Did I mention that it's WINDY in Kansas?

Update from my previous post:  the sustained winds are now 36 mph, with gusts reaching 50 mph!

Here's a tree bending in the sustained wind:

That tree is probably 25 feet tall, has a trunk diameter of 8 inches and a root system going several feet into the ground, horizontally and vertically.

Now, take a look at this picture (taken in San Diego last weekend):

The guy on the right weighs about 150 lbs (dripping wet).  Toss in another 15 lbs for his bike, the tires of which have "contact patches" -- the amount of surface area in contact with terra firma -- less than an inch square.  What do you suppose that 36 mph wind (never mind the 50 mph gusts) is doing to his forward progress?

This is gonna be a tough day.

Life in "camp"

While we're waiting for our racers to catch up with us - Michael Patterson and Dave Burnett are out on the road now, as Don Metz & Dur Higgins snooze in our air-conditioned "Racer RV" - I thought I'd give a little sense of the life of the race away from the race course.

First, calling this a "camp" is definitely a misnomer.  This caravan is so itinerant, never sitting still for more than 3-4 hours, it would give a gypsy vertigo.  But it's the closest we have to "home base" for our entire team of 4 racers and 15 crew.  The most important function "camp" fills is to provide a place for off-duty racers and crew to sleep and recharge before jumping back on duty.  Every 8 hours, or so, two racers will come off the course, get showered, massaged and fed then popped into bed in our "Racer RV."  At the same time, two of the on-course support crew - one from the "Racer Vehicle" and one from the "Follow Vehicle" rotate out of their vehicles and into a flat (hopefully soft) spot in the "Crew RV" for a few hours of sleep.  The rest of the crew catches a nap whenever time and space permit. In addition to being our traveling hotel, the crew camp also provides food, supplies, equipment and all other support needed to sustain four bicycle racers in continuous motion for a solid week.

Each time the race moves on from "camp", the RVs pack up and move down the road to "stage" for the next team exchange, usually 150 miles +/- further along.  We've staged in abandoned gas stations (coveted for their shade-offering canopies), gravelly desert washes and the parking lots of Wal-Mart, unofficial supply HQ for all RAAM teams:

Here's a brief travelog from our most recent stopover in Pritchett, a windswept wide spot in the road on the eastern plains of Colorado.

2:30 AM - The Racer RV rolls into town last ... we're usually last, because (aside from the fact that Michael Scholl and I drive like little old ladies on the way to church ... an attribute our occupants, at least, seem to appreciate) we wait for the racers who have just come off the course to get showered, fed and settled into bed before we roll.  This morning, Michael Patterson and Dave Burnett are already asleep in the back, as is Lydia Brewster, our soigneur nonpareil, so Michael Scholl & I just lean our seats back, pull down our baseball caps and try to catch a few Zs before the action resumes.

5:15 AM - We get the call from the "Follow Vehicle" that the racers on the road are "an hour out" ... the factory whistle for sleeping crew and racers in both vehicles.  Manny Casillas, our nutritionist, chef and general scold, cranks his kitchen into action to whip up breakfast for the racers -- incoming and outgoing.  Manny is usually assisted by Janice Smolowitz, who, as team nurse, has thankfully had few calls for her professional skills since Sunday's topsy turvy day.  Here's Manny, showing off his kitchen:

As Michael & Dave start pulling on their cycling kits, Nate Keck -- former pro racer, current cycling coach and exercise physiologist, who happens to be the "Racer Vehicle" crew member who was most recently off duty -- helps them to ready their "boxes" for transport to the Racer Vehicle.  The boxes will contain everything personal they'll need for the next 8 hours ... extra clothes, an extra pair of shoes, two helmets (one time-trial helmet and one regular helmet), plus whatever assortment of energy powders, gels, electrolyte solutions, etc. their particular racing regimens require.

Someone else (typically me) will unlock and get off the rack all four of Michael & Dave's bikes -- one TT bike and one road bike each -- and ready them for the day ... check & fill tires; check to ensure headlights and taillights (all mandated by RAAM rules) are attached & functional, etc.  One bike will go out on the road immediately with Michael, as he's to be the first to ride today.  The other three will be mounted on the Racer Vehicle rack as soon as it pulls in and the bikes belonging to Don & Dur are removed from it.

