Congratulations to the the Team: Four The Record: of Vicki Anstey, Katie Aguilar, Dani Overbaugh, and Caroline Buckland who set the Women’s 4x USA W-E record during the RAAM 2024 event.
** This is also a Guinness World Record
Our Race Across America journey began in January 2023. We originally planned to race in June 2023 but quickly realized how much was involved and decided to delay until 2024.
We had already recruited our Crew Chief, William A. Medina, who had crewed a total of 11 RAAMs, including the 2011 overall RAAM record for 4 women, 19.22 mph. The record was later reset by the German team “Quattra Bavariae” at 19.27 mph (3087 miles, 6 days, 15 hours, 19 minutes) in 2017. We also planned to set a new Guinness World Record (which did not previously exist) for 4 women to cycle non-stop across the US from the West to East coast.
We were a dual nationality UK/US team made up of Dani Overbaugh, Vicki Anstey, Caz Buckland, and Katie Aguilar. To set out our ambitions clearly, we called ourselves “Four the Record,” four women fueled by determination and an unyielding spirit of competition in the pursuit of setting a new Race Across America record.
Four the Record was not just about our quest for speed; we also hoped to inspire wider participation of women and young girls in under-represented sporting endeavors and to foster a culture of fearless, dynamic feminism in the world of sport. We were proud to raise over £21,000 ($27,000) for the charity Inspiring Girls International, for whom Vicki is the UK Ambassador.
We brought a crew of 11 people together (plus 3 media) from the United States, Japan, Puerto Rico, and South Africa.
Our target was to maintain an average speed of 19.3 mph. Until we gathered in Oceanside, California, some of the racers had not met each other, and many of the crew were unknown to us as well. We hired 2 Airbnbs in Oceanside prior to the race to familiarize ourselves with each other, organize logistics, and practice key aspects of the race technicalities such as rider exchanges.
We experienced very hot temperatures throughout the race, even at night and during points of high elevation. Many of the extra layers of clothing we took were unnecessary. We chose to have an RV and two follow vehicles. We rotated on 4 hours on/off, and within that, each rider took a 30-minute on/off pull. This strategy was to ensure that we fatigued the riders evenly throughout.
We were on track for the race record until around 30 hours out. At this point, we knew we needed to do something different to stand any chance of making up time. We sent all riders out into the follow vehicles and rotated between them, playing to their relative strengths, weaknesses, and levels of fatigue. All extra crew went to the RV and navigated ahead for appropriate pull-out stops, taking care of nutrition requirements.
We hit very strong side winds (35 mph) in Kansas for over 19 hours. This slowed us down. We were also compromised by a ruling in Colorado that we could not have direct follow at night, making descending safely at high speed very challenging.
We finished 4 hours short of the race record (including a 1-hour penalty), disappointed that we hadn’t set a new race record, but delighted to know that a new Guinness World Record would be set for 4 women cycling across the US from West to East. Most importantly, we finished safely and made lifelong friendships with incredible people from all over the world.
We are so grateful for our amazing crew; Carlos Aguilar, Emily Beaulieu, Colin Cross, Tim Gildenhuys, Khyle Henderson, Zane Kuecks, Francisco J. Maldonado, Kay-Leigh Moore, Ivia Moreno, Jason Overbaugh, Sarah L. Roberson, Victor Vega and Lousset Velez.
