Juré Robic is finally on the roster for RAAM. I really thought he’d be doing the Traditional Category but he’s listed in the Enduro. This makes it 17 men in the Enduro and 11 men in the Traditional plus a recumbent.
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Juré Robic Signs Up For RAAM Enduro Category
April 25th, 2006
New Bike
April 21st, 2006
The road bike I’ve been riding for nearly 5 years is a steel Tommasini Sintesi. It has been a great bike and I’ve qualified for RAAM 4 times on it. For RAAM I wanted to have a bike with a triple on it for the steep hills when I’m exhausted.
Last fall I did research and talked to some riders and concluded that I wanted a Specialized Roubaix. It is a full carbon frame with inserts that they call Zertz. The Zertz help to dampen vibrations.
First I tried getting on the Specialized grass root program which I have been on in the past. Part of the program is really good discounts on their bikes. Due to some mis-communication with the shop I went through, I didn’t find out until pretty late that for this year Specialized is only accepting teams to the program instead of individuals. I then tried getting a good deal through the shop that sponsors Pikes Peak Velo. They really wouldn’t do much for me so I called Paul at Team Telecycle.
Paul is a great guy and I used to mountain bike race with him back in the early 90’s. He gave me a great deal on last year’s Roubaix Elite Triple. I really would have liked the Comp Triple which is the same frame but with some better components but Specialized didn’t have any left in my size. Paul is also helping me out with some other things that I need for RAAM so a big thanks to him.
I got the bike a few weeks ago but the longest ride I’ve done so far has been a little over 4 hours. Tomorrow I plan to put in 8 hours since I’ve now gotten pretty much everything dialed in so it fits just like my old bike. As much as I love a new bike I also don’t like it because it seems to always take a month before I get it to feel just right. I keep rotating the bar slightly and turning the brake hoods a little, etc. I finally got the aero bars on last night so I’m sure I have some more tweaking to do on them. I rode the lunch time training race on Wednesday and felt very comfortable on the bike and also fast. I finished 3rd out of about a dozen riders so I’m getting some speed and climbing well on it.
Probably the biggest thing I’ve noticed about it is how stiff it is. I hadn’t realized how flexed out my Tommasini. I have over 25,000 miles on it and I tend to gear mash which probably hasn’t helped it. It’s amazing how fast my new bike accelerates when I get out of the saddle and I don’t feel the bottom bracket flexing. The Roubaix has the same bottom bracket design as the Tarmac which is their USCF racing type bike. The bottom bracket stiffness is also very noticeable when I’m climbing hard. It’s also noticeable how it feel when going over bumps. I feel the bump but then it more like a thud and no more vibration. I’m not sure how much of it is due to the carbon fiber and how much is due to the Zertz but I think it’ll make a big difference on long rides.
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Updates to RAAM roster
April 11th, 2006It looks like another 4 solo men have signed up for RAAM. All of them are doing the Traditional category and it appears one rider has switched from the Enduro category to the Traditional category. This puts 13 in the Enduro category and 12 in the Traditional category. According to a post to the raam group by Jim Pitre, the race director, 5 other solo riders are planning to race but haven’t yet signed up.
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RAAM Roster Now Broken Out Between Enduro and Traditional
April 5th, 2006The men’s RAAM roster is now split into the Enduro and Traditional categories. There are 14 in the Enduro category and only 7 in the Traditional category. I really thought that there would be more big names in the Traditional category but most of them are in the Enduro. Allen Larsen said something to me at Hell Week that he might change to the Enduro category if he felt he wouldn’t have competition in the Traditional category. Even though I’m excited about the Enduro rules, I’d really like to see everyone switch so it really isn’t 2 separate races.
