You're doing the 12 hour race in FL/GA somewhere? Season opener?
I talked to a guy that's done well there and here are a few things I learned from him (he did it solo as well as part of a team):
1. 1 lap at a time. I believe the laps took them about an hour? When solo he kept pace by tracking lap times.
2. Eat
3. Lights with lots of extra batteries. I don't remember what he used but that would be outdated now (it was 5? years ago).
4. They had support staff, friends mainly, food, drink, etc.
5. He didn't sleep.
6. Crashing slows you down a lot, more so than slowing down a bit.
7. Go steady fast for the first half, then go hard. He talked about letting "the old guy through" when they were banging elbows in the last turn before the line for the win, but then he was shocked at how fast that old guy could sprint. "Old Guy" = Tinker. Tinker and him were doing the race solo that year (Tinker always does).
8. Full suspension, big tires. Don't get tired because of the bike.
For training - we'd go down there and he'd train with us. 5 hours a day, steady. He pulled a lot since he was a Cat 2 road, Pro mtb, and a heck of a lot stronger than us Cat 3s (two of us would go there for a week to train with him and his friends). He'd do some harder work too but we weren't around to see that. You need a lot of FTP, that's for sure. Once he rolled away from us - single speed bike (slowed him down) with a huge gear, like 52x15. We went over a little crest and he was like 3-4 minutes up the road, disappearing around a bend. On rides where he had a normal road bike, we'd sprint it out for town, county, and some county-clean-up signs (they look like some other sign). 1, 2, and 1/2 points each. After 5 hours he'd get like 18 points, we'd be stuck with 2 or 3. He was really strong, could sprint pretty well. He also rode us off his wheel leading out the sprint for the final town line - 31 mph for a while in some wind, tired legs, and poof we were all done. Only his ex-pro teammate stayed with him.
If it's not that 12 hour race, forget everything I just mentioned
cdr