Team Cruzbike RAAM 2017

[LarryOz]

Hi All,
Yes I am finally home in Hendersonville. Arrived late afternoon yesterday (Sunday).
I just finished reading this thread - great stuff.
I apologize for not being able to post to it while I was riding - Have the time I did not have a signal anyway.
Ratz did tell me how everyone was watching and encouraging us all. Great to be a part of something bigger than me!
The busyness of the rotations left little time to do much else than decompress from the last 30 minutes, load the bike, cram some food and drink in your face, then hop back out and get ready again for the next 30 minute pull.
I will try and do a write up as soon as possible.
Briefly:
The cycling/speed highlight was flying by our competition in Kansas doing 35+mph (but stopping the pedaling briefly so I coasted by them while they pedaled frantically! Such a fun couple of hours for sure)
Scariest part: Flying down the West Virginia mountains divided highway doing 40+mph, in the middle of the night during pouring rain, and having semi tractor trailers blowing past me doing 70mph. The wind and the rain they would throw at me was just incredible. Glad to be alive after that!
Thanks again everyone for all the encouragement. The Tribe is the BEST!
More later

 

[RojoRacing]

Scariest part: Flying down the West Virginia mountains divided highway doing 40+mph, in the middle of the night during pouring rain, and having semi tractor trailers blowing past me doing 70mph. The wind and the rain they would throw at me was just incredible. Glad to be alive after that!
Thanks again everyone for all the encouragement. The Tribe is the BEST!
More later

Wait, you didn't tuck in behind them and grab a 70 mph draft?

 

[PeteClark]

BREAKING AWAY, "Dave" drafting a semi, downhill, back into Bloomington. Great movie scene, but don't try this at home!

 

[ratz]

Are You home yet, as it would only be an 8 hour??

GREAT Support for the riders, and looking at all those Large wheeled plastic boxes, I think that even the kitchen sink was in there!

Is there ANYthing extra or different, that you could have brought to help in an unexpected event?

Was there any unexpected failures or wear, other than smashing a Carbon rim on a railway crossing?

Did any of the support Vans stay in motels O/Night, and is this when the chains were rewaxed, as I could not see how it could be done in a moving van?!!!

Did the multi-LED light on the Van help the rider see the road?

1. It took Lief and I 28 hours to drive back to Minnesota. Final mileage on the Flex was 6,710 miles. So we definitely logged some travel. We are tired.
2. There were spares for everything. The only thing we didn't use where the 60T chain rings and the 11-23T cassettes we had for Kansas. There simply was never time to install them.
3. We lost 2 tubes tires; on the only day, we ran them. We had one non-self repairing tubeless (2inch cut).
4. We wore through 2 tubeless side walls from rubbing on an old old rack that we later swapped.
5. There were no hotels we could never get far enough ahead of the train to do motels. We did a motel once to get the crew showers. That was a 2-hour stay.
6. Chains never re-waxed, but we did drench them in squirt just before the torrential downpour
7. Yes, Light Bringer brought daylight for one and all. Just watch the videos. That bar has 20 lights on them; the bikes all had the same exact light but only 2 Led's

 

[super slim]

I like that in Larry's new profile picture, he's in top gear (big chainring up front, littlest cog in back). I would suspect that means he is simply smokin' down the road at that point...gotta be above 35mph (56kph).

What bothers me is that he appears to have been caught doing all of the above apparently without breaking a sweat, calm and focused. Walk in the park.

Put me in the seat in that picture and my eyeballs would be buggin' out, my tongue hangin' out and my face would be red from lack of oxygen. If this were a big downhill, my mouth would be open...as I would be screaming in terror.

If you look at the photos of the riders just after their ride segment, they ALL look absolutely spent!!!
Like they had just finished a 20 km time trial!

 

[super slim]

1. It took Lief and I 28 hours to drive back to Minnesota. Final mileage on the Flex was 6,710 miles. So we definitely logged some travel. We are tired.
2. There were spares for everything. The only thing we didn't use where the 60T chain rings and the 11-23T cassettes we had for Kansas. There simply was never time to install them.
3. We lost 2 tubes tires; on the only day, we ran them. We had one non-self repairing tubeless (2inch cut).
4. We wore through 2 tubeless side walls from rubbing on an old old rack that we later swapped.
5. There were no hotels we could never get far enough ahead of the train to do motels. We did a motel once to get the crew showers. That was a 2-hour stay.
6. Chains never re-waxed, but we did drench them in squirt just before the torrential downpour
7. Yes, Light Bringer brought daylight for one and all. Just watch the videos. That bar has 20 lights on them; the bikes all had the same exact light but only 2 Led's

1. I was only 20 hours out!!!
5. So the two? three? beds in the back of one of the vans was hot swap beds for riders and support all the time!!!

 

[LarryOz]

So the two? three? beds in the back of one of the vans was hot swap beds for riders and support all the time!!!