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Article on Mike Trevino
March 27th, 2006Mike Trevino was the RAAM Rookie of the Year in 2004. Last year he was in 2nd when he crashed and separated his shoulder. There’s an article in this month’s Men’s Vogue Magazine not that I even knew the magazine existed. (Update: Seems the magazine was ended in Oct 2008) Clicking on the cover on the right side of the web site shows the beginning of the article although I can’t make much of it out. Maybe I’ll have to go buy one. I wonder what category that would put me in?
I heard that he had quit his job so he could focus on training for RAAM this year. Recently I heard he had crashed during training and injured his elbow. Hopefully that won’t keep him out of RAAM but it would be hard to train. I would think it would be possible to ride on the trainer but I’d think he wouldn’t be able to train on the road.
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Jonathan Boyer to Race RAAM this Year
March 23rd, 2006I had seen somewhere that the new Enduro category had Jonathan Boyer thinking about doing RAAM again this year. Last week he was added to the roster so now it’s more than a rumor.
He is the only rider to race in both the Tour de France and RAAM. He won RAAM in 1985 which was the only time he did the race. He is now 51 but I expect he will still be very fast. When he’s been asked to compare the Tour de France and RAAM, he has said there is no way to compare them.
Now if Lance Armstrong would do RAAM. He has said he’s interested but doesn’t want to spend that much time training now that he’s retired. He’s competitive enough that I think there’s a good chance he’ll show up in the next couple of years.
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Top RAAM Riders
March 2nd, 2006Today I finally got around to reading an article from the New York Times from a month ago about Jure Robic. It’s called “That Which Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stranger”. I think that title comes from a quote by John Stamsted. It’s an interesting article and worth reading. You have to be a registered user but it’s free to register. It talks a lot about the mental aspect of ultra racing. It says he is planning to race RAAM this year but he isn’t on the roster yet. I knew his post on 11/11/2005 said he was but I didn’t know if that had changed. Most of his posts aren’t in English so I can’t read them.
Robic will be tough to beat but I’d really like to see Tinker win. I’ve really admired him for a lot of years on the mountain bike circuit. I also have a lot of respect for Allen Larsen. When I ordered one of his videos a couple years ago, his wife took the order and I told her I was planning to do RAAM in a couple years. Allen started asking questions in the background so she just put him on the phone and he let me pick his brain for a while. Kenny Souza should be another top rider. I’m not sure whether these riders are doing the Enduro or Traditional categories. From what I’ve seen my guess would be that Robic and Larsen will be in the Traditional and Souza will be in the Enduro. I haven’t seen any hint as to which category Tinker will be in.
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Very Cold Weekend
February 20th, 2006Tuesday it was 60 degrees which was probably because of the wind in front of a cold front. Wednesday it was cold and snowed a little and it just kept getting colder. Friday morning it was 1 degree and by Saturday morning it was -12 degrees. The high was 10 degrees.
I planned on riding a couple hours on the mag trainer. It ended up only being an hour because it took me longer than I thought it would to solder ends on the cables I ran for my CompuTrainer through the walls when we were remodeling. My computer is in a different room from where I ride and with little kids it just doesn’t work to string cables across the floor which is what I used to do. There haven’t been many cold days so I haven’t bothered with getting it set up.
Sunday it was -5 degrees in the morning. The only time I had to ride was in the morning so I couldn’t wait for it to warm up outside. I managed to ride for 3 hours on the mag trainer watching last year’s Giro. Even three hours was a stretch for me. Many years ago I did a 5 hour trainer ride and don’t have plans to do it again. I may be forced to if we get several nasty days since I’m training for RAAM. I checked out the page for the UMCA Indoor Challenge and some people are putting in insane hours inside. One guy has put in two 20 hour rides on the trainer. You’re allowed 5 minutes off the bike per hour and every 6 hours a 15 minute break although that time doesn’t count as part of the ride time.
At least riding the trainer Sunday motivated me to finish setting up my CompuTrainer. I plan on getting the Logitech MX5000 keyboard and mouse since it uses Bluetooth that gives about a 30 foot range. I just found today that TigerDirect has a rebate on it. The RAAM website has the CompuTrainer files for the complete 2006 RAAM course so maybe I should start riding it. One of the reasons I’m into riding my bike is because I love being outside so I hope I don’t have to ride inside too much.
