The 2007 Route has been confirmed! Check out the summary below and go to the
CREW CHIEF'S CORNER for the full description. Very cool!
In all, successful, RAAM competitors will climb over 109,000 feet, cross 14 states and pedal over 3,000 miles.
RAAM leaves Oceanside and immediately attacks a series of moderate climbs. After passing through Montezuma Valley, the racers plummet nearly 4000 feet in less than ten miles into the southern California deserts. After several hundred miles of very hot riding – including some very muggy miles along the Salton Sea – the course climbs back into the cooler climates of Prescott and Flagstaff, Arizona.
The course continues into the Navajo and Hopi Reservations of northeast Arizona and the magnificent Monument Valley of southern Utah. Bending eastward, the racers will be challenged by the southern Colorado Rockies, and RAAM’s classic trio of mammoth passes: Wolf Creek, La Veta and Chuchara.
After Trinidad, CO, the course enters the high plains of eastern Colorado and the rolling hills of Kansas. In Missouri, the rollers become more significant – peaking along the banks of the Missouri River. Passing just north of St Louis, the racers cross the mighty Mississippi River and can start thinking of the finish line.
After slicing across Illinois and Indiana along US 40, the course bends southeasterly through Ohio farming country. The Appalachians are the next challenges to face the racers: east of Cumberland a series of three very tough climbs will make tired suffering legs scream. But even after these are behind the racers, the terrain through the Pennsylvania Dutch countryside will not let them rest.
Not until the racers have shuttled across the Delaware River outside Wilmington does the road finally flatten out – only shortly before the racers finish their epic journey across the US on the famous Historic Boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ.
Solo racers leave Oceanside on June 10th: Teams leave on June 12th.
