that I swear started to slow me down. It was the gnarliest thing. It wasn't too long after that I started getting a headache. No amount of salt or water was helping, but whatever.

As we exited the farm country of Brawley, we got into the rolling hills of the desert. Then, out of the blue, the media crew rolled up and it was like the Calvary coming to save the day. For whatever reason, I wasn't as jazzed up on this first shift as in years past, and these guys put me on another level. Chuck, Dave, Connie and Toby all barreled out of the media van, and were posting up all over the place, laughing, cheering and having a TON OF FUN! That's what this is about, right??

1,000 words - pick yours

Through the rollers, and I passed the 4Mil second shift bus, and they were all out clapping and cheering me on as I ripped down a descent. To 4Mil - thanks for that - it was pretty cool to see good sportsmanship out there!!

Then, mini-crisis #1 started. Everyone knows RAAM is not easy on equipment, crew members and riders. Oh yeah, it ain't easy on gas either. Out in the middle-of-freaking nowhere, John says "Uh, we're getting low on gas". No cell service, no people, no nothing where we were. Fortunately, out in the middle of nowhere was a gas station. Whew, crisis #1 is out of the way, and laughs were shared.

The rest of the shift was spent battling through a headache that never got better (same thing for Hammer) in the very hot darkness of the desert. We handed off to Hazard and Crossfire about 20 miles before the AZ border (and Hammer handed off $20 b/c of a bet!) and we were off to our hotel in Tuba City, AZ for the most epic shift in all of my RAAM's.

Rough progress made from our first shift from TS2-TS3:

• ViaSat Projected:   27.50mph
• ViaSat Actual:        27.18mph (not as windy as expected)
• 4Mil:                      25.88mph
• Strategic Lions:      23.71mph

Total distance covered in 5 hours: 133 miles

To anyone driving or riding that stretch in south western AZ:

Next 2,500 miles

From the Start Line to our Shift Start

** Now that grad school is done, I can finish this blog! **

12pm race start - doesn't get much better than that!

The morning of the race is about the same every year: take care of all the little nagging things that I didn't get to during the week or because I was attending the "mandatory" race meeting the night before (zzzzzzz). I always think I'm gonna sleep in, but it never happens. I woke up pretty relaxed, and then realized "Damn, I'm about to race my bike across the country [again]. Sweet!" and off I went.

With Team ViaSat having done RAAM a few times in the past, we knew a lot of the nuances we could improve upon to make us faster. In my opinion, a lot of RAAM comes down to efficiency, and one way to stay both efficient and properly fueled during the week is to bring my own nutrition and food, rather than relying on the rest of the country and its poor food choices to feed the machine, and having to stop to actually get food. For those of us (spoiled) in San Diego, once you get east of the CA border, food quality goes down, and once you are east of Colorado.... fuhgeddaboutit. So, I cooked up a fairly diverse menu of quinoa pasta, butternut squash w/ coconut milk, and sweet potato based dishes to keep me revving high all across the country.

Thankfully, the Hammer was of the same mindset, and brought along a ton of his own food as well, supplying our truck with more Allen Lim rice cakes than one could even imagine. I think the initial count was 120, but it was possibly more. It was a good thing, because before the first shift, I think our truck polished off an entire bag (10+).

I look forward to the RAAM start every year. As I mentioned it before, it's the "anti-Ironman" in the sense that there are barely any people at the start. However, this year was a little different - there actually were people there! They moved the start line down onto the strand, and when I got down there shortly before the 12pm start, there was a ton of people hanging out on the pier, beach and strand, cheering, chatting and having fun! What?! You mean, people are here for a reason?!? Sweeeeeet!

In hindsight, I didn't even need to go to start, but with this being the Hammers first RAAM (and my last), it was cool to accompany him to get him the "full experience". Having already done the race twice already, admittedly, there was a bit less "wide eyed excitement" this time around, and having some new blood in the truck was awesome and kept spirits (and speed!) high.