Lydia readies her massage table, primarily to give the incoming racers a good rub down but often to loosen up stiff muscles for the guys getting ready to go out, too (and occasionally, if there's enough time and no immediate demand for her services, a special treat for one of the other crew members!).

Other members of the crew check fluids in the vehicles and ready them for another leg on the road, clean up around "camp" and perform other duties as assigned, readying for "the transition."  If we're ready to roll and there's time before the incoming racers and support vehicles arrive, we sit.

6:00 AM - We get the call that Dur is on the bike and 15 minutes out.  Within a few minutes, the Racer Vehicle pulls in bearing Don, the three bikes that aren't in use at the moment, and Don & Dur's boxes and other gear.  As Lydia (and, usually, one other crew member) attends to Don, other crew members fall to executing more-or-less preassigned tasks -- removing Don & Dur's gear from the vehicle and replacing it with Michael & Dave's gear; restocking general supplies of water, energy bars, fruit and other foods in the vehicle; removing the three bikes not in use from the vehicle and replacing them with Michael and Dave's bikes.  One or two other crew members walk Michael and his bike to the edge of the road to await Dur's arrival and the transition to a new racer team for the next shift.

6:15 AM - Dur rolls in on his TT bike.  Because it's before 7:00 AM and still considered "night" under RAAM rules (even though the sun is already well above the horizon), Dur must pass Michael and come to a complete stop before Michael can roll out (during daylight hours, the racers execute rolling transitions to minimize loss of time).  Also, because racers cannot ride at "night" without a "Follow Vehicle" immediately behind, Michael must wait for the go ahead from the Follow Vehicle, which is rapidly changing out crew and supplies at the same time, before he can roll out.  As seconds are precious, even in a race expected to take a week, this can be a stressful time.

Once the first racer is on the road with the Follow Vehicle behind, we have a few minutes of breathing room to get Dave settled in the Racer Vehicle, then check to make sure all the gear has been swapped and the remaining bikes are on the rack and ready to go, before the Racer Vehicle pulls out and heads up the road to leapfrog over Michael and get Dave ready to replace him, probably 20-30 minutes after Michael originally departed.

With the fresh racers and crew back on the road, the incoming racers fed, bathed and massaged, and all gear packed up and readied to move to the next staging area, we head out for another 3-4 hours of driving, maybe interrupted by stops to resupply along the way, then begin the cycle all over again.  And on that note, I just got the call from the follow vehicle that Michael and Dave are an hour out, so here we go!

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday (Monday), we woke up in Montezuma Creek, UT.  The guys rode into Colorado, past Durango and up over the continental divide at Wolf Creek pass ... picking up speed all the time!  Despite a lot of climbing, the team's average speed after crossing through the Rockies was 19.2 mph ... amazing what strong riders and a powerful tailwind can do when they work together!

Talk about a change in terrain, too.  Here's a look at what the riders saw as they huffed it up Wolf Creek pass yesterday afternoon:

After crossing into Kansas early this morning, here's a sampling of their view today:

And they're going to be seeing a lot of views just like it for a while ... Kansas is a biiiiiiiiiiiig state.  It's also a hot & windy state.  At 1:00 p.m. CDT in Ford, Kansas, it's 90 degrees with brutally tough winds coming straight out of the south at 30 mph, gusting to 40 mph.  If those winds were coming out of the west, we'd shorten this race by a day, but from the south they'll be hitting our boys right in the side all day.  Ouch.  Still, at the pace they're maintaining, we should hit the mileage halfway point -- 1,496.7 miles, somewhere between Cunningham, KS and Calista, KS -- before nightfall today.

How are we doing?

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!

The best laid plans ...

Racers spend the better part of a year obsessively planning and training for this event, honing their time trial skills, boosting their watts/kg and testing & selecting the particular concoctions of energy powders, electrolyte replacement formulas and recovery drinks that will maximize their ability to perform, hour after hour, day after day and night after night for a week straight. 

