First, as promised in this morning's dispatch, a photo:
Dur Higgins, "time trialing" out of Flagstaff, AZ, yesterday afternoon.
Many of you have been emailing me, asking "How are you guys doing?"
Well, that depends on what you mean by "doing well" ... In light of Sunday's saga, if everyone is healthy, resting reasonably well and riding consistently, then we should consider ourselves doing well; and, in fact, by that standard, we're doing great right now! As of Monday morning, all four racers are in the rotation and we're back on our original schedule ... not something we all would have predicted confidently as of mid-day Sunday.
If you mean, how are you doing against the other race competitors, that depends on who we designate as "competition" for the United 4 Health team. There are no other 70+ four-man teams in RAAM this year. Our team is competing against a former 70+ four-man team that set the existing record of 7 days, 16 hours and whatever. To beat that record, narrowly, our team will need to average 17-point-something miles per hour for the duration of the race. But, because no one can remember what the "point-something" portion of the figure is, and because we want to break the record with a comfortable margin, the team has set a target average speed of 18 miles per hour, which, if we achieve it, would break the existing record by more than 16 hours.
Against a target average speed of 18 mph, we're doing very well ... as of our last time station check-in, a little over an hour ago, the team had ridden about 850 miles at an average speed of 18.9 miles per hour (by the way, you can update yourself on the team's latest time station check-in and average speed by going to the "RAAM Teams" link and the official RAAM site). A word of caution about looking at cumulative average speed: it only looks at the terrain (and other conditions) already encountered, not at the terrain, wind, heat, rain (not to mention exhaustion) still to come, and there's a lot still to come ... for example, we'll be crossing the continental divide at Wolf Creek Pass sometime later today or tonight; that will almost certainly reduce the team's average speed; on the other hand, coming off the front range of the Rockies, it's pretty much "downhill" all the way to eastern Kansas, and if we're lucky enough to get a tail wind, these four guys will fly. All in all, we're pretty happy about where the team is right now.
Even though there are no other teams in the same competitive category as United 4 Health in this year's RAAM, it's still interesting to compare our guys' performance against other teams on the road. Again, take a look at the "RAAM Teams" link. As of about noon today, our guys were faster on the road than both of the four-man 50-59 teams in RAAM this year, and they'd be in the top half of the four-man, under-50 teams ... not too shabby!
Dur Higgins, "time trialing" out of Flagstaff, AZ, yesterday afternoon.
Many of you have been emailing me, asking "How are you guys doing?"
Well, that depends on what you mean by "doing well" ... In light of Sunday's saga, if everyone is healthy, resting reasonably well and riding consistently, then we should consider ourselves doing well; and, in fact, by that standard, we're doing great right now! As of Monday morning, all four racers are in the rotation and we're back on our original schedule ... not something we all would have predicted confidently as of mid-day Sunday.
If you mean, how are you doing against the other race competitors, that depends on who we designate as "competition" for the United 4 Health team. There are no other 70+ four-man teams in RAAM this year. Our team is competing against a former 70+ four-man team that set the existing record of 7 days, 16 hours and whatever. To beat that record, narrowly, our team will need to average 17-point-something miles per hour for the duration of the race. But, because no one can remember what the "point-something" portion of the figure is, and because we want to break the record with a comfortable margin, the team has set a target average speed of 18 miles per hour, which, if we achieve it, would break the existing record by more than 16 hours.
Against a target average speed of 18 mph, we're doing very well ... as of our last time station check-in, a little over an hour ago, the team had ridden about 850 miles at an average speed of 18.9 miles per hour (by the way, you can update yourself on the team's latest time station check-in and average speed by going to the "RAAM Teams" link and the official RAAM site). A word of caution about looking at cumulative average speed: it only looks at the terrain (and other conditions) already encountered, not at the terrain, wind, heat, rain (not to mention exhaustion) still to come, and there's a lot still to come ... for example, we'll be crossing the continental divide at Wolf Creek Pass sometime later today or tonight; that will almost certainly reduce the team's average speed; on the other hand, coming off the front range of the Rockies, it's pretty much "downhill" all the way to eastern Kansas, and if we're lucky enough to get a tail wind, these four guys will fly. All in all, we're pretty happy about where the team is right now.
Even though there are no other teams in the same competitive category as United 4 Health in this year's RAAM, it's still interesting to compare our guys' performance against other teams on the road. Again, take a look at the "RAAM Teams" link. As of about noon today, our guys were faster on the road than both of the four-man 50-59 teams in RAAM this year, and they'd be in the top half of the four-man, under-50 teams ... not too shabby!
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