Race Across the West

Huge thanks to my support crew for making this all possible!


Support vehicles: 1 chase car (van), 1 RV. The RV allows crew to sleep anywhere they can park it, instead of being constrained to hotels in cities.
Support crew: 4; 2 with a little experience with endurance races, but all new to races of this length.
Race start: June 11, 12:00 pm


The morning of June 10, some of my crew went with me to pick of the chase car, while the others finished organizing/filling the RV. I had wanted to leave by about 8 in order to be to Oceanside in advance of a photo thing that I was supposed to be at at 11:15. Through various delays, we didn't actually end up leaving until after 10, causing me to miss the photos and setting up for a very rushed day. The rest of Monday was taken up with informational meetings and preparations, such as putting the required signage on the chase car and RV.


One of the rules for the race was that at night, the chase car has to follow no more than 30 ft behind the rider. This is for safety - if another vehicle tries to pass the chase car and the rider is too far ahead of it, they are less likely to see, and thus more likely to hit, the rider. I wanted to practice this as well as some basic things like bottle and food handoffs, but we were low on time, and the support crew was generally disinterested in practicing these things, because they seemed simple and not worth practicing. Finally, late into the evening, we got out to practice following me, but did not practice the other things.


I stayed up late taking care of last minute things, while my crew slept.


I was a little worried about the crew dynamics going into the race, because, while as far as I knew they were all nice, friendly people, not all of them knew each other.


Tuesday, June 11. The morning of the race, we got up, ate breakfast, and drove over to the start of the race. I had 1 bike that I was riding, and another similar bike as a spare. Some of the other racers had more, and more specialized bikes, including full TT setups with disc wheels.


The race started at noon, with racers leaving at one minute intervals. They told us right before leaving that there had been some issue with the GPS trackers, and that they would get them to us later in the race. I left at 12:16, in a field of 5 women. There was a long neutral section, then a segment support vehicles weren't allowed on, then around 26 mi into the race we got into the normal flow of things with support.


It was hot as we rode through the hills toward Palomar. I quickly saw that I could climb much faster than the other women in my field, but they would pass me on the flat sections. Continuing east, we climbed higher and higher until reaching a high point just before Borrego Springs and starting a long descent. The descent into Borrego Springs is beautiful, but as we descended, the air temperature rose, and it got harder to stay cool with the hot air blasting in your face like a hair dryer. About 100 mi in now, the triple digit heat made the 90s earlier in the day seem comfortable. It would stay in the triple digits for the next 75 mi, until the sun set and it started to cool off.


One of my friends told me to put ice in nylons to put down my jersey in order to stay cool. I hadn't anticipated needing to do this until we got to AZ, but I asked my crew to start making those for me and handing them off. These were really nice to have.


Thus far into the ride, I had had the same 2 crew members in the chase car following me. I think we were all still trying to work out what exactly I needed in terms of water and food. I had a Terrano headset on my helmet, and it was amazingly helpful, as I could easily communicate with my support crew throughout the race at the touch of a button. This meant that they didn't have to anticipate when I was running low on water; I could tell them that I'd need to find a place to get a new bottle some time in the next 3 mi. Everyone eventually settled into the pace of the race and the routine. I wasn't going fast; it was hot and I still had over 700 mi to go.


There were 15 time stations throughout the race - places where you had to check in and you time would be reported on the race website. Because we didn't have GPS trackers, that was the only way my team could tell where I was relative to other people. These were a bit confusing, though, because you could only see when someone got in to a time station, and that wasn't enough to know where they were on the course. A handful of times, other women in my field would check into a time station hours before I got there, but then I would later find out that they were behind me because they took a long break. As far as I knew, no one was going too much faster or slower than me at that point.


The crew in the chase car swapped when it got to be night. I laid down in the RV trying to cool off while they resupplied the car with food and water, cleaned it up some, and reorganized. I slept for maybe 10 minutes. It cooled off to the high 80s. Even though I had looked through all the maps and elevation profiles in advance, I had a hard time remembering exactly what was coming up, because the course was so long. I would repeatedly ask the chase car for the rest of the race how much distance to the next time station, where the next climb was, how long the current climb was, etc.


