The general scenario is clear for most riders entering the two-person team race. Assuming a general equality of team members, each rider can expect to be in the saddle for about 12 hours out of each 24-hour period of the race. Having trained with this assumption in mind, the question facing every two-person team is, how do we apportion the 12 hours of individual rider pulls in order to maximize team efficiency? In other words, should rider pulls be dictated strictly by time (e.g., twelve hours on, twelve hours off), or by the conditions of the race in relation to riders' strengths and weaknesses?

Many teams found it important to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each rider going into the race. For example, it can be vital to know during the race: is one rider a significantly better climber than the other? Similarly, is one rider significantly better on the descents? Is one rider better with long, flat stretches? Is one better at riding into a strong headwind? Is one a better rider at night? Given the variety of terrain and weather conditions facing RAAM riders, many teams found it helpful to have a clear understanding of each rider's strengths and weaknesses. As one rider observed, "this is no time to be macho - honestly evaluating your own strengths and weaknesses can go a long way to planning your team's strategy, and helping your overall performance". Many teammates assessed each other in head-to-head "competitions" throughout their training periods in order to ascertain whether one rider was clearly better for given conditions, such as mountain climbs, flats, headwinds, descents, and night riding. As the rider quoted above concluded, "I'm just not a good climber - certainly not as good as [my teammate]. Knowing this fact went a long way in helping to determine our strategy at certain points in the race".

Most teams also understood that it would be impossible to apply such factors as individual strengths and weaknesses to each and every situation for the entire race. As one rider explained, "with so much climbing during the first half of the race, you can't have your best climber do it all. He'd be fried by Colorado!".

As a result, despite individual differences between teammates, most teams found that the most efficient strategy was to adhere to a regular time schedule during the race, where each rider would take a pull for a specified duration, regardless of terrain and/or conditions. The riders realized that if you micro-manage rider shifts according to terrain and conditions, neither rider will get significant amounts of rest, and both will be exhausted after only a couple of days of riding. Thus, while managing individual rider strengths and weaknesses may be significant for events such as the four-person team race, it appears to be much less of an overall factor for the two-person event. Indeed, all riders were in agreement that the two-person event requires two good, all-around riders for each team. All concluded that the strongest teams were those who had two riders capable of performing well in all conditions, rather than being specialists who were superb at only one or two aspects of cycling.

The question that two-person teams are faced with, then, is what is the best time interval to use for rider shifts? Though the teams used different shifts, the reasoning that guided their decisions was quite similar. Each team noted that the break for the resting rider must be long enough to allow for sufficient rest and sleep, but not so long so as to allow the rider who is out on the course to become exhausted (and thus significantly decrease his or her speed). Some teams, unfortunately, learned this lesson once the race had already started. As one rider explained, "we started out with three hour shifts, reasoning that that was the longest we could go and still maintain high speeds. But we soon realized that there wasn't enough time to rest! By the time I got off the bike, got in the van, and had a bite to eat, there was barely an hour to rest before I had to get up and get ready for my next pull. After the first day-and-a-half, we were both exhausted! We weren't getting much more sleep than the solo riders, even though we were each off the bike for 12 hours!".

Lack of sleep was a common complaint among two-person team riders. Many noted that before the race, they reasoned that with riding "only" 12 hours per day, they felt that they would easily be able to get eight hours of sleep per day, and therefore be rested for the entire length of RAAM. But because their 12 "off" hours were not one large block, their sleep was also broken up into smaller segments. The result was that most riders said they felt sleep-deprived throughout RAAM, averaging only 5-6 hours per day. Many noted that their training for future RAAMs would attempt to take that fact into account. Many riders were not prepared for the continuous feelings of sleep deprivation and exhaustion, and found that they had to adjust their mental attitude after the race had started. In this regard, solo RAAM veterans seem to have had a distinct advantage, as they were able to draw on their experiences of riding while sleep deprived, while most rookies had not previously encountered such a situation to any great degree. With the potential for constant fatigue looming over them, most teams noted that once they sorted out the initial "bugs" in their strategy, they settled into a routine of about four hour shifts per rider. Many felt this was the middle ground between allowing the resting rider to get sufficient sleep (about two hours per rest period, three times per day) and not over-taxing the rider on the course, thus forcing his/her speed to decrease dramatically. Many riders also noted that the added benefit of the four hour shift was that it divided nicely into the 24-hour period, so each rider was always riding during the same time periods each day. As such, they felt that their bodies were not as "out of synch" as if they were riding at different periods for each day. Thus, their bodies did not need to keep "adjusting" every day.

One team, for example, split their shifts up into the following schedule: Rider 1 would ride noon-4 p.m., 8 p.m.-midnight, and 4 a.m.-8 a.m.; Rider 2 would ride 4 p.m.-8 p.m., midnight-4 a.m., and 8 a.m.-noon. To retain consistency (and avoid confusion), these times were allocated according to official "race time" rather local time. The riders used their own strengths and weaknesses to determine who would be Rider 1 and who would be Rider 2. As one rider explained, "from solo rides, I know that I have the most trouble staying awake immediately after sundown, and [my teammate] has trouble in the middle of the night, so he took the first set of shifts [Rider 1], and I took the second [Rider 2]". Other teams similarly set their shifts according to which seemed to better suit each rider.

Although most teams had regular rider shifts, things do not always go according to schedule, and RAAM is particularly notorious in this regard. Many riders described numerous instances when it was advantageous not to stick to the interval schedule, due to things like weather conditions, rider injury, or simple logistics ("we couldn't find a safe place for the van to stop on the side of the mountain!"). One rider, for example, developed an injury half-way through the race. The solution was to have the second rider extend his pulls slightly until the first rider's injury subsided. In another instance, one rider was faced consistently with the challenge of riding up a mountain pass for the entire four hours of his shift. Because he was not a particularly strong rider, this began to demoralize him. His teammate extended his pulls in order to shorten the first rider's shift for that section of the race.

As the examples illustrate, flexibility in shifts was helpful in some cases. Most teams found it necessary to choose when to make use of this flexibility, and apply their knowledge regarding each rider's strengths and weaknesses to the appropriate scenarios in order to maximize efficiency. Most riders felt that those teams who applied the knowledge sparingly, and at the most opportune times, had the decided advantage over the other teams. The riders stressed the dangers of constant micro-managing of rider shifts. One rider noted that a good crew can be especially helpful. His crew "always seemed to know when it was best to adjust the shifts, and when the riders should just suck it up and push on".

In the end, the best tactics for the two-person team event seemed to be those that kept to a fairly consistent rider shift schedule, but allowed for some slight variation in order to play on individual riders' strengths when the need arose. As with solo RAAM, the key to the two-person race seems to be consistency over the entire route. The Race Across America cannot be won in a day, or on any particular mountain pass, and the successful two-person teams recognize this. As one rider noted, "having your stronger rider do almost all of the climbing may benefit your team for the first half of the race, but if he is spent after 1,500 miles, the team's going to suffer". Ultimately, consistency from both riders is what really matters in order for a two-person team to be successful.