My Adventure: by Brian and Stacey Welsh
RAAM (Race Across America) is a long-running, epic, and famous endurance cycling event from coast-to-coast across the U.S. It entails 3,000 miles of pedaling and 175,000 vertical feet of climb. In 2008 Stacey and a team of three other ladies decided to attempt RAAM as a team. After many factors resulted in members dropping one by one, leaving Stacey alone with the threat of an unfulfilled challenge, Brian, being ever chivalrous offered to do it with her. She asked, ‘how do we get two more people.’ I replied that I had done a four-person mixed in both 2004 and 2006 so, let’s do it as a pair.
At the time only one mixed couple had ever completed RAAM as a mixed pair, and that was with a time limit of 10 days. When we checked the time limit, it had been reduced to 9 days. ‘Oh dear’, I said. Ever the optimist I was, ‘we can do this,’ ever the gullible (inexperienced) Stacey was ‘OK, if you say we can do it, let’s do it.”
In March we started training seriously, culminating in Stacey doing a 500-mile week, whilst working 10-hour days. When we returned from our last ride, Stacey discovered she was still 12 miles short of the 500-mile target. I’m, ‘it’s close enough.” Stacey being Stacey and pretty much a perfectionist and who believes a target is a target wants to do the final 12 miles, so I go off to the ‘Fish and Chip Shop’ whilst Stacey sits on her turbo.
Challenge number two is that we do not have a crew and no sponsors to help pay for them. We suck up the cost, order an RV and a car in the States, speak to a friend who is over from South Africa and is always up for an adventure, plus she had done ‘Race Around Europe’ with me the year before. We then cobble together five more willing souls, mainly under the age of 30, apart from Ian who has just retired as a professional violinist and wants to see life a little.
We start, Stacey and I riding 4-hour shifts each, so 4 hours riding, 4 hours resting, repeat and repeat. This is how the night hours are divided between us. During the daylight hours, we do an hour on, hour off, the resting rider eating and sleeping in the follow car.
The poor crew, who have had very little training are rotating, 2 driving & navigating the RV, plus making food, bottles, listening to the rider moan about how tired they are, 2 trying to rest in a moving RV or people moving about and 2 driving the support car, which during the night must be behind the rider, and keep the rider in the headlights and. A hard task going downhill when the riders might be doing up to 80 kph, even worse when going uphill and the rider may be doing 8kph. They worked hard. Riders and crew make one team and it is only as a team that we get to the finish, safely and in time.
It is a race where limits are tested. We recall one very memorable incident where tiredness and emotions made poor companions to decision making and communication. As the riders get more tired, I can see the 4-hour shifts are too long for the riders, we are not able to keep nutrition and hydration levels up. I decide that the riders will go to 3-hour shifts during the night. Our Crew Chief, who by this time is beyond tired, says, ‘the crew need to do 4-hour shifts,’ I reply, ‘I don’t care what the crew does, we need to be on 3-hour shifts.’ She takes this as me meaning I don’t care about the crew and immediately informs the rest of the crew of this fact. What I meant was, I don’t mind the crew sticking to 4-hour shifts whilst the riders do 3-hour shifts. We can manage with stopping the rider on the road whilst crew changes. For my first three-hour shift, no one offers me a drink and I’m, ‘screw you.’ It all got pretty sorted in the end.
In RAAM near the end are four nasty, nasty hills, the Appellation’s may be lower than the Rockies, but they are one after the other and steeper. Getting through them was our last big target, both Stacey and I had given everything by then, but realised to finish in the time limit we just needed to keep going. We had overcome strategy changes, issues including open saddle sores, mouth burn and many limits had been tested and pushed.
We finished exhausted but happy in 8 days 17 hours 54 minutes. The team was exhausted!
We have both had more Ultra Distance and RAAM adventures since then, but this was one of the most epic.