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Enduro or Traditional RAAM Category
January 31st, 2006I received an email last week for Jim Pitre, RAAM race director that solo riders had until today to choose between the Traditional (old rules) and Enduro (sleeper) categories. We can change our mind once before May.
I don’t like the idea of the mandatory sleep stops. It’s not that I think 40 hours off the bike is unreasonable but I want to be able to sleep when I feel like I need to not when I manage to get to a control point. My first thought was great, I’ll sign up for the Traditional category now that it is going to be a real category with prize money.
But reading through all the information, I found one little detail that I haven’t seen anywhere else. The Traditional category isn’t the rules from the last few years but rather the original rules. The key thing is you have 48 hours after the winner to finish. I really don’t know if I can finish within 48 hours of mutants like Robic and Trevino. The Enduro category gives 12 days 2 hours to finish. That’s hard but seems a real possibility for me but in the Traditional the cut-off could be under 11 days.
My coach didn’t want me back on the bike until Sunday after having the flu last week. Even on Sunday she only wanted me to do an easy spin. That gave me Saturday to make another attempt at installing the remote car starter and remote door locks on my wife’s van. In the time between my last attempt, I had soldered up the required resistors and connected the wires to the relays so that it would reduce the risk of me getting stuck with the vehicle unusable for a few days. The short story is everything is working now including the horn honking and the lights flashing before it starts up. I’ll leave the painful details for another post.
Sunday evening I thought I’d hop on the trainer for an easy spin after we went over to a friends house. The kids were downstairs with their kids when we heard a big bang. About right away Danielle and Cassidy started crying. Danielle was lying on her back on the floor. They had the carpet torn out so it was just bare concrete. She was kind of limp but screaming. Cassidy’s face was bleeding.
We got them upstairs were I got the full benefit of Danielle throwing up. She was like a rag doll in my arms and we were having trouble keeping her from going to sleep. We called 911 and they ended up taking her to the hospital in the ambulance. For the first couple hours her heart rate and temperature were low and we couldn’t get much response out of her.
They finally took her for a CAT scan and that woke her up. After that she started talking and told us that Cassidy was on the stairs and started falling and so she had tried to catch her. Cassidy doesn’t weigh much less than Danielle so that was a bad idea. After a little while the doctor came back in and said the good news was there was no sign of brain bleeding or bruising. The bad news was her skull was fractured. They went ahead and sent her home since the brain was alright. Yesterday she was running around the house as though nothing happened. Cassidy’s face is pretty beat up looking.
Since I spent Sunday evening in the ER, yesterday was my first day back on the bike. I just did an easy spin for about 45 minutes on the Santa Fe Trail. My legs felt good so today I plan to ride a little longer but still keep it easy.
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Debate about new RAAM rules continues
January 19th, 2006There has been a discussion on the ultracycling e-mail list that at times hasn’t been too nice about the new “sleeper” RAAM rules. I think most of the finishers and those that are signed up don’t support the rules and some are strongly against them.
The requirement of time off the bike doesn’t bother me too much but the lack of flexibility when I can sleep does. There’s also a “old rules” category but as the rules are currently written there’s no prize money. Any rider that does this category will not be officially recognized as placing in or winning the overall solo Race Across America but will be credited in the “old rules” category. An article last week on Cyclingnews.com though quoted Jim Pitre, the race organizer, as saying there will now be prize money in both categories.
There also has been a discussion on RoadBikeReview.com that has been more supportive of the new rules. However it shakes out I know I have a lot of training to do.
I met with my coach today and discussed some of the training needed besides on the bike. One of the common problems with RAAM riders is having trouble holding the head up because of neck fatigue. She pointed me to head harness online. My guess is that it will help strengthen the neck but it looks like some torture device.
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