Solo cyclists in the most amazing bicycle endurance event in the world, the Race Across America, start their cross-country purgatory on June 17.
A documentary that chronicles their mind-boggling trials over a previous 10-day-long race from Oceanside, California, to Annapolis, Maryland, will be released early next week.
Entitled “Bicycle Dreams,” the film by Stephen Auerbach gets inside the heads of these cyclists and their support crews over the mind-numbing, sleep-deprived 3,000-mile race.
Auerbach, who produced an earlier documentary on RAAM for NBC-TV in 2005, had 18 cameras following the action. This included camera crews embedded with cyclists' support crews. You can experience the personal drama that resulted from their efforts in the 2:50-minute trailer above.
I was introduced to RAAM back in the 1980s when a network actually assigned a camera crew and a couple of reporters to post updates on a weekend sports show. Having just completed an 11-week cross-country bicycle trip myself, I was struck by watching cyclists such as Lon Haldemann and Pete Penseyres pedaling day and night across the U.S. I've been astonished by the race participants ever since.
Haldemann was the winner of the first race held in 1982. His nutrition regimen included pizza. In 1986 Penseyres completed the 3,107-mile ride from Huntington Beach to Atlantic City in just over 8 days; his average speed of 15.4 mph has never been broken.
Returning this year is Slovenia's Jure Robic, the winner of four out of the last five RAAMs in the solo men's category. In addition to about 30 solo riders, a number of relay teams of 2, 4 or 8 members also will race, leaving Oceanside on June 20.
The destination for the solo and team riders is again Annapolis, Maryland. They're expected to show up between 4 a.m. June 26 and 5 p.m. June 29, give or take a few hallucinations.
This year's route, participants, and other information is available at the RAAM website.
I haven't seen the movie, but 2006 RAAM participant Rob Lucas has. He reviewed Bicycle Dreams at his blog and says that it does the best job of showing the riders' emotions of any RAAM documentary that he's seen.
The movie goes on sale at the “Bicycle Dreams” website on Monday.
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