2020 Race Across Oregon (RAO)
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| Photo: Scott Swanson |
Below is an explanation of the racecourse from the race director:
"Many people think of Oregon as being lush, green, and very wet. Certain areas of Oregon fit that description well. Our loop course most definitely does not. High desert all the way. It's barren, beautiful, deserted, windy, hot, and contains a bazillion feet of unending rollers and sustained climbs. Difficult? Very....just as a Qualifier for the Race Across America should be. Nothing can truly prepare one for a solo RAAM attempt but the RAO 1000k will test your limits like no other event under 1,000 miles. "
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| Tony Musorafite Sr This says it all!! One man One mission One gear
It is difficult enough to do a RAAM (Race Across America), qualifying race on a geared bike.
Just imagine this!
You ride a bike that has only one gear and NO freewheel.
If you are not familiar with a fixed gear bike (fixie), there is this. You can never stop peddling whether you are climbing or descending. That means.....no coasting and resting on descents, only spinning spinning spinning. From what I have been told, that is the most difficult part of riding a fixie.
You are also very limited to the speed you can go downhill so there is no making up any time on a descent.
There you have it.
Let's get to the race. Below is the overall race map and profile. Did I say it was a tough course??
I have known Tony for many years. I lost count on how many double century events and training rides we have ridden together over the last 10 years. He was our crew chief for RAW in 2014 where we fielded a 50+ team. He was also crew for me on my 2016 solo Silver State 508. He is a truly selfless person who has helped and given back so much to the ultra-cycling community for years on end.
Tony was the first person to do the Race Across the West 930 mile course on a fixed gear and the first person over 60. RAW Race media video here: RAW on a fixed gear.
When I heard he was doing RAO, I just had to be a part of it in one way or another.
People were telling me that the Race Across Oregon was actually physically harder than RAW due to the amount of climbing and lack of flat roads to recover on. It had the same amount of climbing in about 300 fewer miles. After following him on the epic adventure, I have to agree.
I told Tony early on that I wanted to be part of his crew. His crew was comprised of Tony's girl Gina and our good friend Margaret. Gina was Tony's crew chief at The 24 hour time trial at Sebring, Florida, and at The Natchez Trace 444. Tony just crushed both those races on his fixie!! Margaret was our team navigator for our 4-person Race Across the West in 2014 where Tony was crew chief. That was Margaret's first experience at this type of racing. She went on to win multiple RAW's on 4-person, mixed, team Specialized Moab. She has also done The 508 on a two-person team and The Hoodoo 500 (both solo and team). She has done 2 Natchez Trace 444, doing an amazing job on both. I have never crewed on this long of an event before, so I was a little worried about sleep deprivation with the crew. I, myself, have a hard time sleeping while crewing. I am the type of person who doesn't want to miss anything. I find it so hard to doze off in the support vehicle.
A bit windy at the start
The cut-off to finish the event was Monday at 8am. Just the amount of time allotted to complete this course should give a hint at the difficulty of it. It is a brutal course. 629 miles with over 48,000 feet of elevation gain START:
23.7 miles · +2,142 ft / -2,100 ft.
The race started with an unsupported loop from The Dalles, Oregon, and made a loop westerly along the Columbia River before looping back to town.
This gave us some time to finish prepping the support van with a few things. We only had a few things to do and had it done rather quickly. We then began the wait for Tony to come back to the hotel.
We also had shopped for things the day before to surprise Tony and decorate the van. Gina is very artistic and throughout the race, she and Margaret added some various things to the van to commemorate this epic challenge he was doing. Little by little, things were added. We even got a little mascot to put on the van.
He told us to wait at the hotel for him so we waited......and waited....and waited.
I guess he was under the impression that the route went right past the hotel but it did not. It was a couple of blocks up the hill on another street, but very close.
We were hoping and praying that he did not have a problem and that he just kept going on course thinking that we would figure it out.
We did figure it out but we called him anyway just to play it safe, and he got back to us. He was already almost 40 miles from the start and climbing Hwy 195. He still had plenty of water and supplies so he was not stressing and neither were we..... finally.
