The Hoosiers team was born during RAAM 2006 as Dave Tanner (Bloomington, IN) and Steve Gerbig (Evansville, IN) staffed a RAAM time station during the race. They talked about doing RAAM as a team and before they went home the nucleus of the Hoosiers was formed. In the months that followed they added, Dick Rupp (Angola, IN) to the team and then Drew Clark (Erie, CO), though the Indiana riders had to ignore geography to include Colorado resident Clark.

Gerbig later earned the moniker Dr. Downhill for his ability to descend fearlessly. Rupp, a retired cardiologist, rode by the numbers from his heart monitor with such discipline I call him Dr. Pacemaster. Tanner is the only Hoosier with prior RAAM experience, having completed solo RAAM almost 20 years ago. The Hoosiers are a 60+ team, hoping to win one for the geezers.

Since we had not all met, the Hoosiers gathered for Texas Hell Week in Fredericksburg in March. The winter had been unusually inhospitable for bike riding, especially so in Colorado, so we sought a warmer clime for base miles and team bonding. The mileage and hill work was great training, but not as valuable as the opportunity to build a solid team relationship.

The Hoosiers had logged miles and made friendships, but RAAM was going to demand much more than that. Logistics, strategy, nutrition, crew, sleep. What is an efficient rotation strategy? How fast a pace can we handle? We all had a pretty good idea of how fast we could ride a century, but riding a solo century is not at all like team RAAM.

We decided to pick a state in which to attempt a cross-state record to test riders, equipment, strategy, nutrition, and crew. Indiana was a natural choice for Hoosiers though it had little in the way of elevation gain. We chose a West-East-West attempt. This gave us a little over 300 miles and we hoped to make the double-crossing in 15 hours. We planned the start time late enough in the day (9:00 a.m.) to ensure that we would all have a stint of night riding near the end of the attempt. On May 14, we gathered at the IL/IN state line on Highway 28 and headed east, quickly falling into a routine, which would serve us well on RAAM. Clark and Rupp would alternate pulls of about six miles each for two hours. Then Clark and Rupp would go forage for food while Tanner and Gerbig alternated pulls for two hours. The wind was from the south, with maybe a degree or two of westerly component, so little benefit nor hindrance occurred until the last 20 miles before the Ohio border, where the road angled southward.

Immediately upon crossing the IN/OH border, the westbound rider took off for the return trip, while the rest of us checked the time and did calculations. A younger team had set the record of 7 hours 32 minutes in 1995 and we crossed the border at 7 hours 6 minutes, beating the old record by 26 minutes for an average speed of 21.67 mph.

The wind strengthened and shifted maybe another degree or two to the west, but remained mostly southerly as we retraced our route back to the IL/IN border. Our pace dropped off slightly. We reached a unanimous consensus that shorter pulls were better as we tired and we changed to pulls of four or five miles each.

As darkness came, our exchange tactics had to change as we were now limited by the nighttime rules requiring the rider to stay within 50 feet of the follow vehicle as well as within the headlight envelope. We muffed one exchange and got a well-deserved warning from our official, Mike Jacob, who is himself an accomplished ultracyclist.

We made the IN/IL border in 8 hours 6 minutes, giving us a round trip time of 15 hours 12 minutes and an average speed for the roundtrip of 20.12 mph.

What we learned:
1. We hoped to break the RAAM record for an age 60+ team based on average speed. To do that, we needed an average speed near 18 mph. Even though our average on this record run exceeded 20 mph, we all knew we could not have done that for a full 24 hours, let alone for a full week, as RAAM would require. So, the question remained: How far did we have to back off the pace from 20 mph and still be able to maintain pace for more than a week, night and day? At least we had a ceiling; we knew how hard was too hard.

2. Exchanges during the night were going to be more difficult than we thought. During RAAM it often became a challenge simply to find a good location for an exchange, especially on the winding, hilly roads in Missouri and West Virginia.

3. Our crew chief, Stan Gerbig, learned communications between our three support vehicles was going to be our single biggest problem.

4. Sleep. While sleep was not an issue on our Indiana attempt, it definitely was an issue during RAAM. We had expected to get by on as little as four hours of sleep per night during RAAM, but we were wildly optimistic in that hope. In fact, during RAAM, we were lucky if we got two hours of sleep per night.

I was also able to test a piece of nighttime equipment. A rider's pace normally drops when riding in darkness, perhaps due to the loss of visual speed clues. I find it very helpful to be able to see my bike computer to monitor my speed constantly. But as with most bike computers, mine won't light up without pushing two buttons and then it only stays lit for a few seconds. I needed a "dashboard" light. And I found it by using a book light; one of those miniature battery-powered reading lights. I found one that used a single A-cell rather than a button battery. I attached it to my handlebar with a Velcro strap so as to shine directly onto my computer and it worked wonderfully, giving me continuous lighting to read my speed.

The Indiana ride was invaluable practice for RAAM. We did set a new 60+ record for RAAM with an average speed of 17.87 mph. But something else happened during RAAM that was even more helpful in breaking the record. Competition. Another 60+ team was entered in RAAM, composed of Walt Chapman, Larry Gitman, Dennis Kasischke and Paul Danhaus. They were indeed worthy competitors. In fact, we traded the lead several times. They also broke the old record, finishing not far behind the Hoosiers. The winning margin for the Hoosiers was roughly equivalent to winning a 100-meter race by one tenth of a second. That is appropriate, because after all, RAAM is a race, the World's Toughest Bike Race.