Penn High School teacher races bike across the U.S. in just over 11 days

I spoke with Les Crooks on Monday to see what mere mortals like us can learn from the 50-year-old Mishawaka man's latest feat. He’d raced his bike 3,000 miles across the United States in 11 days, eight hours and 52 minutes.

He’d climbed more than 179,000 feet of elevation, from Oceanside, Calif., to Annapolis, Maryland.

And he’d slept just three hours per night on a bunk, built inside of the support van that followed him almost every mile of the annual Race Across America, or RAAM.

His lips and tongue grew sensitive from electrolytes that he’d gulped, one nourishment drink after another, as he talked about a nonstop hunger. In every video dispatch from his bike, he always spoke about the “good food” he’d eaten or was about to eat, though on Monday he confessed to a craving that would have messed up his stomach during the race: a box of Oreos and a glass of milk.

Crooks, who oversees houses that students build as the building trades instructor at Penn High School, calls himself “a normal individual doing an extraordinary event.”

Many argue that RAAM, which started in 1982, is the toughest bike race in the world. Tougher, even, than the Tour de France that starts July 1, as racers in Tour bed down for full nights in hotels and cover two-thirds of the distance.

Crooks rode past midnight Saturday, finishing fourth in his age group, 50-59, among the solo men racers. There were a total of 33 RAAM racers from around the world, some in teams. He pedaled through 112-degree desert heat. Near the windy halfway point in Kansas, he lamented to followers on video: “I would much rather have the (climbing of the) Rockies than the wind. Relentless, pounding all day long, coming at you.”

His wife, Nikki, applied things to soothe his muscles. A crew of 13 dwindled to 10, some in the van and some in an RV that, in Colorado, suffered from bad bearings (Crooks’ son frantically figured out how to fix it and get back on the road).

Crooks has been building to this point from when he was a kid in a small town east of Grand Rapids, watching RAAM on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.” He’d ride his bike anywhere and joined a high school youth group's bike tour around the state of Michigan. Bike touring stayed with him into adulthood. He got a taste for long solo rides, doing a 1,200-mile loop around Lake Michigan in seven days in 2019.

He realized, “I can do a lot more than 100 miles a day.”

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To qualify for RAAM, in 2020 he raced the Natchez Trace 444, in which you must finish 444 miles from Nashville, Tenn., to Natchez, Miss., within 48 hours (it took him 28.5 hours). This February, in his training, he did a race across Florida covering 530 miles in 34.5 hours.

Q: Last August, you hired a prior RAAM racer as your trainer, who prescribed exactly what you had to do to train. So, were you physically prepared?

Never in all of the climbing did I ever get off the bike and walk. Physically, I felt top notch. Before I went into the race, I had 7,100 miles ridden this year. I would guess that 5,000 miles was on a trainer. That is just craziness to put that much time on a trainer in your living room. To sit on a trainer for 12 hours a day and be absolutely mind numb and still hit your numbers. I’m not going to get any faster. It’s: How much tougher am I going to get?

Q: You logged 12-hour days in the trainer on Saturdays and Sundays this spring. Did you have to push some other things aside?

My toughest time to ride is at night. So, if there was a party Saturday afternoon (like someone’s birthday), I’m going to ride from 10 o’clock Saturday night until 10 o’clock Sunday morning. … One of the things I realized is how much time I waste on things that are not that important. When there’s a goal in mind, it inspires you to think about what’s important and not important.

Q: So, to train mentally, you forced yourself into your weakest situations. Here’s what you’d said in a video June 17 on the race:

The mental training, I think, is more important than the physical training. That’s where most people get tripped up and don’t finish. … I had to put myself in situations that are uncomfortable, for sure. … In my mind, I just have a picture of me at the finish line. That, and I also have so many people following me (and my progress).

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Q: Did you have hallucinations from the sleep deprivation?

Yeah. At night, it’s always tricky because you can’t see much. All I have is my vision on the road. Sometimes I thought I’d see a line of trees, and there’d be no trees. … One time, I vividly thought I saw some ducks on the white line (on the pavement). I physically turned my head like I was going to watch them. And then I realized, oh yeah, I was really tired. I wear glasses, and I’d see double vision. So the white line would almost look like it was off the ground.

Q: As tough as it was, you said it was fun. Why?

Seeing my crew overcome obstacles and support me. Having my three kids (twins Mark and Troy, now in college, and Kyle, in high school) and wife all part of the crew. … It was fun to see the sun rise every day. When the sun would rise, I knew it was going to be a good day. One morning in Monument Valley (a Navajo tribal park on the Utah-Arizona border), the sun came up perfectly over one of the monuments. It was like a picture.

Q: Is there anything about being a building trades teacher that prepared you?

The bigger the project, the bigger the obstacles. … Teaching building trades always has big obstacles: Things are built wrong. We work in all kinds of weather, so we have to improvise, adapt and overcome. We still have to plug on and finish the job. Just like a bike race.

Q: You used this race to raise $100,000 and awareness for a ministry called The Crucible Project, which you’ve been involved with in Chicago since 2015. People go to weekend events where they address deeply rooted personal issues. How did this inspire people as you raced?

They could see this was no joke of a race. If Les can do this, why can’t I do something to step out of my comfort zone? They’d say: You inspired me to walk. Or you inspired me to look at something in my life that was hidden and buried; I don’t want to make the same mistakes in my life. When people come to a (Crucible Project) weekend, they dig deep into their life. It’s not easy. But you get your reward: peace and a sense of accomplishment.

Q: While riding, you listened to a book by David Goggins that inspired you, “Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds.”

I was listening to the book in Colorado. I could see my speed pick up, and I was leaning forward like, "Let’s get after this." He would take his weakness and drill down on it until it wasn’t a weakness.

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Find columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures or 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: RAAM: Indiana high school teacher rides bike across U.S.