We were now happy and ready to race!!
The first part of the course was really amazing and much like some of the areas just over the first coastal mountain range in Southern California. Golden hills with some trees. Ranches and wheat fields everywhere.
I found one thing really amazing though. The entire area seemed to be volcanic residue. I have not researched it, but the whole area had us descending into and out of these amazing volcanic canyons that looked like ancient lava flows. It was like this pretty much the whole race with the exception of when we ascended some of the higher mountains with pine trees in abundance.
Below is a map. We were just to the south of the Columbia River during the race.
 Map of the Columbia River Basalt Group within the northwestern states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada, USA, shows the main regions of basalt exposure, including Steens Mountain in the south, Malheur Gorge, and the Columbia and Snake Rivers to the north.
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We caught up to Tony quickly since it was pretty much a climb for quite some time. We topped off his water and made sure he had plenty of food. He was really looking good.
I usually have a much better recollection of things when I am actually racing. I am not sure what it is. Could it be the endorphins or just the blood flow to the brain? All I know is that I remember almost everything when I ride an event. Things just seem to pop into my head when I am writing about it. It is a little tougher when supporting events so I know I may be missing some things. All I know is that this thing was epic as epic gets. I have never seen a course like this. I was not riding but I don't think there was a forgiving place on the course, especially for a fixed-gear rider like Tony. And to make matters worse.....that is for 629 miles!!!
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| A water hand-off. You can see Mount Hood to the left sticking up behind the hill. |
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| Endless rollers on this first part of the race. The mapping profile shows it all up but there were many long rollers. |
It was really windy in places and at times, a really good tailwind, which does not really help a fixie much.
47.7 miles · +3,718 ft / -3,036 ft. Total miles 104.7 Accumulated gain 9,467 feet
This was a really windy and tough section. (At least it seemed like that to us with the wind. Tony looked like it was just another walk in the park!!)
We crossed the Deschutes River at around mile 8 of this section and then Tony had to climb an insane grade to get out of the gorge we were in. You can see the low point on the profile above at about mile 7-8.
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The profile above after we climbed out of the river gorge, looks like its level for quite some time but it was absolutely not. It was countless rollers into crosswinds and tailwinds.
Tony almost got blown off his bike a few times on the way into Moro where he had a crossing headwind. I had the van door almost blown off when I opened it at one point. It was crazy windy!!
Tony rolling down a hill with a tailwind.
We, so far, had a great look back at the Cascade peaks. I think it was during these sections where we had a view of many of the main mountain peaks. It was beautiful. Pictures don't do it justice.
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| A slight little turn back to the west and a look at Mount Hood |
After leaving the area where we stopped to look at the mountains, it really got windy. We were heading more north with a couple turns north-west. There were many wind turbines in this area. It was obvious why.
The below video is just before he turned and had to endure the crossing headwinds. The toughest part of riding fixed.......spinning on a descent!!
Yowza!!!
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| Moro Oregon. Still looking fresh at 100 miles in and all that wind. |
42.4 miles · +4,143 ft / -3,066 ft. Total miles 147.10 Accumulated elevation gain 13,610 ft.
Off Tony went into the wind again.
This time he turned toward the east again and had somewhat of a tailwind. The next part of the course dropped a little bit more to the south-east. It went through Cottonwood Canyon State Park. This was a really nice stretch. We crossed the John day river at one point and found out that we would also cross it later on the return trip.
This section was more of the same type of terrain.
Below, Tony looking good and fresh with under 20 miles to go to Time Station 3.
We rolled into Condon Oregon and got him re-supplied with food and fluid. We then sent him on his way while we did a re-supply of ice, food, gas, and water at the local gas station. We were told that we needed to gas up whenever we could. This course has very few gas stations and you just don't know whether they will be open or not.
We then headed up the road to intercept and continue leap-frog support.
42 miles · +1,877 ft / -3,633 ft. Total miles 189.1 Accumulated elevation gain 15,487 ft.
We picked up Tony not long after our stop.
