Twelve days, 4,900 kms, coast-to-coast across the U.S—via the Mojave desert, through the Colorado mountains, the Kansas plains and finally the Appalachians—on a bicycle, with no more than three hours of sleep (two, sometimes) every day.
The world’s toughest bicycle race, RAAM (Race Across America), was a challenge that Nashik-based army aerospace medicine specialist Lt. Colonel Srinivas Gokulnath had made his mind to take on: “before he turned 40.”
“Distances began to allure me,” says Gokulnath, 37, as he recollects his introduction to endurance cycling nearly 10 years ago when he cycled 140 kms up Bengaluru’s Nandi Hills. He rapidly went from 140 kms to 200 and 300 kms in the following months, and setting records soon became a regular habit.
In 2014, he entered the Limca Book of Records for completing the Leh to Kanyakumari (3,921 kms) cycling challenge in 15 days and 17 hours amid snow and rain and bouts of acute mountain sickness.
His next mission was RAAM. He had earlier attempted it in 2016. However, after 3,000 kms, Gokulnath had to give up. “I had not focussed on strategy. I had not factored in the intensity of the race,” he said.
But his determination to complete this event only grew. He hired a coach, the 2011 RAAM’s ‘rookie of the year’ Alberto Blanco, and put together a veritable crew, including his wife Prafulla, a doctor, to train him. Gokulnath decided to work on a budget of Rs. 15 lakh, which he borrowed from friends and family.
RAAM 2017 was upon Gokulnath before he knew it. He decided to adopt the ‘bit-by-bit’ strategy. He kept an eye on the clock at all times.
“The biggest challenge was to never take my focus off the race and staying rooted in the present and positive at all times,” he added.
His 11-member crew were split between a mini-van and a car. The teams took turns to follow him, providing him with liquids, food and technical help. Gokulnath says that he might have consumed 8,000 calories of a largely liquid diet and slept only three hours a day either in the mini-van or at a highway motel room. The rest of the time, of course, he was on the saddle.
He admits feeling completely ‘knocked down’ several times during the 11-day race. “There were times when I felt I was done with the race. If you succumb to this feeling, you are finished. You just need to believe you can do it. This strategy works wonders,” he further added.
The landscape was magnificent, he recalls. “I became one with nature. The Wolf Creek in the Colorado mountains was particularly scenic, so were the Appalachian mountains in the last leg of the race. Of course, one is physically exhausted when you reach the mountains and the climbs can get challenging,” he said.
Gokulnath finished the challenge well in time—in 11 days 18 hours and 45 minutes—becoming the first Indian solo cyclist to complete it, followed three hours later by Amit Samarth, a doctor from Nagpur. So far, four Indians have attempted to complete the race in the solo category. Now Gokulnath is keen to travel across India and speak about his experience especially to the cycling fraternity.
“I want to tell cyclists in our country that if I could complete the RAAM, so can they,” he added.
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