Road Trip Chronicles: RAAM 2010, by way of Texas

[Road Trip Chronicles keeps us in the loop when conquering heroes venture afar, or at least over the state line. Next time you pack your suitcase of courage for some out-of-town racing, why not let GamJams know about it?]

I took part in the Texas Time Trials RAAM Qualifier on Sept 24-26th.  This 500 mile/48 hour solo race was my qualifying race for solo RAAM in 2010.  The 26.3 mile course with 1,100 feet of climbing per lap was brutal over the 19 lap race.  Temps were in the high 80's during the day to the low 50's at night. 

My support guy was Johnny May, a teammate of mine and my massage therapist, travelled to the far outskirts of Dallas to Rose Glen, TX to help me get through this race.  Coach Kris Auer was only a phone call away and kept in touch with Johnny throughout the race to assess my state and help decide when to rest and when to push harder. 

Starting the race with the flu was not the start of our best luck ever... We had a bad mechanical early on (a broken hub when the gears overshifted into the spokes) that sucked up quite a bit of our time, along with near hypothermia (it gets cold in Texas!!), and a few cases of heat exhaustion when the temps soared in the heat of the afternoon, but we made it through and finished in 47h5m.  I finished as the third place female in my first ultra endurance race ever, next to two veteran endurance cycling ladies, and qualified for solo RAAM in 2010. 

This was definitely the hardest race I've ever done on a bike, and I could not have gotten through it without the help of Johnny May and Kris Auer... Although something tells me that RAAM will be a lot easier without the flu!

  - Submitted by Heidi von Teitenberg, C3 - Athletes Serving Athletes

Comments

[greg]

congratulations! That's a pretty crazy thing to do.