lungimsam

Would it be like comparing the average club cyclist as the men/women on the company softball team, and the solo RAAM people are like Cal Ripken, Willie Mays, etc?

Like us in the school band, and they are Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach or something?

What's the comparison?
Or can anybody get across America in 7 days if they are willing to put in the time and have the pain tolerance for it?

Machka 

This.

Well ... probably not "anybody", but you don't have to be a professional cyclist to do it.


Join your local Randonneuring club ... you may discover someone there who has done the Team RAAM. Go ride one or more of the many 24-hour TTs ... you'll probably see people qualifying for RAAM, perhaps even some who have done a solo RAAM.

unterhausen

the top riders are pretty impressive. I don't think it helps quite as much to be a genetic freak on RAAM as it does in pro road racing. In the early days, there were some pretty good road racers in RAAM.

hamster

One correction. Not in 7 days, and probably not even in 9 days. Maybe in 12.

2011 #4 solo male under 50 finisher, Alberto Blanco, had been a pro cyclist before he got busted for doping. He made it in 9 days 7 hours. #6 , Christopher Gottwald, also a pro, made it in 9 days 18 hours.

You don't have to be a pro and you don't even have to race, but you need enormous stamina and endurance to show a good time.

P.S. Another example. Mark Pattinson (this year's #4, 9 days 7 hours). https://app.strava.com/activities/61894858# The route took riders up the first half of Mount Palomar climb, and Mark did it in 29:55. That effort put him in the top 20% of all people who rode that segment - most of whom did all-out TTs to exhaustion up the mountain. My personal best on that segment (it's basically my backyard) is over 38 minutes. If I tried to ride it at the pace that I expected to maintain even for 12 hours (let alone a week), it would probably take me 45+ minutes.

lonesomesteve

Sorry, I have to disagree. I think nearly anybody could ride across the country. But in less than 8 days?? Even less than 10 days... That takes someone pretty exceptional both physically and mentally.

The fastest PBP finishers come in at around 44 hours. Strasser covered the same distance in less than 41 hours, and then kept going for another few days. I know, it's apples and oranges. The courses are different, etc. But still, the performance of the fastest RAAM finishers is clearly superhuman.

StephenH

I think there's a couple of other aspects to this. Suppose, for example, that the Solo RAAM Record was 30 days. Heck, I could do that, you could do that, lots of riders could do that. But, if that was the case, how many people would cough up $50,000 to put together a RAAM solo effort to actually do the ride? I think probably no more so than do it right now. The fact is, a serious desire to do solo RAAM is a pretty rare quality. There may be all kinds of pro racers and endurance riders out there that could be competitive, that just have zero interest in doing this event. Right now, you or I could establish a new course, a new race if desired, and set off setting the record for the first Diagonal RAAM or whatever event, but we just don't really want to do that.

A second point is that it is not just a matter of pain tolerance to do stuff like this, it's a matter of avoiding that pain in the first place. I ride with two ladies in the local club. Both have done long-distance riding, 1200k's, etc. One of them has had a lot of trouble with fit issues, with knee pain, with neck pain, etc. She's got the kind of determined attitude it takes to do RAAM, but it's hard to imagine that she'd ever get very far with those kinds of issues. The other lady just doesn't have those issues. So yes, she's had saddle sores and what all, but she's just avoided a lot of the physical pitfalls that would prevent a person from even considering RAAM. She's not a superwoman or anything, just another rider when you're out riding with her. But I once asked her if she had ever ridden a 600k straight through, and she said, "Well, I DID complete solo RAAM..." And yes, she did.

I think in your original example, the difference is that baseball and music are VERY popular activities that nearly everyone has a go at to some extent in school. So when you get the "cream of the crop", you pretty much have the best people out of several hundred million. When it comes to long-distance bicycling, there are very few people, relatively, that have ever tried it, so you're getting the best people out of several thousand. Which is to say, they may be better than me, but the difference is less pronounced, I think.

Italuminium

One factor to consider in the "cream of the crop argument" is that the RAAM attracts a lot of sportsmen and women that got tired of triffles like full Ironmans or running across the Sahara So yes, I think the top RAAM'ers are likely winners in the genetic lottery. That said, with our sedentary western lifestyle, running 500 m to catch a train is too much of an effort for most of the population (currently at 70%) obesity, but deep down, we're all Savanna animals made for long, aerobic activity, it's just that we somehow forgot to nurture this talent in favor of our other species fun traits, like making tools and abstract thinking.

Richard Cranium

Anyone who has actually ridden a bicycle beyond 24 hours knows that the kind of effort to "keep it going" for 3000 miles is beyond description.

There simply is "no comparison." I've met dozens of RAAM riders and can't think of any identifiable trait that says " this guy can finish."