He was doing good and beginning somewhat of a decent but still not easy by any means. (Still a lot of rollers).
This section had much less elevation gain at under 2,000 feet.
We went by this cool place called "The Mountain Identifier". We were able to see all but one of the main mountain peaks from that point. It was really cool!!
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| The "Mountain Identifier" |
About 5.5 miles to Ione, Tony was looking good.
We rolled into Ione, mile marker at about 189 miles at around 7 pm.
We had some awesome peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, then hit the road to catch up to Tony.
Margaret doing a hand-off
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| Gina adding some artwork to the van at one of the stops. |
17.3 miles · +1,044 ft / -205 ft. Total miles 206.4. Accumulated elevation gain 16,531 ft.
All things considered, at only 17 miles, this was a pretty short section but it was all gradually uphill with some of what I like to call kickers.
He had a tailwind pretty much the whole way as the sun started to set behind us in the west.
Tony did his first 200 miles in just under 15 hours of ride-time and had an accumulated 16,000 feet of elevation gain already. He was feeling good and had to stop and document the moment on his double century.
Our mascot, Tiny, above.
The name all started by my Facebook update where I had a typo and I called Tony, Tiny. So we called the little unicorn Tiny. He would soon get dismembered when Gina drove for the first time and accidentally turned on the windshield wipers instead of the lights. It was hilarious. Fortunately, Gina was able to do some corrective surgery making him as good as new. It then happened again. He was triaged again and then moved to the antenna. He had a lot more fun there.
Just about to get dark in Heppner. We are now about to start what turned out to be an all-nighter climb!! Photo credit: RAO staff official Ian Hoffman
60.6 miles · +4,917 ft / -3,970 ft. Total miles 267. Accumulated elevation gain 21,448 ft.
All I have to say about this next section is this. Holy cow what a change of scenery and elements from the daytime. The route book said something like, "start 15-mile climb", or something like that. This climb just seemed endless. If you look at the above profile, it is over a 20-mile climb that just gets steeper as you go along. It then looks like it levels but it really doesn't. It again is just rollers with some really steep sections.
On one of the first stops we made to give Tony a break, I had a little surprise for him.
My nickname is White Owl as many people know.
I had a rubber owl mask and I put it on, hiding in the darkness as the girls fed Tony. While they were talking, I stepped out of the darkness next to them and just stood there until he looked up. His reaction was priceless. I didn't really want to freak him out by running along the road while he was riding. I thought it best to just stand there and see what he did.
Below is the picture Margaret got. Tony and his Owl friend.
HOO HOO
The temperature dropped into the low 40's. Tony was really wet due to all the climbing and we had to stop him countless times to get him in dryer layers. He was really getting cold. The only thing that could have been worse is rain at this point.
We kept looking for the descent that showed up on the profile but it never really felt like one. He had to slow way down due to the cold.
The stars were just amazing and bright. It was incredible. We climbed over this big mountain to over 5,000 feet in elevation before dropping down slightly to Interstate 395 and The Bridgecreek Wilderness Area.
This section took most of the night.
We started to see daylight on the first climb after the time station in Dale, Oregon. We didn't get any good night pictures, but below are a few short videos that show the beast conquering this mountain on his fixed gear!! Check out the reflective gear. I think we only saw one car on the climb.
We had to call into race headquarters as usual in Dale but we were not supposed to stop at all. Apparently, something happened there once, which made the locals angry (one local apparently), so they didn't want any problems since it was in the middle of the night.
57.1 miles · +5,346 ft / -5,417 ft. Total miles 324.1. Accumulated elevation gain 26,794 ft.
We went through Dale while it was still dark but it started getting light near the summit of the first long climb. This next section was worse as far as elevation gain than the previous but did not seem as long since it was getting lighter and warming up a bit.
This was another really beautiful mountain section with lots of pine trees.
Watching Tony climb all these epic climbs on a fixed gear bike was just mind-boggling to me. I have seen him on countless events but this was just epic because he just kept the same pace the entire time and never seemed to falter. The only time we were a little worried was in the cold but he got through that with flying colors.
