2007 Race Across America is Finished

cycling, RAAM, Race Across America, ultra cycling | UltraRob | Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 9:39 pm

The Race Across America was officially over Friday afternoon. There were 5 guys that I thought were going to have a tough time making the time cut-off. They all made it except 2 hours and 45 minutes of time penalties pushed Patrick Autissier 34 minutes over the limit. He was still counted as an official finisher and I think he deserved it.

This year the time cut-off was 3 hours longer than it’s been the last several years. 4 racers were over the old time limit. In the early years of RAAM, the time cut-off was 48 hours after the winner. 13 racers this year were over that. Some old timers think that RAAM has become too easy. It may be easier to get an official finish but it’s still far from being easy.

David Jones dropped out of RAAM last year after he was blown off his bike in the wind storm in Eastern Colorado and Kansas. This year he came back and finished a few hours before the time cut-off to set a new record in the 60+ category. He’s not quite as old as Fred Boethling was last year so Fred still is the oldest RAAM finisher although he was a couple hours over the time limit.

Another rider to finish with just a couple hours to spare was John Spurgeon. The impressive thing about him was he did the race on a single speed. He had one bike set up with a gear for climbing and another one with a gear for everything else. RAAM is hard enough with gears. I can’t imagine doing with only 2 gears and shifting gears required switching bikes.

Kerry White was the last of 5 women to officially DNF this year. The diabetic from Vail, Colorado continued on and finished around 1:30 PM on Saturday. She had the most cheering of any finisher when she made it to the boardwalk.

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