• In the Race Across America,
  • the winners:
    • sleep an average of 2 hours a night (that's truly nuts... having to dodge cars at 16.5mph in the dark with that much sleep deprivation is an obvious recipe for disaster)
    • complete it in 8-9 days
    • have a trip-average of 15.40mph (factoring in the 2 hours of sleep they get a night, that's still a 16.80mph average while moving)
    • burn 6000 calories a day
  • only 7-20 finish every year, and the slowest finishers have an average of ~10.5mph (probably increasing amounts of sleep?)
• routes
  • Transamerica Trail (4250 miles, $135) (maps), said to be one of the most popular routes (the same organization has a number of other routes mapped out too)
  • Race Across America (3000 miles, free)
• So... 13mph for 16 hours a day might be reasonable? (which means 10mph in the Rockies, 15mph in Kansas) So that's 208 miles a day, and if we did the RAAM route, that would take 14.5 days. (assuming no long stops for really bad weather / mechanical breakdowns / getting sick or injured)
• Appalachian Mountains are apparently the hardest

Interesting?

• the 2008 RAAM race will pass closest to Chicago at Effingham, IL on at ~9am Sat June 14th.

Physical preparation

• lose lots of weight (that's the very definition of dead weight)
• get up to 15mph average on the flats (pretty friggin hard)
• do a double century (terminology)
  • chicago area ones
  • OMG, "but are you also training your stomach?", that is a contest I can win!

Equipment

• one or two GPS units