Sunrise at one of the many summits on a very hard section. This is the summit of Ritter Butte.
Almost to the final summit before heading down to Mount Vernon
Long Creek Mountain summit. Just a few more bumps to go before a nice descent.
Down Tony went toward Mount Vernon.
This was a pretty long descent into the town. We needed to get gas and take a lunch break.
We got gas, found a park, and then got some food from the gas station convenience store. It wasn't the best but it was fine. With COVID going around, we just wanted to stay outdoors as much as possible.
Tony took a little nap in the park there while we ate.
It was really warm there even in the shade so we knew it was going to be a hot day to come.
Tony trying to sleep in the park while Gina gets ready to put that new tire on his bike.
60.5 miles · +3,138 ft / -3,166 ft. Total miles 384.6. Accumulated elevation gain 29,932 ft.
This section of the course started out with a gradual descent but it seemed relatively flat. This was the only section of the race where it seemed to me Tony was getting a little break from the constant up and down. It looks in the profile like about 30 miles of little bumps that slowly lose altitude before a beast of a climb.
The next climb started at an area called Rattlesnake Creek.
The route book made a comment about the canyon wall radiating heat and how it felt like being baked in an oven. They were not wrong.
We entered Rattlesnake Creek along the John Day River, then we took a left turn up another canyon that was just as hot.
The two canyons, I believe, are part of the same fossil beds state park system.
It was very hot here and we started to wet Tony down a bit and got him into his ice vest for a bit. It also started about 25 miles of climbing in some really spectacular terrain.
That canyon up ahead was like a furnace
Tony riding into the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.
The John Day River to his right as he rides into the Fossil Beds.
We now had an ice vest on Tony. The girls cheering him on at one of the really hot sections.
Once we got over the climb, we went down the hill a bit and waited for him to come down. After we got him past the turn in the town of Mitchell, we went back into town for ice and supplies again.
This town of Mitchell was like a western town out of a western movie. People sitting and talking outside a saloon looking store with a sheriff outside talking to everyone. Of course, the sheriff was in blue jeans and a camo vest and baseball cap. You can see the store we went into by clicking on the blue-colored links above. It was really an old pioneer town. Really cool!!
36.7 miles · +2,603 ft / -3,624 ft. Total mile 421.3. Accumulated elevation gain 32,535 ft.
After filling up with ice and more food, we raced back up to Tony.
He was still climbing out of town and starting some pretty steep stuff.
He was getting really tired and wanted to go down for a long sleep break. Throughout the race, we were in contact with his coach David, filling him in on what Tony was experiencing and getting his recommendations. He always knew what to do and what to give him for certain issues.
It is really not good to go down for too long of a sleep break on this type of event. Too much time and it is very hard to get the body and mind rolling again. David allowed an unusual 2 hours sleep break. We think Tony needed it and we really needed it too.
After he summited one of the easier hills on day 2, before the final 3 peaks in the profile above, we stopped for dinner and sleep.
A little party for Tony.
That was the best watermelon I have tasted in years.
We had the perfect spot.
It was a huge pullout on one side of a very small mountain road with no traffic.
Picnic time
We pulled a whole bunch of stuff out of the van and made room for Tony to lay down. We arranged everything outside for a makeshift picnic dinner and had something to eat as Tony started to nod off.
After we were done eating, we got back in the van, leaving everything open since it was so nice out. Not very hot and just cool enough to snooze. OH, SO WE THOUGHT!!
I was just starting to finally nod off to sleep when I heard the first one.
Oh......The telltale sound of.....need I say...Mosquitos buzzing in your ear.
Almost immediately Tony yelled out something to the effect, " we're being attacked by mosquitos!! Shut the windows and rear hatch".
It wasn't only mosquitos, but that is for a story a little later on other visitors we found.
We left the engine running with the air on and shut the van up.
We all started to go to sleep finally and I think it was about 45 minutes from the time we went down after eating, that I heard the telltale sound of cycling shoes being tightened.
He was already up and ready to go.
