We finished RAAM 2011

[troymac]

Our team R4M race for a mission finished Saturday at 10:34 am est. What an incredible experience. I was navigating at the time and called in the last time station. Thanks to all who followed our team. Here is the link to the RAAM page and all our time stations. http://www.raceacrossamerica.org/raam/rcracer.php?s_N_category_group=2&s_N_Race_ID=1&N_webcat_id=109&s_N_Entry_ID=2712&s_N_Year_ID=34

[RABikes2]

WAY TO GO!! :banana: CONGRATULATIONS!! :banana:

RA

[ThasFACE]

Congrats!

RAAM is high on my list of stuff to do. One day...

[ultraman6970]

Congrats, I would not even get off California! hehehe :) Awesome!

[rustychain]

After a good weeks sleep please tell us what worked and what you will do differently next time. Awsome challenge.

[roguedog]

Congratz. Amazing achievement. Well done! :beer: :beer: :beer:

[onekgguy]

Congratulations! Good for you. I'd love to hear your thoughts about the experience.

Kevin g

[jghall]

What a great accomplishment. Congrats.

[sc53]

Congratulations!! Please let us know, as previous poster said, what worked for you in this endurance-fest and what you would do differently. :beer:

[AngryScientist]

strong work, congratulations on a great accomplishment.

[znfdl]

Congratulations!!!

[FlashUNC]

Fantastic.

As others mentioned. When does the week's worth of sleep start?

[William]

:beer:



William

[Hawker]

Congrats...must have been a hot one this year huh?

Blessings.

[haneriali]

Awesome accomplishment; congratulations! :hello:

[troymac]

Thank you to all who have written well wishes. Just got home to California a couple of hours ago and will post thoughts and advice to those who asked. Here is a pic of the top of the Rockies right before our team leader Doug Reid began his descent. The other photo is outside of Miami of Ohio's college on the interstate.

[troymac]

I would say first and formost those on the team especially the crew have to choose to be a servant. It may sound cornie but egos need to be left home. They'll just kill moral for other crew and riders. We had a great team. We had true definable goals. First safety; second remain friends/stay positive and third finish in less than 7 days. We accomplished all 3. Saying please and thankyou go a long ways to cut through the tension that will arise. Have a great fundraising team it's expensive to do this race. Most teams raise money for charities besides general race costs. Start planning early. We started planning last October. Plan on things going wrong...they will but it shouldn't ruin the race. We had a crew member bow out a day and a half before the race start. I had my daughter go into emergency surgery Friday night while I was driving a follow van though Gettysburg. Thankfully she's fine/ we had a contingency plan to get crew or riders home if something like this occurred. We had protocall sheet to cover situtations so that sleep deprived emotional people could make rational decisions. We learned that the follow vehicles needed to split the clock so both teams shared in direct follow support( 8:00pm to 6:00am local time, direct follow was defined by following directly behind riders no more than 50 feet ahead within he headlights). In the day time you could provide leap frog support. In the end the most important things were to stay friends leave your egos at the door and have fun. I can truly say it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

If you have more detailed questions you can certainly pm me I'm more than willing to give more insight.