The facts of these types of matters is that each rider and crew - and each RAAM race - are unique entities. No amount of talk matters - that's why they run the race.

vic303

Sub 8 days and a new record!
1 377 - Christoph Strasser S 55 2962.40 06/19/2013 14:20 7 d 22 h 11 m 15.58avg OFCL

hamster

This is getting off topic, but I must disagree with one point. We are not "made for" long aerobic activity. We have very versatile, swiss-army-knife bodies that can tolerate (briefly) a wide range of activities, from swimming, to eating raw fish, to running. But running is not an activity that we are meant to do all the time. We are designed to be able to run far enough and long enough to get to the nearest tree and to climb on it when we need to escape a predator. We can train to run farther and longer than that but it's not something we're prepared for by the evolution.

If you want an example of a "savanna animal made for long, aerobic activity", look at horses. (Though, strictly speaking, horses are steppe animals.) They have massive aerobic capacity (your average 3-year-old horse has greater VO2max per unit of body mass than fully trained and doped Lance Armstrong), they can run for 10-20 miles nonstop with no training, their average muscle glycogen concentrations are ~5x greater than ours, and wild horses don't suffer from runner's knee, shin splints or achilles tendon ruptures.

Unlike horses, we can't run very well unless we specifically train for it, we quickly run out of energy stores if we try, we can't run without footwear (even on dirt) because our feet are fragile, and even trained runners get injured all the time because their joints are too weak to handle the stress. Long distance running is a clear case of forcing ourselves to do something we're not meant to do.

What we _are_ made for is walking. Any healthy human can walk for 10 hours/day, 7 days/week, we can digest food faster than we can burn it by walking, and the risk of injury is much lower. Most wouldn't consider walking an aerobic activity, it's too "easy". But things we're made for are supposed to be easy.

Carbonfiberboy 

Not in 7 days, not in 12 days, either. I've ridden with solo men's finisher #16 (counting the over 50). He can outclimb the average well-trained and fast club rider while towing a large dog in a trailer. He's won the 508. He held the 1000k road record for several months (31:40:10, 19.62 mph) and finished PBP in 41:36. And he finished RAAM about 3 days after the winner and 2 days before the last place rider. The talents of all these folks are stratospheric.

Carbonfiberboy 

There's a current theory among scientists that we evolved as "persistence hunters," due to several odd human physical traits. While the 100 mile horse world record is about twice as fast at the human 100 mile world record, humans have won races against horses, which unlike modern humans, have been bred for speed and endurance for 1000s of years.
https://www.slate.com/articles/sports...s_.single.html

We have two very special traits: we are hairless and thus can dissipate heat, and we can eat and digest highly concentrated foods. Endurance race horses eat beet pulp, BTW.
https://www.triplecrownfeed.com/artic...ulp-horse-feed
Not something available to the average wildebeest, though maltodextrin was also not used by early humans. I think the hairless feature especially interesting, especially in light of our African ancestry. I always wondered why that was.

wphamilton

That's an interesting perspective. The conventional wisdom is that we're better adapted to endurance rather than speed, relatively speaking.

hamster

Any hunting-related adaptations must be relatively recent. We have neither the teeth nor the stomach for raw meat. Your average cat or a dog can eat a whole dead mouse (bones, fur and all), digest it and it won't get sick. We need to cook our meat, and our ancestors only learned to do that when they were already very similar to us biologically.

Races against horses where humans stand a chance are those pitting elite genetically gifted runners with years of dedicated training against run-of-the-mill horses. It's not a fair game. Instead, take a random fit young adult who was not specifically trained for long distance running, and pit it against a horse.

The problem with highly concentrated foods is not that they are hard to digest, but that they are hard to find. There is a theory that early humans shifted their diet towards high energy density because they had tools to get high-density food, and then having access to that food allowed them to shorten the GI tract and to grow a large (but nutritionally expensive) brain instead, in turn allowing them to make even better tools.

Humans are exceptionally economical walkers and the metabolic cost of running per mile is at least 60-70% higher than the cost of walking the same distance at the optimal pace (though lower for humans than for apes). We're far from being optimized by evolution for long-distance running. For an example of economical runners, look at ostriches. https://intl-rsif.royalsocietypublish.../8/58/740.full "Ostriches are able to reach maximal speeds two times those of humans (60 versus 30 km h−1) and, importantly, have a metabolic cost of running that is nearly 50 per cent lower."

Endurance hunting is a curious theory but it's still far from universally accepted. It's a pet theory of a single scientist and a bit of a stretch. For example, most known hunter-gatherers rarely run. Persistence hunting is a rather obscure hunting technique only practiced by a handful of tribes. (The theory goes that our ancestors used to run all the time, but they stopped doing that after they got better tools like bows and arrows.) Then there's a chicken-and-egg problem: persistence hunting only works if you already can run for 2 hours in 40 C heat, and no primate comes even close to this. So you can't evolve the ability for long-distance running by endurance hunting, you need to have this ability before you can hunt. It's useless unless you can run down a wildebeest, and you can't run down a wildebeest unless you can run a half marathon. It's more plausible that the ability to run is just one of the larger set of omnivore tools and abilities and a few tribes occasionally use it for hunting when circumstances are right.