Unbelievably, he was back on the bike in a couple of minutes and on the road as soon as we rushed to put everything back in the van. It only took us a couple minutes. What a team!!!
There were some more really tough climbs on this stretch during the night. We had another GPS in the van and some of the gradients were close to 20% at times.
Watching Tony grind up those things was amazing. He, never once, on the entire race, walked up a hill!!
It was during this section, I believe, that the girls noticed some other visitors we had picked up from our picnic dinner stop.
I was in the back and one of them looked down in their lap and said, "is that a TICK???!!". "Yes it is", the other one said. They jumped out of the van and shook themselves off. We would find a few others on their clothes at some point as well as countless other bugs that came along for the ride. We even had grasshoppers. At one point Tony was grunting up a hill at sunrise and grasshoppers were jumping all over the road. You could see them glistening in the sun. We even picked up a few of them. The girls were not happy!
Watching Tony grind up those things was amazing. He, never once, on the entire race, walked up a hill!!
It was during this section, I believe, that the girls noticed some other visitors we had picked up from our picnic dinner stop.
I was in the back and one of them looked down in their lap and said, "is that a TICK???!!". "Yes it is", the other one said. They jumped out of the van and shook themselves off. We would find a few others on their clothes at some point as well as countless other bugs that came along for the ride. We even had grasshoppers. At one point Tony was grunting up a hill at sunrise and grasshoppers were jumping all over the road. You could see them glistening in the sun. We even picked up a few of them. The girls were not happy!
76.2 miles · +7,162 ft / -6,141 ft. Total miles 497.5. Accumulated elevation gain 39,697 ft.
Leaving the town of Spray, one has to think. Does the climbing ever end?
Wow.....over 7,000 feet in this next section.
I hate to be repetitious but, again this was some beautiful countryside.
As we got closer to Condon for the second time during the race, we again encountered the high plains wheat fields and windy conditions. There were still some intense small climbs before getting to Condon after getting out of the mountains. Some were downright terrible.
During this section we were watching Tony up ahead and all of a sudden he fell.
The girls yelled and I raced up to make sure he was ok. We thought the race might be over. He was not on a descent. He was actually going really slow but it looked bad. When we asked him what happened he said he didn't know. He just got up and kept going but had a bloody elbow. We cleaned it up a bit and he was on his way. Those moments are always scary.
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| Crazy hills getting back to Condon |
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| This picture does not do it justice. It just seemed to keep going. Can you see Tony? |
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| At this point in the race, the first 4-person team passed us. With a little over 120 miles to go in the race. The fast teams started on Saturday. This was at one of the final summits before Condon. It was still pretty early and already getting quite warm. |
We went up ahead of Tony a little bit so I could drop the girls off at the grocery store for supplies. I went back with the van until I intercepted Tony. I told him what we were doing and that we needed to fill up with gas also. He stopped to use the bathroom while we got gas. It was a nice little break after a tough section.
19.2 miles · +1,521 ft / -1,674 ft. Total miles 516.7. Accumulated elevation gain 41,218 ft.
The ride from Condon to Fossil was relatively short at only about 19 miles. The terrain was pretty much all wheat fields again until we approached Fossil. The climbing was not bad but with about 500 miles in his legs, I am sure Tony would bare to differ.
It was really hot when we got to Fossil near lunchtime and there was not much shade anywhere to park for a sleep break which Tony wanted. We found a nice shady spot in front of someone's house in town.
The owner came out and talked to Tony for quite some time about what he was doing. He was an elderly gentleman. He looked to be in his 80's and he was just in awe at what we were doing and the distance.
It was mentioned in the route book that the next segment was one of the toughest of the race. Blazing hot and totally unprotected with no shade so we wanted to be prepared.
We got all the hot weather items out as well as the spray bottles. We used the water from the ice in the ice chests, which was not good for drinking, to use in the spray bottles to cool him down when necessary. We also had a giant squirt gun that looked like a "Lightsaber". It shot a big stream of water out and could get you really wet!
