Early on as a team we decided on three goals for our race:

· Be Safe

· Keep it Simple

· Ride with Intent

I think we accomplished all three and more.

At no time do I think that safety was an issue. Although we all know that riding the white line is dangerous no matter where we are, I think we were courteous with the public and didn’t offend. We were fortunate that the weather cooperated and didn’t require us to make any safety decisions. All actions were performed under control, so there were no decisions that put anyone in warm.

As we all saw some teams were huge, with multiple RV’s and support vehicles, which required many people to make things happen. We kept our team small and focused on moving forward versus complicating things trying to go faster. We kept it simple and used teamwork with everyone working together, intelligently. RAAM is an enormous task with lots of logistics, tactical decisions and moving parts. I commend Sara for coordinating our team and also applaud each team member for fulfilling their role to the best of their ability, whether pedaling the bike, driving, or performing minor tasks, we all worked together focusing on our goals. And we did it while building bonds and making friends versus adversaries who won’t talk to each other after.

We heard the RAAM motto “this is not a tour”, and we took that to heart. I am really amazed at how all of the riders were able to continue to push through the heat, cold, wet and wind, from start to finish without any debilitating injuries, ailments or illnesses (maybe a sore butt). We all managed our nutrition, hydration, electrolytes and intensity to be able to reach the finish in strong and in good spirits. My personal thought was that the route was not hard, but it took mental toughness, fortitude, and trust in our legs. We each had prepared ourselves for the challenge and rode into unknown territory and faced it without fear of failing. We surpassed our goal of averaging 15mph by averaging 16.17 mph and gave the Brazilian team a run for their money. Even though they had a 2nd follow vehicle and over a dozen RAAM races under their belt.

I have to commend everyone for doing their part and pulling together to be a united team. All of you have heard about or were on RAAM teams that had “issues” which made for great story telling after the race. They had to do with poor planning, uninformed crew, un-prepared crew, poor personalities. I could go on and on. One can say that this team was “boring”, we didn’t have all these stories of what went wrong, who fought with who or how anyone of the team failed. This is admirable and I’m very thankful that you were all able to be part of these memories that will be cherished for a long, long time.