It's a joke.
The goal is just to do it as fast as possible, for pride.
All the locals go out and beat each other up for 100 miles. It's not really any different than many of our rides except that there are thousands of other riders on the road too.
Oh darn didn't notice the edit.
But did the dude really ride for T-Mobile at one time? I know lots of pros , ex-pros, olympians do the Tucson ride.