I rode through the night without any additional sleep. Apparently it's common to not sleep at all for the first day or two. The sun came up and it got warmer. We were in AZ, which looked like it would be the hottest part of the race. Late in the morning at one of the time stations, we stopped and I ran into the nearby gas station to wash off my sunscreen in the bathroom, while the crew in the chase car swapped. I put on sun sleeves to try to keep wet and help stay cool, and covered the rest of my skin in sunscreen.


It got hot. 100 degrees. 110 degrees. 120 degrees. There was a very gradual climb over the 100 mi leading to Prescott, AZ. The hottest temp I saw on my Garmin was 123 F. Initially my support crew planned on doing handoffs every 10 mi, but I was going through bottles faster than that, and the ice in the nylons would melt faster, too. We shortened it to every 7 mi. Then every 5 mi. Then every 4 mi. I was going slow, but so was everyone else. I was just barely able to stay cool enough with ice down the back and front of my jersey, and constantly pouring water on my jersey and sleeves. It took about 45 seconds for my sleeves to completely dry after soaking them, so I was occupied with constantly re-wetting them. Other people had other approaches. Someone passed me carrying a large container of water with a spray nozzle on his bars, so he could spray his face with water. Some support crews had the sort of sprayers that you pump up and then can spray continuously, and they would ride beside their racers for short periods of time, spraying them (support cars weren't allowed to stay beside the riders because it would impede traffic). Some racers had cooling vests. Some decided to use this time to take a nap, in hopes that it would cool off by the time they got going again.


There is some point between 115 and 120 degrees where the air starts to hurt. It feels like it's burning my skin. Just standing in it is uncomfortable.


One of the support cars for another team drove up next to me, and someone leaned out the window with a spray bottle and yelled, "DO YOU WANT WATER??" I gladly accepted it, and they sprayed me for a bit before driving up to the next racer and doing the same thing. The water almost immediately dried, but having those few seconds where I didn't feel like I was overheating was so relieving. That support crew kept driving up and down the course for a while, spraying people.


I would make sure my support crew had a spray bottle like that on any future races.


It cooled off to 110. At least the air didn't hurt anymore. I kept cooling myself by drenching my jersey and sleeves with water, and putting ice in nylons down my jersey, but this got my chamois wet. Riding with a wet chamois leads to saddle sores, so I changed into a new kit and tried to find ways to keep cool without letting water drip into my chamois.


The skin behind my knees started to sting. I had sunscreen there, which was getting combined with salt and dirt, and getting sticky. This made it so every time I bent my legs, the skin behind my knees would stick to itself and pull away, effectively slowly pulling off layers of skin cells. I cleaned the area and put Chamois Butt'r on it. That fixed it. I had to keep doing this the rest of the race.


When it started to get dark, my crew swapped who was in the chase car again. I stayed in the RV to try to stay cool and maybe take a quick nap, but told my crew I didn't want to stop for long. I felt like if I stopped for too long, it would be harder for me to get going again. They said ok, and I was ready to go again after not too long. But they were not ready to go for another hour after I was ready, at which point I had cooled down and I knew I'd have a harder time getting started again. Had I known it would be that long regardless of when I was ready, I'd have taken a longer nap, but it kept seeming like they were almost ready to go, so I stayed ready to leave.


About an hour after leaving, it was dark, and I was starting to feel sleepy. I pushed through it for a little while, but eventually saw that I was having a hard time concentrating on the road, and kept losing concentration and drifting off to one side or the other. I stopped and took a short nap in the chase car. I think my crew were annoyed with me for stopping when I could have slept earlier, but I hadn't known they'd take so long. When I woke up, it had gotten cold. It was some weird combination of the air being a bit cold, and maybe a bit windy and humid, and me not being able to keep my core temperature up. It was probably only in the 60s, but I ended up putting on knee warmers, rain pants, arm warmers, a gilet, a wind jacket, full finger gloves, and a neck gaiter, and I was still cold.


My crew looked up where the other racers were. We had gotten really spread out in the heat, assuming the times at the time stations were correct. The times for the women were +0h, +4h, +6h, +10h (me), +13h. I figured at this point that there was no way I could make up a 10 hr difference, but I should be just fine for finishing the race.


