It’s not every day that we work with folks who ride across the country. Last week, however, we were fortunate enough to work with not one, but two, CBS clients riding across America, albeit at very different paces.
CBS client and good pal Jeff B. is racing Race Across America (RAAM) on an 8-person relay team with the Team Type 1 professional cycling team. He is such a tall rider, that he could not get the team issue time trial bike to fit, so he enlisted our help to build a custom Seven Aero Alaris for him.
Team Type 1 is looking to break the 8-person record which is 5 days, 9 hours, and 43 minutes. The team left Saturday, and already encountered some pretty horrific incidents. Here’s an update from Jeff as of today, Monday the 22nd at 11:28 am:
“So far, we’ve burned the [team's] follow vehicle (seriously, a full fire with flames), dropped the transmission on the rider RV in B.F.E., and run out of gas on the rider follow vehicle (the one that replaced the burned one)—all in the first 36 hours of the race. In spite of the bad luck and the time we lost, we’re still flying a full 2 hours faster than last years Team Type 1 team. We’re in first place for all teams and plan to keep pushing. ”
Jeff told me their strategy in detail: each rider will race for 45 minutes or so, doing full-on TT efforts. 45 minutes on; 5 hours and 15 minutes off. Repeat for 5 days! Come Thursday, we’re anxious to hear how it goes. Check back to cascadebicyclestudio.com for daily updates.
While Jeff B. is racing across America, Matt G. will be taking his sweet time with 42 other riders riding across the country, spending 2 months seeing the sights. Matt came into CBS last week for a bike fitting, just prior to his trip. He’ll be leaving from Central Park in Manhattan on Wednesday with a group of riders heading for the Los Angeles Bike Film Festival.
Matt actually won a contest sponsored by 42 below, a New Zealand vodka company, to be a fully sponsored, cross-country rider for 2 months! In addition to having a fully supported trip, he’ll be getting paid! The motivation for Matt, though, was to try and get 100,000 readers to sign up for the 42 below Twitter site. If 100,000 readers sign up on Twitter to follow the group, (and prove to 42 below the power of viral networking!) 42 below will donate $42,000 to bicycle and walking advocacy groups. At the time of writing this article, they were up to 144 followers.
You can read Matt’s winning essay on being selfishly altruistic, on the welikebike42 website, which is to launch on Wednesday. Premium vodka, two month bike ride. Nice!
Best of luck and safe travels to Jeff and Matt!!!
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