RAAM Start Nonsense

Let me preface this next entry with an acknowledgement that orchestrating an event that involves monitoring hundreds of racers/crew spread across 3000 miles and 12 states is certainly a huge logistics challenge.  The fact that RAAM management is able to pull off a race of this magnitude each year with so few issues is remarkable.  BUT… (here it comes…)  There are a few things that RAAM does that are L-A-M-E!  At the top of my “Lame Things About RAAM” is the start.  The start procedure has changed several times over the years but the current cluster goes something like this (sorry this will be a bit long and slow but we need context to understand what went down and what was going through our heads as we left Oceanside)…

1)    First we have a mandatory racer meeting where all racers must show up the night before the race and sit around in an auditorium while RAAM flips a handful of PowerPoint slides that were created in, oh, 1987. Snappy graphics. There is absolutely ZERO useful information that wasn’t already communicated at the crew chief meeting earlier in the week.  I can tell you that I can’t find anything else I’d rather be doing before a huge effort bike race than sit around with a few hundred of my closest friends.  Boy howdy…

Tynee and Animal on the edge of their seats

2)    Next let’s have all the teams drag themselves down to the Oceanside Pier before the start to stand around for an hour or two while we interview current and former racers over a garbled PA system that no one can hear.  Guys this is RAAM, not the Super Bowl.

Oh, the humanity...

3)    Racers start off on one minute spacing in reverse order with 2-man first, next 4-man, then 8-man teams.  Now, as you can imagine, racing RAAM as a 2-man squad is a completely different race than going off as a 4-man unit which likewise is a totally different race than that of an 8-man team.  Racers on the 2-man teams are each settling in for a 1500 mile grind on little rest and lousy food.  Let’s drop into a nice rhythm and start to bang out some miles. Most 8-man teams race with a rotation scheme that has their racers complete a series of almost full gas sprints while they leapfrog across the country. So let’s put the long and slow(er) guys out in front of the teams so we can make our first few hours of racing unnecessarily chaotic as the trailing 8-man racers/crew vehicles overtake the 4-man racers/crew vehicles who are overtaking the 2-man racers/vehicles. 

4)    Here’s the best part… The official clock starts as the teams roll out from the pier.  Each team’s start time is adjusted based on their start position so every team is measured based on the time they start rolling. Makes perfect sense, right? But wait… there’s more.  The first 8 miles (most of which follow the San Luis Rey bike path) of the “race” are called the “parade zone.” Teams are not allowed to pass and are supposed to ride at no more than 18 MPH (OK, sure…) The only thing this does is ensure teams bunch up on the bike path thereby skewing the spacing time adjustments.  Or worse, some teams get stuck behind teams doing the “Ride Across America” and spinning the bike path at 12-15 MPH while those ahead are banging out tempo and potentially opening up big gaps.

Wildebeest and Slayer "parading"
It's going to get ugly soon-

5)    After the first 8 mile parade zone, things get interesting as “racing” begins.  (This implies that there hasn’t been any racing on the bike path... OK sure…) The fact that RAAM doesn’t queue up teams at the end of the parade zone and start the clock/spacing at that point is a true mystery.  The next 12.5 miles comprise a stretch known as the unsupported zone.  What this means is that racers are on their own and mechanicals, flats, missed turns, etc… are completely the responsibility of each racer.  This drives a key start strategy that we have employed for the past few years. In order to keep Truck 1 (traditionally the flagship of the Team ViaSat fleet) clear of the start shenanigans, Truck 4 generally gets the honor of taking the first 20 mile “shift.”  As our first official shift isn’t slated to start for 15 hours after the start, we have the best chance of rolling the start, hand off to a locked and loaded Truck 1 at the end of the unsupported zone, and then get out to AZ to get some rest and ready to roll Sun AM.  The Wildebeest and I were given the honor of taking that first 20 and firing the first shot… More on this next post.

So in summary (finally), what we have is the possibility of gaining or losing many minutes in the first 8 miles of parade with the next 12.5 miles of high risk unsupported racing.  What’s the big deal?  Well… RAAM is as much mental as it is physical.  We knew we were fast… really fast… but (as evidenced by comments we picked up from competitors during and after the race) no one outside of our team knew what we were bringing to the party.  And we had been training for the better part of a year working our asses off and were primed to send a message. 

Next up, unleash the Beest…