During the night, we went over some really rough roads. Not the kind with potholes, but the kind with surfaces that just vibrate everything violently. My hands and saddle started to hurt after a few hours on this. I tried holding different parts of the bars, but nothing really helped. The bar tape I had didn't have very much padding. I had my crew put aero bars on my other bike and switched to that bike. It was less comfortable in some ways, but being able to take my hands off the bars was really relieving. They had started to hurt so much. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay on my aero bars for too much longer, because there was another climb coming up. Fortunately on the climbs I was going slow enough that road vibrations were irrelevant.


This was a critical point on the race, because for the rest of the ride after this, my hands hurt, and my saddle hurt. I couldn't figure out any way to make it better, and the pain from those kept me from pushing harder.


On one of the climbs, I heard off in the distance something that sounded like a strange high pitched siren or something. Then it changed to rapid beeps. My crew contacted me over the headset and asked how I liked the music. Very slowly, someone in the men's solo field caught up with and passed me, followed by a chase car decked out with colorful lights and huge speakers, blasting electro house music.


Early that morning we got to a time station that my crew was planning on swapping at. However, we got there before the RV, so we had to wait for about an hour. I took a nap, because I wasn't allowed to leave without the chase car. I felt like by around this time, my crew had mostly pulled everything together and had gotten into a good routine. While I had felt we were unprepared going in, I felt like they were doing a pretty solid job now.


The next day was supposed to be cooler. We had looked up the weather the day beforehand, and it looked like it was supposed to be in the 90s. But the temperatures climbed to around 110.


I talked with my crew in the chase car while I was riding, and heard that somehow I was still in 4th, but only 3h behind the woman in 1st. The woman behind me was only 1.5h behind. We guessed that the times from the time stations might not be accurate, or that people had recovered from the heat differently at night, or maybe taken breaks. In the men's solo race, the leader and a handful of others now showed DNF on the results. We speculated that it was because they tried to go too hard through the 120 degree weather and couldn't recover.


As far as I remember, this day was relatively uneventful. It was hot. There was climbing. My hands hurt a lot. My saddle was uncomfortable. We were getting closer to leaving AZ, but not yet.


My crew kept pushing me to eat more. I was mostly eating shot bloks and rice ball things that my crew had made. Sometimes other stuff like Clif bars. I started drinking Gatorade instead of water, to get more calories. They started giving me stuff like gummy bears, too. Some time in the afternoon when they were pushing me to eat more, I ate a candy bar, and I figured out that my stomach just cannot handle the amount of sugar I was eating (this was, like, a LOT of sugar over the course of the day). I could eat more food, just not more sugar. That candy bar made me feel sick. My crew kept trying to get me to eat more shot bloks, but I'm pretty sure I would've thrown up if I had. I kept drinking water and climbing the hills slowly, waiting to get to the point that I could eat again.


Going into Tuba City, AZ, there were some weird signs. A Burger King that claimed to have a museum in it (one of my crew members checked it out, and confirmed that it did in fact have an extensive museum in it). A Denny's with a jacuzzi (we did not check this out, but wish we had). I got to the time station in Tuba City, and found that two of the women in my field who had been ahead of me were currently at that time station, resting. I started to get concerned about making the time cutoff, because it was supposed to be triple digits heat again that day, and I could not go fast in the heat, and with how much my hands and sit bones hurt. The other 2 women left slightly before me from that time station. The woman currently leading the race was way ahead of everyone else, and we were unclear where the woman we'd thought was behind me was.


At this point I decided I wasn't concerned about doing well, so long as I finished. I was tired of fighting the heat. We were almost to Utah. Most of the other women seemed to be going approximately the same snail's pace as I was. Later that day, we finally got the GPS trackers.


Everything was hot. Everything was slow. I didn't want to eat more candy. They kept trying to make me eat more shot bloks and rice balls. I didn't want more rice. I wanted pretzels or bread or anything else. This was starting to be less fun.


We got to 725 mi. I called ahead to the crew members that were going to next swap into the car. I told them that there was only a double century left, and I have done lots of double centuries, and that I want to ride the next 200 mi the way I want, not the way they want. That that means that I'll be eating a lot less than they had been telling me to, drinking a lot less, and pushing a lot harder. I think they realized that arguing wasn't going to go anywhere, so they agreed and said they'd just monitor me and make sure I was doing ok. I rode hard to get to the time station where we'd swap who was in the chase car.


