June is an exciting month for endurance cycling fans as it’s peanut-butter-RAAM-time! The world’s toughest endurance bicycle event kicks off on June 16 in Oceanside, California, and then races coast to coast to finish in Annapolis, Maryland, three thousand miles later.
If you’re following a team, they’ll be done in five to nine-ish days; if you’re following the solo riders (who are the really tough cookies), it’ll be in the seven to twelve day range. Twelve days is the cut-off: you have to complete within 12 days to be considered a RAAM Finisher.
There are no rest days either, it’s not so much ‘ride, eat, sleep, repeat’ as ‘ride, eat-ride, ride, sleep, ride, ride some more, repeat’. RAAM’s own website says that a solo racer can’t sleep more than 4 hours a day to get in under the 12 day limit. If I do only a couple of 4-hr nights in a row, I’m a little wonky; I can’t imagine 12 days in a row – plus riding at least 250 miles a day every day while awake.
While you wait for the event to start, I encourage you to watch The Ataxian, a feature-length documentary about Kyle Bryant, unable to walk due to Friedreich’s ataxia, and the rest of his team as they attempted RAAM 2010. The movie’s world premiere is on June 6. It’s a pretty remarkable story.