RAAM

bobhitch

evening,
Has anyone out there competed in the race across america ? I'm considering it as a beast of a challenge for 2013 (riding as a team of two )
If so how did you go about sorting out all the logistics ?

cheers

amaferanga

You must be loaded to even consider it....

jgsi

or extremely well sponsored corporately.

Good luck to you fella, even doing 1/2 of it, still wouldnt do it.
oh go check their website, pre qualifying your 1st hurdle.. unless you are loaded to buy yourself into it.

mrushton

you need to prequalify or get yourself in with money. A prequalifier is something like PBP (1200km). The RAF have done it as a 4 man team and there was a guy on TV who attempted it and he was struggling. Maybe try to contact previous competitors?

Monty Dog

A friend did it as part of a sponsored team last year. They rode in pairs, riding 4 hours on 4 hours off, each taking 1 hour turns. Sounded like a psychological nightmare to be honest - they spent a week just riding, eating and getting massaged. Plenty of riders fall-out with their support crew who don't tend to view it as a 'holiday'. FWIW PBP doesn't automatically count as a qualifier.

samtw

You only have to qualify if you're entering solo, so you won't have to worry about that as a team of two. However, as others have said, the financial issue is a big one, and you'll either have to be happy spending a significant amount of money yourself or getting lucky with corporate sponsorship (probably £20k minimum for a UK-based team).

Having the right team is incredibly important, both in terms of the other rider and your crew, who will be having to work as hard as the riders.

(I did it this year as part of a two-person team - well, that was the intention, at least!)

bobhitch

Thanks for the replies
samtw - i've been checking out the video clips of your efforts -mighty impressive
assuming the cost isn't the issue (!) and the training is doable then how did you arrange the support crew?
did anyone in your team have prior experience -
it really is only a bit of a pipe dream but i seem to spend a lot of time thinking about it and every adventure has to start somewhere.

cheers Bob

samtw

With my support crew, we plundered friends and persuaded them to give up two weeks of their time for a free trip to the US. We paid for everything for them, but they really did have to work their arses off. We didn't have a lot of 'specialists' on the crew, but had one person who was fairly adept at first aid (although not a nurse/doctor) and one who knew his way around a bike very well (but not a professional mechanic at all). If you can persuade someone who is medically trained or a physio, that would be great, but I don't think vital. Having people who are sensible and willing to work is far more important.

Nobody on my crew had any prior experience, and it certainly showed to begin with. By the end we'd worked out what we were doing, but we were a long way from perfect to begin with. Again, if you can get someone who has crewed before, that's an advantage, but you can get away with it as long as you have a really good crew chief who is able and willing to work it out as they go. The race organisers are very good at helping out with advice too.

Ultimately, it's not the most complicated thing in the world, but there is a huge amount of work involved (both before and during) and plenty of mistakes to make along the way.

Good luck!

bobhitch

samtw -How many crew did you take with you ?
how many vehicles (i assume the organisers can give advice on vehicle rental)
and last , but not least , how much do you reckon it cost overall

thanks again -bob (i'll leave you alone now )

samtw

We initially planned on having 10 crew but, when we realised we needed some to help out with riding, we recruited one extra. I think 10 would be right for a 2-man team.

We had two cars (an SUV and a minivan) and an 8-man RV.

Costs is difficult to estimate, because we were lucky and got a fair amount free/reduced. But, the main costs you can't avoid are:
Entry fee (about $5,000 I think, but you could check on the RAAM site)
Vehicle rental (about $1,000 for each car and about $4,000 for the RV)
Flights (around £600 per person, so £7k-ish)
Pre- and post-race accommodation (depends what you go for. Motels are fairly cheap, but a bit crappy)
Fuel and food (I can check through our accounts to give a figure for this, but you could vaguely work it out)
Any equipment you need to purchase (depends entirely on what you already have)

The equipment is a big variable, depending on if you have all the bike equipment you need, any custom clothing you choose to buy, vehicle wraps and stuff like that.

As I said earlier, if you have two bikes each already, I think you could do it on a £20k budget. Depending on how crazy you want to go, you can go as far up from there as you like!

sub55

Known two people compete in the RAAM as solo events and they both have the same characteristics.
Basically , they are psychotic. and im sure they wont mind me saying so. Especially Hoppo,
if thats what it takes to do RAAM, i wish you the best.
would consider this though http://www.racearoundireland.comseems logisically easier and financially viable. would also be a good practise, if RAAM was still your ultimate goal.

LeDomestiqueTours

I did RAAM in a four man team this year. PM me if you need any advice in the on going months on training or more general stuff.

We didn't use an RV due to the costs. That is somewhere where you can save an awful lot of money. We used two 11 seat vans with the rear row of seats removed and a people carrier - total cost $3000. In a two man team this would work really well. Camp bed in the back of each van for riders/crew to sleep on and still plenty of room. There are lots of problems with teams and RVs and most of the people we spoke to post race said they wouldn't use one if they did it again.

Another way to save costs is to ask crew to pay for/contribute to flight costs. All our crew paid for their own flights in the end on the basis of advice we received from the race staff at RAAM. The key is to find people that WANT to do it and see crewing as an adventure/challenge in its own right (which it is). There's a danger of attracting the wrong sort of people if you go down the route of providing everything for them as they may see it as a free holiday - it definitely isn't. So the flights are sort of treated as a demonstration of commitment. We covered everything else out of our own pockets and using some money provided by our employers (we all worked at the same place at that time). This strategy caused us some major headaches as we had many potential crew members lined up who then pulled out for various reasons but we got there in the end. If you book flights early enough you can get them for £400pp.

Petrol shouldn't be underestimated as a cost. You are looking at a minimum of 10,000-12,000 miles between three vehicles. As everything over there has a massive V8 the mpg figures are woeful.

If you work really hard you can get quite a few sponsors for various bits and bobs - we were sponsored by High5, Planet X and Magicshine, all of whom were awesome. But we got plenty of rejections as well.

Even with these cost savings it cost a lot of money and the organisation was incredibly hard work (probably the biggest challenge of all).

Looking back at it it was a fantastic experience but the costs were huge.

Other than that you just have to take care of the training.... 8)