A season without RAAM Even without RAAM, I had a very challenging season – with a 100 mile World Record on the Road and the 24h TT World Championships as the major goals. I can say with confidence that my season was successful with only one second place and all the rest were victories.
For me the World Championships 24h Time Trial was not the closing race of the season 2012, but in fact one of the preparatory races for RAAM 2013 in which I would once again like to compete for the top spot of the podium. Considering that fact, my goal was to ride my own race without watching the other racers too much and try to beat the magic mark of 500 miles in 24 hours.
When asked by Tortour organizers if I want to do the race for the fourth time, I told them that I will probably be looking for new challenges in 2012, but I would still like to do it if they can arrange for me to join one of the teams. On my mind for 2012 was Race across Oregon and possibly also Le Mans 24h Cycling Race, which both are too close to Tortour to do them all successfuly. But the Tortour with it's perfect organisation is just too nice of a race to miss and I knew it would be a new challenge for me to do it with a team. So, I was more then happy when the organisers called me and let me know that I am welcome to join the 6-person Laureus Charity Team for Tortour 2012.
After giving it a lot of thought and weighing of the quality of racing and competition, the financial input, and how many days of leave I still have, I made a decision somewhere in the June that after eight long years since the race organizer George Thomas has invited me to his race, I will finally attend Race Across Oregon RAO 2012. This is one of the most difficult qualifying races for RAAM in the United States, 840km long and with more than 12,000 climbing.
While we are waiting for official confirmation from UMCA about my 100 Mile World Record attempt, my time was 3h 48min 41sec, here is a short film about it:
Tomorrow, on Monday June 25th, I will attempt to better the 100 mile World Record on road. The current UMCA World Record is held by American Dan Mc Ghee and was set on March 6th, 2011 on road course in Arizona state. The record is 3h 52min 49sec, which means average speed 41,475 km/h (almost 26miles/h)! Good job mr. Mc Ghee. ;)