Hairlessness is not necessarily an indicator that early humans had to be doing a lot of running, there are estimates that merely walking during the day in hot weather would have produced more heat than hairy humans could dissipate through sweat: https://www.pnas.org/content/108/52/20965.full "we calculate that hair-covered individuals would only have been able to walk in full bright sunshine in hot weather (we assume cloudless skies and a maximum air temperature near the ground of 40 °C) for 10–20 min before overheating was sufficient to induce symptoms of heat stroke."

Italuminium

Yes, running, that's expensive, but jogging?

unterhausen

I was a little surprised he was so far back. But in RAAM, physical ability isn't everything. You have to have a good strategy and experience is important to success. For example, I wonder if Mark Pattinson could best him in a 1200k race.

As far as the question about the human capability for endurance, I'm not sure it really comes into play with RAAM any more than it does on a 200k. Although I start feeling a lot better at about 500k, so it seems that there are a lot of processes going on..
I have always thought it's more important that we have the capability to withstand starvation and still perform athletic feats, but I obviously haven't looked into it much

Carbonfiberboy 

He said he got into trouble in Ohio with a severe heat rash on his legs. He could hardly pedal, so took more time off the bike than planned and also slowed his pace quite a bit. He actually walked one hill. Lots of things to go wrong. By the Appalachian climbs he was riding strong again.

c.miller64

IMHO, to perform well in ultracycling events, it's just the opposite. You need to be able to consume large amounts of carb-heavy calories hourly without gastric distress. If you can't do this, you're doomed before you start.

unterhausen

I don't think the math really adds up for that, most endurance events result in building a calorie deficit. Granted, you have to be able to eat, but there is a tradeoff between the ability to digest and the ability to exercise.

c.miller64

Yes, but your body fat stores will more than make up the difference. What is most important from a performance standpoint is that you consume a high quantity of carbs. Even at a low workload your body is burning a 50/50 carb to fat ratio for fuel. This ratio continues to rise with intensity which is why if you want to perform at a high level, you need to replace them at the level you're burning them. Get into a carb deficit and you'll slow down, your body will begin to convert protein to glycogen, and you'll bonk.

Homeyba

That's impossible, during events like RAAM, you are burning as much as 1000 calories and hour. You can only absorb 250-350 calories and hour. Everyone is running at a huge deficit during these races. If you take in more calories than you can absorb, your body will not digest it and you run the risk of getting sick. Been there, done that. It's worse than bonking. The key is to intake the maximum that your body can absorb in an easily digestible form without over doing it. Too many carbs is a mistake some racers make too. Your body needs proteins and fat as well to perform optimally. That's why most endurance fuels now have a percentage of each of those in the blend. Everyone is different and the optimal mix will vary from person to person.

Richard Cranium

I'm really surprised - none of the factors mentioned by most of you have anything to do with finishing RAAM. I need to repeat - RAAM - as well as any activity requiring day after day of activity with sleep deprivation - IT BECOMES MENTAL !

No matter how well trained, no matter how well fueled - it takes a special mental toughness, a great crew, and a lot of luck to make it work for 3000 miles. Some of you should know better.

unterhausen

On the contrary, I think recent years have shown that it is mostly physical conditioning, preparation, crew, eating, and sleep. If these things work out, the mental aspect is not really that significant.

c.miller64

While there would be times you'd be burning this many calories, the average burned per hour would be much lower, probably in the 500-700 range.

This varies from person to person. I know more than a few Ultracyclists that can consume 400-500 calories per hour without issue. Personally, I take in at least one Gatorade and one Ensure per hour which is right around 400 calories without any issues. I have gone as high as 500 calories per hour in the final hours of a 24hr race

Some more than others. And it's my opinion is that those who are performing at a high level are the ones able to consume more calories, and not those with a "capability to withstand starvation and still perform athletic feats". All things being equal, of course.

I agree. That's why I stated "carb-heavy calories" not carb only. Bottom line, the higher the percentage of fat to carbs you're burning while on the bike, the slower you're going.

Homeyba

Randoneurs can do that because they are not "racing." A 24 hr race is not RAAM and it really depends on the effort you are putting out. If you are just plodding along, sure you can take in more calories. If you are racing you are putting maximum effort out on the bike and that diverts blood from the digestive system to the muscles. You cannot absorb as many calories in that state and if you try you are destined for pukesville. I don't know a single top RAAM racer who is ingesting anywhere near 500calories and hour but, I only just participated in my 7th RAAM so what do I know.

Richard is absolutely correct. If you have the proper physical conditioning, preparation, crew, eating, and sleep during the race you are way ahead in the game but it's still mental. RAAM flat out messes with your mind and there are some huge ups and downs. If you and your crew aren't mentally prepared for that you will not finish. It happened to Robic one year when he quit just a couple hundred miles from the finish, Cassie Schumacher last year (who rebounded this year to finish) and I can name people from every year who've not had it between the ears for one reason or another