Looking back

The 2011 edition of RAAM is history, with nothing left for the documentary crew to do but sort through a few terabytes worth of video looking for the soul of a film. That's going to take a while, but hopefully it will all come together and one day in the not too distant future there'll be a documentary that shows the race from a new perspective. Until then, a couple closing impressions from the race:

The last of the RAAM documentary crew arrived in Annapolis on the final Sunday of the race and within 24 hours were packed up and headed home. It was a bittersweet feeling, one that I think we shared with the riders and their crews. RAAM is a bit like summer camp. It's a weird, often unsettling adventure, and you end up with plenty of ridiculous stories to tell your friends back home. Along the way you do a lot of complaining, but you make friends quickly in cramped quarters, and at the end there's a sense of sadness that it's all over. It all seemed to go by so fast, and as you step on that plane or bus or RV for the ride home, you have to do a bit of mental stretching to reconcile what you've been through with your quickly approaching return to real life.

And it's that return to real life that may be most jarring thing about RAAM. Because yes, real life is comfortable. You sleep in an actual bed, and dinner is hot, and the toilet works. But in real life you're just like everyone else. In RAAM, you can be a hero. You can spend 10 days pedaling up mountains and across deserts. You can cling to the edge of the road as trucks whiz by at 60. You can push your body and mind to the absolute breaking point, stop on the side of the road totally defeated, then find a hidden reserve of will power buried deep within that forces you back onto that bike. Those are things you can't do in real life, and they make these two weeks in June such unique, irreplaceable experience.

So thanks to everyone at RAAM, all the riders and their crews, and especially to the documentary team- Andre, Ernie, Jon, Jeric, and Taylor- for making it such a great race. Let's do it again next year, shall we?

Andy

The RAAM tidal wave

The RAAM documentary crew started to split up a few days ago, with cameramen Andre Trinidad and Ernie Holly moving forward along the route with some of the leaders, and Jon Dunham and myself hanging back a little. Jon and I are now in Grafton, West Virginia, a small town in the heart of Appalachia.

Here in the mountains, Jon and I are mostly following solo riders as they hit perhaps the most difficult part of the race. The elevation here isn't nearly that of the Rockies, but the climbs tend to be steeper and closer together. Plus by the time riders get here they've been pedaling for 10 days without much sleep so the legs are just about gone. The only consolation is that once they make it through the last brutal peaks of western Maryland it's all downhill to Annapolis, and the finish line is only a couple hundred miles away.

At this point in the race, there's a certain glassy look on the soloists' faces. For the first few days there was still a sense of excitement about this adventure, but by now any energy they have left is best used for pedaling, not emotion. It's like being caught in a tidal wave- you either keep swimming or the wave takes you under. Looking at their faces, you get the sense that they aren't really doing RAAM anymore, RAAM is doing them.

So the obvious question is why on Earth did they sign up for this in the first place? Honestly, if you judged this race based only on what we're seeing right now you'd probably never even want to see a bike again. But Annapolis is only two days away, and I'm guessing the looks on the soloists' faces when they get there will change everything.

-Andy

Flying by

It's hard to believe, but somehow the RAAM documentary crew is all the way up in Indiana today. The days out here mostly consist of driving, filming, more driving, stopping to eat for five minutes, filming, driving, and sleeping. So not a lot of time to fit blog posts in there. I think towards the finish line I'll write up some longer posts going back over the course of the race, but for now just one quick factoid about the drive-

Animals we have swerved to avoid:

One coyote, one fox, one deer, one very lucky armadillo, multiple rabbits, and one unidentified creature, possibly a chupacabra.

Animals we have hit head on:

Approximately 40,000 bugs. Our windshield looks like a Rorschach test.

Enjoy the view... if you can

RAAM is full of beautiful scenery, and I know there’s lots of competition up ahead, but for now I’m thinking the stretch of road between time stations 7 and 9 in Arizona might just be the prettiest place we’re going to see. It covers Prescott through Flagstaff and includes the amazing Mingus Mountain descent, the little town of Jerome perched right on the edge of a cliff, and of course the pink canyon walls of Sedona.