We got all the hot weather items out as well as the spray bottles. We used the water from the ice in the ice chests, which was not good for drinking, to use in the spray bottles to cool him down when necessary. We also had a giant squirt gun that looked like a "Lightsaber". It shot a big stream of water out and could get you really wet!
We pulled Tony away from his conversation with the local homeowner and got him down for a short nap with the AC blasting in the van.
- Time station 11 to time station 12, Shaniko
42.1 miles · +4,921 ft / -4,248 ft. Total miles 558.8. Accumulated elevation gain 46,139 ft.
This final day was turning out to be the hottest of the race. It was Sunday and the forecast in The Dalles was to be in the upper 90's. Much hotter out in the boonies.
Right out of town there was an approximate, 6-mile climb. This climb started out going through some interesting lava formations, then we were up in a wooded area to the summit. We were not yet in the fossil beds section.
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| Incredible formations of rock leaving Fossil |
The lava beds were just beautiful with all sorts of weird formations. We were again near another area of the John Day Fossil Beds.
We got Tony in his ice vest during this first section as it was only going to get hotter.
Below is a video of Tony near the summit of the first grade out of Fossil in the above profile.
Next up he had a nice little descent of about 12-13 miles before a small kicker. Then it was time for the infamous "Clarno" climb.
You can see the little kicker in the profile above at about mile 18.
It doesn't look like much right? Well...It's not that long but it was pretty steep!
Tony at the summit of "The Clarno Kicker"
Photo: Ian Hoffman. RAO official
We were now in the John Day Fossil Beds Clarno Unit area.
It was spectacular. The rock outcroppings looked like giant castles protruding out of the ground. It was amazing and the pictures do not do it justice!
Note: Click on the pictures to enlarge them. They are really amazing, full screen.
We now had Tony in full ice gear. Arm-coolers, his torso was wrapped in a special cooler fabric, leg coolers, and finally an ice vest that had been sitting in the ice chest. It was 100 degrees out and he said he was actually cold. (That is a very good thing when you are trying to keep the body core cool!)
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| Margaret pouring ice water all over Tony. |
We did all sorts of fun things to take his mind off of it. (Especially the girls).
Tony never faltered. He only stopped a few times to enjoy some salty treats like potato chips and beef jerky. You could not even tell that the man had over 500 miles in his legs at this point in the race.
Have I said it before? It was just epic to watch!
(And pretty comical at times. Those moments are best left out of the media. LOL. The crew knows what I am talking about.)
The gals did an awesome job keeping Tony amused and focused on the task at hand!!!
Over the summit, he went.
The next and final climb, of this segment, looked daunting on the profile but it was not as bad. It had some nice switchbacks, deer, and antelope playing in the ravine to the side of the road. A really pretty climb and not quite as exposed.
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| I think those are antelope but not sure. They did not look like deer. |
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| Looking down from near the summit of the final climb before Shaniko. |
We reached the summit of a big plateau and took a long break before heading into the time station at Shaniko.
26.1 miles. 584.9 total miles· +580 ft / -3,080 ft. Accumulated elevation gain 46,719 ft.
The next section of the race was riding into the sunset, descending about 3,000 feet and into a nasty headwind.
Tony was going really steady but, even though it was mostly downhill, he couldn't make much speed in that wind. We were in direct follow now.
Just prior to starting this segment, we got a text message from race headquarters that read something like this. "Do not stop at the next Time Station. Just roll through. Campers and partying people in Imperial River Company-Maupin, are not obeying the Covid-19 mandates."
Tony needed a final sleep break before the final, tough, 46 or so, miles of the race.
We decided to stop for a break at a big road turn-out on the hill above, and about 2 miles from town.
We were just about to nod off to sleep when a race official drove up and asked if we were ok. We were not too happy about that but I guess he was just concerned so it's ok. We thought it was the police at first due to the flashing lights he had on his truck.
I think Tony only slept for about 20 minutes and we were on our way down to town.
Maupin and the time station was right on the Deschutes River. We went over a really cool bridge into town. This was a really cool town.
