Home again!
It is all over and I had a wonderful sleep of nearly 12 hours in my own bed. The simple pleasures really are the best. I am still unwinding this experience but very quickly the difficult things are fading and a warm fuzzy glow is emerging. Here are a few quick take aways.
As I planned for my part of the ride it was all about the training to handle the load. That was important, but we were all surprised by how much the team impacted our ability to get things done. I don't think we really understood until we were going how vital our drivers and crew would be, both in getting to our ride locations, but also in keeping our heads on straight and doing their absolute best to keep us fed and rested. How they did this with less sleep than the riders got is beyond me. The riding actually helps keep you awake. The driver of my van, Tom, was awesome and I learned so much from him about biking and operating under pressure. Jimi, the driver of the other van in our group, had learned quickly the lesson of being suspect of our own opinions, and helped us all get better as we went on. His sense of humor at times didn't hurt either. Neither did Tom's and his constant work on our bikes.
This is not a surprise to anybody, but when you start going 24/7 and are operating on little sleep, people can get crabby. A lesson for next time, or for somebody new thinking about doing RAAM, is to learn and exercise the team dynamics before you start. Nobody is smart enough after 3 days of no sleep to think clearly and you can't rely on a strong leader to make good decisions. We all got stupid. Instead you must learn to work together and support each other, with a healthy way of dissenting, coming to consensus and taking action as quickly as possible. You have to focus on the goal of navigating the course, planning the interval lengths wisely, planning the course for the day, and making sure that all the riders are with you and willing to put in the effort. We all had learn to be somewhat skeptical of our own opinions, because they were often wrong. That combined with the goal of coming to an intersection and trying to figure out the route was often the scene of very high tension, and failure means all your hard work to train for a certain pace is lost while you try to get yourself back on course. I never would have guessed that teamwork would play such an important part of an individual sport like biking.
There were lots of other things we learned and I'll throw more out later. For now, wow, what a great experience. We got a group of 8 "seasoned" riders across the US with very varied athletic backgrounds and abilities. We got better and faster as we went along. Many of us conquered fears or anxieties to be a part of it. We saw the US from the intimate view of a bike. We raised a really satisfying amount of money for Make-A-Wish.
Success!
I'm still not sure the call isn't going to come in and we all have to jump on our bikes in 20 minutes.
As I planned for my part of the ride it was all about the training to handle the load. That was important, but we were all surprised by how much the team impacted our ability to get things done. I don't think we really understood until we were going how vital our drivers and crew would be, both in getting to our ride locations, but also in keeping our heads on straight and doing their absolute best to keep us fed and rested. How they did this with less sleep than the riders got is beyond me. The riding actually helps keep you awake. The driver of my van, Tom, was awesome and I learned so much from him about biking and operating under pressure. Jimi, the driver of the other van in our group, had learned quickly the lesson of being suspect of our own opinions, and helped us all get better as we went on. His sense of humor at times didn't hurt either. Neither did Tom's and his constant work on our bikes.
This is not a surprise to anybody, but when you start going 24/7 and are operating on little sleep, people can get crabby. A lesson for next time, or for somebody new thinking about doing RAAM, is to learn and exercise the team dynamics before you start. Nobody is smart enough after 3 days of no sleep to think clearly and you can't rely on a strong leader to make good decisions. We all got stupid. Instead you must learn to work together and support each other, with a healthy way of dissenting, coming to consensus and taking action as quickly as possible. You have to focus on the goal of navigating the course, planning the interval lengths wisely, planning the course for the day, and making sure that all the riders are with you and willing to put in the effort. We all had learn to be somewhat skeptical of our own opinions, because they were often wrong. That combined with the goal of coming to an intersection and trying to figure out the route was often the scene of very high tension, and failure means all your hard work to train for a certain pace is lost while you try to get yourself back on course. I never would have guessed that teamwork would play such an important part of an individual sport like biking.
There were lots of other things we learned and I'll throw more out later. For now, wow, what a great experience. We got a group of 8 "seasoned" riders across the US with very varied athletic backgrounds and abilities. We got better and faster as we went along. Many of us conquered fears or anxieties to be a part of it. We saw the US from the intimate view of a bike. We raised a really satisfying amount of money for Make-A-Wish.
Success!
I'm still not sure the call isn't going to come in and we all have to jump on our bikes in 20 minutes.
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