Of course all this scenery is great if you’re a film crew and you can just stop on the side of the road, set up a shot, and soak it all in while you wait for a rider to come through. But do the guys and gals on the bikes actually get to enjoy it? It depends. When you’re riding on zero sleep and you’ve still got 2500 miles to go, it’s a little hard to ooh and ahh over every mountain that comes by.

But now and then the riders really do get a chance to look around and appreciate where they are. We came across soloist Ron Skelton the other day in a canyon just north of Sedona and he was really enjoying the surroundings. Skelton came all the way from New Zealand for RAAM and had never been to the area before. The proud Kiwi was riding his own race, not overly concerned with the standings, just chugging along strongly and soaking up those famous Sedona vibes. In a race that’s all about cranking through mile after mile after mile, it was nice to meet a rider who was gaining energy from the endless road, rather than losing it.

-Andy

Teams versus solos

As the documentary crew gets some time with the team racers today, we’re noticing the huge differences between the team riders and the soloists. For those of you who are new to RAAM, solo riders have to do all 2989.5 miles on their own, while the teams work in a relay system. There are 2-person, 4-person, and 8-person teams, so depending on your tolerance for pain and exhaustion, there’s always an appropriate division.

The first thing you notice when you shoot the teams is the extremely high energy level they have to maintain. Yesterday our cameraman Ernie Holly rode with Team TDL All 4 Transplant and he was amazed by the pace. Without giving away any team secrets, let’s just say they had their system of rider exchanges and support vehicle movements down like clockwork. Riders are constantly rotating, so fresh legs are never far away.

Obviously, the soloists move at a much different pace. With only one rider out there, your strategy is mostly based on when and where to sleep. The crews need to keep their rider fed, hydrated, and motivated, but no one’s checking a schedule every five minutes. You come into this race with one goal- making it to Annapolis- and the details of how to do it reveal themselves along the way.

It’s an interesting contrast: the excitement and breakneck speed of the team race versus the deliberate, almost spiritual feel you get from the soloists. If we can just keep up it should make for a pretty cool film.

-Andy

Back on the road

In the last three days the documentary crew has made the drive between Flagstaff, Arizona and the starting line in Oceanside twice, once in each direction. First it was to get back to Oceanside for the start of the team race, and this time it was just to catch up with the team leaders, who are making incredible time through the desert. There was at least a 20 mile per hour tailwind coming through Borrego Springs last night, so no surprise that these teams were flying. We're hoping to get some good stuff later today north of Flagstaff as we head into southern Utah. More updates soon, I hope. I'd post more often, but wi-fi tends to be spotty in the middle of nowhere, or when you're sleeping on a picnic table.

Andy

The race blurs on

Wow, it's been a long two days since I last posted. Or is it three? Time tends to get a little hazy when you're out on RAAM. minutes turn into hours, then hours turn into days, and then suddenly your mind turns into a grapefruit, and you wonder why a grapefruit is standing around a parking lot in Brawley.

And now a couple of the images that are swirling around in my head from the last couple days. Whether they actually happened or I just hallucinated them we may never know.

-A time station deep in the Arizona desert, populated by a strange group of people who call themselves the Bullshifters. They carry around cowbells and cantaloupes, and somehow conjure up an inflatable pool from the desert sand.

-A campground somewhere near Blythe, full of beleaguered media members sleeping on picnic tables. "Fire ants," someone warns. Seriously? But why would they come near us? Have they no sense of smell?

-A town called Jerome that seems to hang on the edge of a cliff, taunting the valley floor while it basks in the glorious sunset.

-A man blogging from a bathroom in Flagstaff, his eyes completely bloodshot, his back aching, his whiskers growing at an astonishing, almost visible rate. Tomorrow he will drive back to Oceanside to cover the team start on Saturday, then head out on the very same route again and end up reliving everything he thought he just imagined in the last two days. And his mind will turn back into a grapefruit, and he'll be fine with that, because that's just what happens during RAAM.


