Stage Five – Alamosa, CO to Trinidad, CO

I was looking forward to this stage, as Tina and I were going to cross over two of the three high Rocky Mountain passes, La Veta @ 9418 ft, and Cuchara @ 9939 ft. The only downside was that we were starting in the middle of the night, so we didn’t see much of La Veta, and with a slight headwind combining with the uphill grind, it seemed like I was climbing through molasses. Even so, it wasn’t a difficult climb and soon enough Tina reached the summit and I was ready for the descent. It was a little chilly at the top, and I put on every piece of clothing that I had brought: long-sleeved underlayer and jersey, thick vest, thin vest, Shower’s Pass jacket, leg warmers, long fingered gloves with hand warmers, and shoe covers. Dawn was breaking but it was still dark, so I made sure I took no chances on the downhill. Also, the turn to La Veta would come up quickly, and it wouldn’t do to miss that. As it was, the descent was very enjoyable, and I particularly enjoyed the rolling twisty road just outside La Veta.

Dawn saw us on the climb to Cuchara. The Cuchara pass is one of the prettiest, and it seemed especially so in the early morning light, that is when I was on the bike. In the van, I managed to actually get a quick nap in as I was pretty tired from it still being so early.

I ended up taking the last pull to the summit, and I felt great. While I hadn’t been feeling bad on the bike at all up until this point, I felt like I was starting to get stronger, or more likely, my legs were getting used to the work I was asking them to do. I reached the summit and kept going for the first part of the downhill. It was a great downhill, with Titus and me carving through the winding road as a single unit. The only downside was passing the RV of the two-person Team PKG PedalFreeks, which was in the middle of the road protecting one of the riders who had crashed and was being helped at the side of the road by his crew. I found out later that the rider’s front wheel or what had failed, and he went down pretty hard. They had to pull out of the race, which was sad to hear, but understandable under the circumstances.

There was still a long way from the top of Cuchara Pass to Trinidad, on a rolling road in a river valley, trending downhill. We made good time and I continued to marvel at how good my legs felt on the last short climbs before reaching the timestation in Trinidad.

On the way out of Trinidad, we stopped at an RV park to dump waste and fill up on water. As a special treat, we we able to use a normal shower there, which I pretty much jumped out of my seat to get to. In fact, I was so quick to get there, I forgot to bring any clothing to switch into, so I ended up walking back to RV with my towel wrapped around my waist. No one even said anything, such is life on RAAM.

Stage Six – Ulysses, KS to Pratt, KS

The mountains of western Colorado quickly gave way to the high plains of eastern Colorado and western Kansas. We had a nice long break in Ulysses waiting to start our stage. While we were waiting, we could see storm clouds in the west, clearly moving towards us. I couldn’t get a sense of which direction it was headed, as the weather app on my phone didn’t have such a feature. However, the timestation was manned with volunteers manning a van with an Internet-connected laptop. As it turned out, there were storms all around us, but the one to the west was looking like it would miss Ulysses. Perhaps we would be lucky and not get hit by the storm.

Doug arrived soon after 7pm local time, and we were quickly on the road. My hope of not getting any precipitation was soon dashed, as it started raining lightly, and the winds started picking up, settling into about 20-25 mph crosswind, coming from my 2 o’clock position. With the wind gusts, it was often difficult to control my bike, and most of the time, I felt like I was leaning my bike to the right into the wind.

Even so the rain wasn’t too heavy, but that would change as the edge of the storm caught up to us. First, I noticed the road went from mostly damp to very wet. Then, we made rider switch to Tina, and it really started to pour, and Tina came back into the van to put on more rain gear. Just as we were getting ready to start moving again, a cop came up behind us and warned David that there was a big storm to the south that had golf-ball sized hail and was dumping about 2-3 inches of rain. We didn’t see any hail, but it certainly was raining hard.

The rate of rainfall ebbed and flowed until well after Montezuma, KS, and didn’t seem to let up until we were close to Greensburg, KS. As it was, we decided to do slightly longer pulls, so that we didn’t have to dread getting on the bike in the rain as often. While in the van, I kept checking the weather radar, which seemed to show a rain band following us around. I think it was going about the same speed as us, which probably made it seem to last longer than it would have if we were simply standing still. While I was pretty wet from the rain, I never felt particularly uncomfortable, as the night was still relatively warm, much more so than riding in the rain in California during my winter training.

Another fun thing I noticed on this stage were all the fat frogs in the middle of the road. It reminded me of the old video game, Frogger, where the goal is maneuver a frog across a busy road, while avoid being hit by one of many types of motor vehicles. Anyway, the frogs were numerous and looked very well fed.

While at the Greensburg timestation, we saw the Flying Frenchies, a two-person team, stopped while one of the riders was yelling something at his crew. I don’t know a lot of French, but there were definitely some swear words in there.We got out of the timestation before they did, but they soon passed us on the road, wisely choosing to spend that passionate energy on riding, rather than yelling.