As we rolled through town, there was a ruckus outside a bar with a whole bunch of people. After crossing the river, it is a long climb through and out of the town of Maupin. While going really slow and direct following Tony, the whole group outside the bar started cheering and calling Tony's name. Not sure if someone had told them what he was doing or if they saw his name on the van. It really cheered him up.
40.4 miles. Total miles 625.3 · +3,070 ft / -3,631 ft. Accumulated elevation gain 49,789 ft.
You can see the climb out of Maupin in the above profile.
I am not sure if it was just that we were all really so tired that we got confused but for some reason, we thought the route book made it sound like this was the final hard climb. We were all thinking that once we got over that section, it was not a bad amount of climbing. You can clearly see in the profile above that the next one is a beast. (We did not have this profile to look at. We did have an extra GPS unit mounted in the car that said we were on course and gave us the mile to the next queue, but I guess we didn't want to believe it.)
Tony was on top of it the whole time because he had the profile on his GPS unit right in front of him. He did stop and question his GPS for a minute also, though, when the climb just didn't seem to stop.
Before this final climb, we had an exciting moment. We saw the flashing lights of the officials truck up ahead. Tony then stopped and we followed suit.
They pointed up at the sky. We got out of the van and all had an amazing view of the comet Neowise.
We had gotten a glimpse of it when driving into town before the race during the week but could barely see it from the car while driving.
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| Neowise |
The final big climb was the Tygh Ridge Climb. 7 miles with about 2,000 feet of elevation gain. If you believe the GPS data above, it calls it out as about 1,600 feet but that does not include the lower portion shown on the map. This late in the race, and in the pitch-black darkness, it seemed endless. There were very few cars.
Not sure why we got confused about this section because now, looking back at it, it seems pretty straight forward. I think all our brains were toast. Tony was the one who kept telling us that the summit was up ahead, but it just never seemed to come.
FINALLY, we got there. There was a nice descent, and then a couple rollers before we got to the bottom.
When we got to the turn, on 8-mile road, again we got a little confused.
We thought this was the checkpoint for some reason and called into headquarters saying we were at the final checkpoint.
The final checkpoint was actually about 7 miles down the road at "15-mile road."
We thought we had only about 7 miles left to race but we actually had about twice that.
Again...Tony was the one who was on top of it. He was following his course on his GPS and he stopped at the proper checkpoint location and told us.
He just flew like a horse smelling the barn along 8-mile road. It was amazing. 620 miles in his legs and he looked better than when he started. Go figure!!
The reason we actually had to call in when reaching the checkpoint is so they could get ready for our arrival in about 15 minutes at the finish. When we did not arrive, they thought something had happened and they called us. We had figured out by that point that we must have called at the wrong place. The tracking system for the race was not working so they were relying on communications to see racers' progress.
7 miles. Total mile 632.3 · +188 ft / -317 ft. Accumulated elevation gain 49,977
We now followed Tony into town for the final miles. We were finally in civilization once again. It was right around 2am and Tony had made the cut-off by close to 6 hours.
We rolled through The Dalles on empty streets and into the finish. There were a few people there to greet us.
Just a note: The Ride With GPS data shows that the race is a little over 632 miles long. The official race mileage is shown at 629 miles. The Ride With GPS elevation data also adds up to just under 50,000 feet of climbing per the course breakdown.
Not sure where the discrepancy is but it is very close and who cares about a few miles or an extra 1,800 feet at this point right!!?? This was just a BAD-ASS TOUGH EVENT!!!
A big thanks go out to George Thomas and the whole staff at RAO for putting on an epic event. I think I may just come back next year to do one of the courses offered if I can at all swing it. What an amazing race it is.
We rolled through The Dalles on empty streets and into the finish. There were a few people there to greet us.
Just a note: The Ride With GPS data shows that the race is a little over 632 miles long. The official race mileage is shown at 629 miles. The Ride With GPS elevation data also adds up to just under 50,000 feet of climbing per the course breakdown.
Not sure where the discrepancy is but it is very close and who cares about a few miles or an extra 1,800 feet at this point right!!?? This was just a BAD-ASS TOUGH EVENT!!!
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