-Andy

What it takes

The race officially got underway today with the start of the Women's Solo and Men's Solo 60+ divisions. In fact, some of the folks we spoke to just the other day- Dex Tooke, David Jones, and Debbie Tirrito- are already out there cranking along. As I post this they're about 10 hours into the race, probably somewhere out near the Salton Sea basin. And if they're smart they're putting as many miles up as they can overnight, because once the sun comes up in the morning they'll find themselves right in the heart of the Mojave Desert- the hottest, driest, most intimidating place to ride in the entire race. We'll catch up with them in a day or two, assuming they're all still chugging along.

But back here in Oceanside we spent another day talking to riders as their starting times quickly approach, and there were a couple themes that just kept coming up among everyone we talked to. One of my stock questions in our pre-race interviews is what it would mean to them if they had to drop out and couldn't finish the race. And every last person we've talked to gave essentially the answer: failure is something they have never even considered.

That sort of confidence in the face of something so daunting really struck me the first time I heard it. But when you think about it, there's just no other way to do this race. RAAM is such huge challenge and takes such a massive commitment of time and resources that a person would never even enter this race unless he or she knew with 100% certainty that this was something they could finish. Tim Case from the 4-person Team RAAM used the word "audacity" to describe that feeling. And he's exactly right: it takes a ridiculous amount of sheer audacity to show up in Oceanside, knowing you've got thousands of miles to go and there's going to be pain, there's going to be sleep deprivation, there's going to be a million little things every day telling you to just get off the bike and go home, and yet when they call your name at the starting line, you step up and start pedaling anyway.

That's the sort of feeling you get from folks here at the starting line, and it really is an amazing thing to be a part of.

talk to you soon.
-Andy

Interview day

So it's day two here in Oceanside and the RAAM documentary team is all about the pre-race interviews. The idea here is to learn as much as we can about these riders before we head out on the road and things get a little more, uh, chaotic. We hit the ground running with our first two cameramen, Andre and Ernie, and picked up some great stuff.

I guess the big thing we learned today is that RAAM brings in people of all ages. On one end of the spectrum is Steven Perezluha, who's barely 20 years old. Steven's crammed a lot of miles into those 20 years, and he has a secret weapon in the form of his uncle, former RAAM champion Danny Chew, who's leading his crew. Danny knows this race better than just about anyone, so Steven's hoping that this combination of youth and experience gets him to the finish line at the front of the pack.

On the other end of the spectrum is Dex Tooke, the 61 year-old Texan who came agonizingly close to finishing last year before he had to drop out. Dex is a local hero in his hometown of Del Rio, and he's got a close-knit team of family and friends in the support team. When I asked Dex how he decided to do RAAM again after failing to finish last year, he gave me a great answer: "I'd rather fail again than to never know if I could do it."

I think that notion sums up the feelings of a lot of the riders out here. They're all embarking on an incredible challenge, and no one can really predict how it's going to turn out. But they've all come to Oceanside anyway, because in spite of all the pain, exhaustion, and fear they know they're going to experience on the road, they've realized that if you never get on the bike in the first place you'll never know what you could have accomplished.

See you next time.
-Andy

Welcome to Oceanside

So we are at the starting line for the 2011 Race Across America! In addition to the excellent daily reports and streaming video on the RAAM website, this year a documentary film crew is heading out on the road to get a closer look at the action. That team is producer Andy Firchau and cameramen Andre Trinidad, Ernie Holly, and John Dunham. Our goal is to take a deeper look at what's going on with the racers and their crews- from the basic questions like what you eat out there on the road to keep you going, to bigger ideas, like what makes these seemingly normal men and women push themselves to such extremes. It's all part of the fun, power, and magic of RAAM.

So watch this spot for updates on the film and everything else we find out there. And if you have any questions for the riders and crews, let us know!

-Andy