But I... we, had a responsibility. Because of the way the RAAM start is structured, Slayer and Wildebeast would be doing the non-supported stretch from College Ave to Old Castle. This meant they have to traverse the completely exposed, treacherous O'side bike path, and that meant Hammer and I had to block every bit of wind possible to let these guys save all ounce of energy for the TT onslaught they were about to unleash. We knew WB was going to have something up his sleeve, and we were all pretty anxious on how things were going to unfold.

Pedaling > Walking 

The Hammer and I were Truck2, which means we were going to get the second shift of our team, likely somewhere west of Brawley. We started our eastward journey bypassing all parts of the course, but doing our best to keep tabs on what was happening with our boys. Fortunately, we had a few manned mobile vehicles doing course recon.

From what I understand, and as expected, the WB made up a ton of time on our competition. With ViaSat being the 13th 8-man team to start (on one minute intervals), 4Mil being the 4th, and Strategic Lions being the 8th, he pretty much closed a lot of that gap by the time he got to Old castle, a meer 20 miles inland from the coast. Despite WB putting himself into an absolute world of hurt, the man came out the other side smiling - because thats just the type of athlete and person the man is.

WB handed "the torch" off to METAL. For those of you who don't know METAL (he doesn't have a real name actually), this guy is one intense dude. While everyone on the team stepped up their game this year, I think METAL takes the crown of stepping up his game the most. I don't think he has driven to work since 2010 because he rides every single day, and was regularly doing 140+ miles just about every Saturday, half the time solo. There are implicit brags of how long his X5 sits in his driveway. He laughs at request for smog tests because when you don't drive, who needs to get smog tested?

Well, the now the spot light was on him, and man was he fired up. I mention the figurative torch, but he rode like there was a literal torch under his arse.  I don't know about you, but there is no way I would want to race against THIS GUY:

I STRANGLE CORPSES FOR FUN

I'm not really sure if he is catching flies, breathing deeply, pounding his hand to the music and voices in his head or what, but the man was ON FIRE. He was of the mentality that NO ONE was going to ride "with him" on Old Castle, and I can offer guarantees from afar that no one did. Toro was the other member of Truck1, and they take the honor seriously, having always done an exceptional job of giving ViaSat a chance at this thing in years past. To have such energy to start our team off was incredible.

This year was no different. We checked TS1 (Lake Henshaw) times, and as expected, Team ViaSat was up on the competition:

• ViaSat: 2h34m; 22.15mph
• 4Mil: 2h54m; 19.6mph
• Strategic Lions: 2h42m; 21.05mph

Here is a little video our media team put together. Note the METAL music to accompany said rider that documents the battles they did with the Strat Lions:

Naturally, I was pretty stoked about where we were in this race, but was even more excited about what was to come.

Dude, where's my team?

The Hammer and I arrived out to a projected area for a hand off, and when we got out of the car, we were greeted with the triple digit temperatures that we expected. What was unexpected though was the wind. We checked the data of the solo riders (who started 4 days prior on Wednesday), and one solo rider just absolutely ripped from TS1 to TS2, averaging 26mph, a testament to the tailwinds he received. Based on years past, we were expecting 20mph tailwinds, but today would be different. The wind was best described as "kind of swirling". Jeremy arrived at the projected hand off first and confirmed the same. We got the lowdown on how the first shift went for Truck1, and it was only a matter of minutes before it was officially "go time" for Truck2 at 6pm.

I gathered my bike and helmet, and waited for METAL to arrive at the stop sign to do an exchange. As I stood there waiting for him in the 100 degree heat with an enormous amount of nerves and energy, low and behold, the Strategic Lions rolled up and literally parked 30 feet from me. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?! IT WAS ON. I was so amped!!!! So, I look down at my HRM, and literally just standing there, my HR was at 132. Usually this is a HR reserved for when people are actually moving or doing anything.Where all that blood was going is beyond me, but shit was about to go down! Within a minute, METAL arrived, screaming "GO GO GO GO!!!" and I was off to start my third RAAM...