We left AZ.


Utah was beautiful. It was hot and dry, but it was probably my favorite part of the race, just because of the scenery. It helps a lot to have interesting and continually changing scenery.


The next 100 mi were full of interesting scenery, tail winds, and steep short climbs. In trying to make sitting less painful, I ended up doubling up bibs. I'd heard someone mention doing that before, but had completely forgotten about it until just then. It helped. As we got nearer CO and it started to get dark, I started to get sleepy. I took a short break, then kept going. My hands hurt and my sit bones hurt to the point that riding was very uncomfortable. I spent a while talking with the crew in the chase car about how to minimize my time in the saddle, while not exhausting myself. Doing a century out of the saddle is too much. As far as I knew, all the women were ahead of me, but not by a lot, and I had plenty of time to finish. I wasn't going to try to catch them.


We turned on to a dark road. There were bushes all along the sides, and weird clouds in the air. The bushes started to look like they had faces in them, and I mentioned that to the crew in the chase car, and they agreed. It got creepy. The road kept going for a long time, winding into the darkness. I alternated sprinting and then just coasting hovering barely out of my saddle. There were no other racers. It was dark and strange. I wanted to get off this road. The road kept going. There were 40 mi left and I had 8 hrs to complete it, which seemed both like a very long way, and also very doable. I kept talking with my crew to try to avoid getting creeped out by the scenery.


Finally back on normal roads, my crew swapped who was in the chase car one more time. I was really sleepy. I took a short nap, then kept going. Then got sleepy again and napped, then kept going. I was on the final climb before Durango, and would definitely get there before the time cutoff, but each mile was mentally harder than the last. It got cold, or at least, I got cold. I put on warm clothes. I got to the final descent into Durango in the morning, and my chase car split from me to meet me closer to the end of the race. I met them at the bottom of the descent and climbed in the back of the van, stripping off all the warm clothes and changing into a new kit. I took a little while to look at the rest of the route and chat with them. Then we got going again. I went slowly. I was there, and I had made it in time. Durango was pretty. No need to sprint up the last little hill to the finish line.


I got to the finish line and they took a few pictures and gave me a finisher's medal. 3 minutes later, the last woman in my field, who I thought had been hours ahead of me, rolled across the finish line. I had no idea she was close behind me, otherwise I wouldn't have stopped, and would have gone faster. I think she had no idea I was there either.


I finished 4th out of 5. Considering the number of DNFs in the men's field, and that I was by far the least experienced in my field, I'm pretty happy with that.


After the race:

I didn't spend much time going hard during the race for various reasons (heat, hands, crew), so my legs actually weren't tired at the end. My average moving speed wis only 14mph (with tailwinds throughout most of the race), and average overall speed only a little over 10mph. I was certainly overall tired, and had a lot of sleep to catch up on. My fingers were still numb. Over the next couple days, I felt like I almost completely recovered, except for my hands. My fingers are still a little numb; apparently you can do damage to circulation through long, intense vibration. But they're still getting better and I don't expect that to continue too much longer. In the future, I would try double wrapping my bar tape, and spending more time on aero bars.


By the end, I felt like my crew really pulled everything together and made a great team. It took a little time to get there, but I was really glad to have each and every one of them by the end.


Things that worked:

Australian Gold Botanical SPF 50 Lotion - this is mineral sunscreen, so it lasts a lot longer, and it isn't greasy. And it smells delicious. It also is very white, so makes you look like you got painted with white out.

Makeup remover pads - worked much better than baby wipes for removing sunscreen and salt/sweat/dirt before applying a new layer of sunscreen

Chamois Butt'r - does what it's supposed to

Terrano XT - invaluable for communication and saving time by not having to stop to have a discussion


Things I would do differently:

I had 5 kits for 3 days. I would have used 1-2 more if I had had them.

Definitely have my crew have a sprayer.

Eat as much food, but less pure sugar.

Have a working power meter.

Double wrap bar tape.



Here's the ride on Strava: RAW


If you're still reading - I'm planning on doing RAAM solo next year. Let me know if you'd be interested in being a part of it! You do not need to be experienced with endurance races or have any specific skill set (though there are some things I need someone on my crew to be able to cover).