The crew chief likewise invests untold hours in planning, planning, planning for every racer exchange, every team exchange and every driver exchange, plus all the meal prep, massaging, showering, bike swapping & fixing that has to go off like clockwork to ride this race at a record-breaking pace.  Elaborate, multi-page, multi-color, multi-level schedules promise to befuddle but, ultimately, deliver the goods. 

Then, in one fell swoop, we are at “Plan B” … which is: makin’ it up as we go along!

During the first night of the race, one of our racers fell ill, apparently from an electrolyte imbalance created by the intense effort and heat of riding across the California desert the first afternoon.  Pulling in to what should have been the site of our second racer exchange, a cool spot in the desert where the resting racers should have been able to sleep and gather strength for their next leg, he started vomiting violently.  Our crew chief made a quick decision: take the sick racer to the hospital for evaluation and, probably, IV rehydration; move the RVs down the road another 55 miles; and tell the crew supporting the two racers on the road that those racers would need to tack on another two-plus hours to their current shift.

Two hours later, our sick racer still isn’t back from the hospital, and we have two racers coming in who’ve already spent over two hours more on the road than we planned or they anticipated.  What do we do?  We can’t squeeze any more out of the two racers coming in, but we can’t sit still either, so we send out the one healthy, rested racer we have left and let him ride a solo “time trial” for 55 miles, about three hours, uphill, rather than riding in 20-30 minute shifts, to allow reasonable rest and recovery for his legs and lungs.  Then, so we don’t completely incinerate that racer, we send out the stronger of the two other healthy racers, to give him some relief … only problem: the “stronger” racer has now already got two extra hours in his legs and only three hours off the bike, instead of eight, as planned.

At the end of the day, our sick racer still isn’t 100%, but we have three racers who have been picking up the missing quarter of the workload … one of whom has been out on the road for about 18 of the last 24 hours … and if we’re going to get to Annapolis (never mind break the record), we can’t lose another racer.  The crew chief, who readily accepts input from all but ultimately makes the call (this is no place for democracy!), dispatches minute-by-minute decisions, constantly changing course, sometimes even reversing himself, all in the hopes that we’ll cobble together the resources we have to reach the goal we set for ourselves, notwithstanding the impediments thrown in our path.  In the end, he decides to put the original team back on the road for a full shift ... it's night, so the conditions will be better - cooler temps and less traffic - and the route for tonight's section is more downhill than up.  All in all, a good opportunity to break our guy in "easy" ... we'll see.

What makes this the “world’s toughest bicycle race” is not the “mere” fact that one, or two, or four, or even eight riders have to string together continuous rides for 3,000 miles … that’s a given, a known, a monumental but surmountable challenge.  What makes this race so damned tough is that all the training, preparation and planning in the world can never adequately anticipate or plan for the inevitable fact that something will go wrong that you hadn’t planned for … Lots of things go wrong in this race, like every bicycle race, many of them even predictably so, but there is always something, something that’s almost sure to happen but not predictable anyway, that challenges the whole game plan.

[P.S. Not enough bandwidth here in Montezuma Creek, UT to upload pics … more later]

Arizona!

We are moving across this country.  The team put in a fast section from Oceanside to Brawley, averaging 19.1 mph for the first 145 miles (in spite of some stout climbing, blistering heat, and nasty crosswinds), then they put on their wings and flew over the benighted desert for the next 197 miles, averaging 21.3 mph!!  It ain't always gonna be so fast, but we're makin' hay while the sun is shining.  And speaking of the sun shining, here's Michael Patterson, getting some last-minute notes from Nate Keck, before riding into the rising sun ...

... as Don Metz recovers on the massage table after a long night in the saddle:

And recovery he will need ... it's gonna be a 109-degree scorcher today!!

By the way ...

A few people have asked about how to track the progress of the racers.  There's a cool little Google do-hickey on the team's site (United 4 Health Racing) that will show you exactly where they are (more or less) at any given moment.

Also, many of you have emailed me best wishes to pass along to Don.  Be assured that he's getting the messages and appreciates them.  Feel free to keep sending 'em, either to my email address - barney.brannen@valley.net - or by posting a comment on this blog.  You can also call my cell (as Tim Caldwell and John Griesemer did on their way back from the Mt. Washington race today), but I'm not sure how consistently I'll have service as we head east.