Dawn saw us finish our rather wet stage with the storm clouds dissipating around us. It had been a very difficult one, and now it was time to dry out, get clean and rest up for our next segment.

Stage Seven – El Dorado, KS to Fort Scott, KS

The flat plains of western Kansas started turning into rolling cropland. There were more trees and everything seemed greener. We started in the middle of the day, as Lonni pulled into the RV park we were waiting at just past the El Dorado timestation.

To keep focused, I concentrated more on my power output than I had previously, generally riding the flat sections at about 170-190 watts of power, and turning it up to around 220-230 watts on the uphill parts of the mild rollers. My legs were feeling great, and the 30 minute pulls suited me just fine, giving me a few minutes for the legs to really loosen up, and then about 25 more minutes to keep the pace steady. My heart rate never got very high, certainly not as high as the first day or two, but my power was very consistent. If I had ridden on just heart rate, I might have pushed too hard trying to keep it at the same level, but by using power, I was always in the right zone.

Because we were riding in the daytime, it was pretty warm and the humidity was starting to increase the closer we got to Missouri. I made sure I kept hydrated and caught up on my electrolytes. I was really enjoying doing my strong pulls, and then getting into the van to cool off, eat, and drink.

This was the stage where we started to see more of the Brazilian team. This was our competition, so to speak, as they were the only other four-person mixed time in our age group. At the closest point, we were about a mile behind them, which is pretty close in a 3000 mile race. They were a very experienced team, so it was nice to see that we were doing almost as well as they were, given that our team was comprised of rookie riders.

The only contentious point on RAAM that I had was this stage, as I was under the impression that we would stop on the Missouri side, allowing us to bag a state border crossing. Tina and I hadn’t crossed a border yet, and while I was satisfied with our team effort, it’s nice to have a little goal to set for oneself, and the border crossing was my goal for the day. Naturally I was disappointed that the RV was actually waiting at Fort Scott, in Kansas, where the facilities were better. There was a discussion afterward with our crew chief Sara about this, and I hope, in my tired and disappointed state, that I was able to convey to her that my personal goals for the day weren’t important at all compared to the much higher priority of making sure that the RV was always stopping at the best spot. I think, though, that this underlines the mindset of a rider setting little goals within the larger goal of actually finishing the race.

The only other eventful moment on this stage was missing a turn which required me to get off my bike, get back in the van and get shuttled back to the turn, which we had only gone past by about 200 yards. I could have easily just turned around and rode back to the turn, but that’s against the rules, which are there for our safety. So back in the van I went, and soon enough, I was riding again, reaching Fort Scott just before dark.

Stage Eight – Past Camdenton, MO to the Mississippi River

This stage would see us reach the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, there was a route change near the Mississippi that required both riders to get in the van and drive forward on the course and across the river. Even with that, it was still a long stage.

We started off in the early morning light, tackling the rolling terrain that would take us to Jefferson City, and our first crossing of the Missouri River. There wasn’t much to say about this section, as we were on a busy highway with many fast moving vehicles whizzing by us. Fortunately, the shoulder was ample and with two lanes going in our direction, there was plenty of room for traffic to pass. A highlight of Jefferson City was going right past the state capitol building, topped by a rather nice statue, which turned out to be Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, which I looked up online later. Right after passing the capitol building, I crossed the Missouri River, and I was glad to have the van following me on the narrow and busy bridge. We soon turned off onto a nice country road that generally followed the river. Alongside the road was a nice bike path, and there seemed to be some local bike event going on that was making use of it, as the there were a number of cyclist that were on it. The road even had a turtle or two sunning itself on the warm black surface.

While most of the road along the river was flat, we still had some climbs up and down the bluffs along the river. I quite enjoyed these little hills, being a nice change from the flats, and they allowed me to use my climbing muscles and to also have fun on the quick, steep descents. Wheee!

Tina got to cross the Missouri a couple more times, and in what seemed like no time at all, we were approaching the suburbs of St. Louis. I noticed a lot of turns onto roads that were identified as simply letters: turn left on T, turn right on D, keep straight on Z. Soon we had to make three quick turns in Wentzville, and the van was in front of me, instead of guiding me from behind. It ended up going past the last turn, as I watched in puzzlement. Instead of following, I turned onto the correct street, and found a parking lot and went to the other side, where I had a good view in the direction that the van had gone. Soon enough I saw it coming back and I rejoined it as it passed the parking lot, and soon we were back on course. It wasn’t much of a wrong turn, and I was glad I had studied the route book before I got on the bike for this section, as well as having my Garmin map turned on, with the route that I downloaded to it confirming the turns I had studied.

After some not so fun sections through busy suburban traffic, we arrived at the end of the stage, got in the van, and were shuttled across the Mississippi, which is indeed a very big river.