On June 21, 13 hours and 52 minutes local time Gerald Bauer finished in RAAM in Annapolis (Maryland) with a total time of 9 days, 22 hours and 3 minutes (9th place). Of course, our team is a bit behind the winner Christoph Strasse, who completed the race in an incredible 7 days 22 hours and 52 minutes, but in this contest, the fact that the athlete has successfully finished is very important by itself.
And Gerald finished so that he is going to stay in history of RAAM. In the last 2 days his rival Edward Fuchs, who was 8th and who had the advantage of 90-100 kilometers, began to lose speed, resulting in about 300 miles gap to the finish narrowed to 30 km (just over an hours). Wanting to finish the race in less than 10 days and not losing hope to improve his position in the standings by one point, Gerald decided not to stop for the 2-hour night-rest and ride the finish segment (a total of about 36 hours and about 500 miles) only with a short (no more than 10-15 minutes) breaks. During one of such breaks, one day before finish, we had the last barotraining.
Due to a change of tactics and speed advantage Gerald caught Fuchs and the last 50 km of distance they were literally "nose to nose", so that in this marathon race the finish turned out to be a sprint! Gerald crossed the finish line a little earlier than Fuchs, but due to the start time difference Fuchs still was ahead by 1 minute!
Surprisingly, conquering 2962.40 miles in less than 10 days, Gerald looked fresh and cheerful. He was actively giving interviews, warmly greeted his rival and compatriot Edward Fuchs (who, however, did not look so energetic). In his short speech during the awards ceremony Gerald expressed gratitude for the use of MULTISPECTRUM-HYPOXI equipment. But Gerald did not stop on this. There was another surprise for the audience and spectators. On a stage of the official finish of the race just 10 minutes after awards ceremony Gerald proposed to his girlfriend Tina (she was in the support team). She said yes! So the 2013 RAAM race ended with such a romantic note for us…
Not everybody got to the finish (at the time of writing this story, about a day after Gerald’s finish, South Korean rider going last has still had more than 800 km to ride). Incidentally, the only Russian athlete to compete in the men 60-69 years age group, unfortunately, pulled out after 441 miles.
However, our work with Gerald is not finished yet: on his return, he will start recovery activities, which cannot do without the use of MULTISPECTRUM-HYPOXI equipment, as well as our (now remote) control.