Maria and Jim shared a 15-passenger van with a pilot and navigator.
They had beds in the back and a row of seats right behind the front bucket seats.
..
Kevin and I had pretty much the same setup, except Kevin's wife, Gretchen was also in the van with us all the time.
Kevin bought two cots from a sporting goods store. They pretty much consumed the side to side space which was nice in that they could not slide around. That left about a 2 foot section between them and the row of seats. It was cramped and we played a form of "musical cots" as we changed riders and rotations.
There was not much room, but it was doable.
During "rest/sleeping time" Kevin and I would be on the cots and Gretchen slept on the row of seats, and all the floor space would be used up with our cooler, food, and gear.
During our 6-hour rotation of riding all our stuff would get thrown back on the cots, and the non-riding rider would sit on the bench seat behind the drivers getting ready for his next "pull" and Gretchen would sit on the edge of one of the cots and keep us focused mostly on eating and drinking. Once the riding rider came in, they would take the seat and Gretchen would give them food and drink.
She was great and without her there, we would have had to fend for ourselves. Once we got into a groove it worked.

 

[ratz]

5. So the two? three? beds in the back of one of the vans were hot swap beds for riders and support all the time!!!

This was a total team effort it's probably easy to imagine what the riders went through;.... do that and then make it 5 times worse and you'll be close to the truth. Qty 2 beds in two vans dedicated to riders; they pretty much rode or "rested" if you can all it that; in the vans. (Ford Ecomax 350). Imagine trying to sleep at 65mph when the wind shoves the van into a rumble strip. You either trust your relief driver (a person working on 4 hours sleep, or you lose your mind).

Meanwhile qty 4 beds in the RV for the 16 crew; sleep shifts were four hours. The team really gets high props the RV generator broke on the way to CA. The crew did the entire trip sleeping 4 hours at a crack at most; in 90-104F degree heat often bouncing down the road at 70mph. Basically, no power or A/C in the RV accept what we could tap from the cigarette lighter; unless we could find an electrical outlet to tap into.

It pretty much went like this.
Rider: Ride on course 6 hours, off 6 hours, Repeat
Crew: Work on course 6 hours, rest 3 hours, sleep 3 hours. Repeat

The killer part is that rest 3 hours usually equaled doing other work; often driving the off-duty cars down the course to the next exchange.

If you do the math it gets obvious.

Rider averaging 20+ mph in 6 hours goes 120 miles-ish in Kansas at 30+ mph 180miles.
Car going an average of 60 mph can get 120 miles in 2 hours, but with traffic, loading and unloading that really takes about 3-4 hours. That leaves about 2 hours which get used up by gas, food, water, and mechanicals. The "4 hours" often felt like 30 minutes. Add in the van repair and other surprise and it was often the case the bikes had to stay out 30-minute longer until we could get to them.

 

[ratz]

The number one question I would really like to know the answer for is: How many hours did the crew spend in Walmart parking lots? I'm thinking we have a major record here!

1 - 6 hour shift because the course looped and doubled back on itself. so we got to stay stationary and wait for the riders to come back to us. That's when we attempted to fix the van and did the major food/nutrition reset on several riders and crew that were fading. That's also when we changed our vehicle strategy because it was clear we were losing the battle. If I recall that was the shift that really drove you crazy about what we were doing.

The rest of the time that's where we'd "Run" the vans to down course because they allow RV in their lots at any time of the night. Sprint 3 cars to a Walmart; pass-out on the ground and sleep for an hour or 2 while the riders catch up. One of the challenges is how to pass the tracking device from follow-car to follow-car as you flip teams; until we figured out a protocol that often got forgotten. so you see the tracker show Walmart during the sessions when everyone would sleep. That sucker updates really slow too; so it probably made us look far more idle than we were.

 

[LarryOz]

Goodness, how wide are those dang rumble strips? I'd hate to have to transition across those...

The rumble strips were pretty horrible.
On some aprons there were actually 2 different sets - one a foot wide where they painted the lane, then about another foot to the left was a wider one (about 2 feetwide) , but not as deep. You could barely see it when you where driving, but still hell to ride on on a bike! My teeth just start rattling looking at them!

 

[Abbott Smith]

The rumble strips were pretty horrible.
On some aprons there were actually 2 different sets - one a foot wide where they painted the lane, then about another foot to the left was a wider one (about 2 feetwide) , but not as deep. You could barely see it when you where driving, but still hell to ride on on a bike! My teeth just start rattling looking at them!

Only problem I've ever had with the Vendetta headrest was crossing rumble strips and/or pavement that was infested with asphalt gophers. It's enough to rattle out fillings and an instant headache.

 

[BentSk8r]

Huge props to all who made the RAAM victory happen. I AM IN AWE. And happy to share vicariously when on my V. or chatting with another V. curious rider about the bike and it's exploits. Congratulatory hugs and high fives to all!