“I feel fantastic,” he said, to laughter from the assembled crowd, which stayed up into the wee hours of Friday morning to greet the solo winner of the race, referred to as RAAM. “I could go on cycling, but I prefer not to.”  Strasser, a 28-year-old who worked as a bike messenger in his native Austria to help raise the $50,000 needed to finance his RAAM appearance, finished what may be the world’s toughest endurance race more than 200 miles and a stunning 16 hours ahead of his closest competitor, Mark Pattinson, a 41-year-old financier from Westport, Conn.  Thirty years ago, four intrepid cyclists raced from the Santa Monica Pier to the Empire State Building in the first RAAM. Since then the race has evolved into the holy grail of ultracycling, a discipline that attracts athletes eager to test the bounds of human endurance. While professional cycling has been rocked by numerous drug scandals, no RAAM rider has failed a drug test. Most say that there is no incentive to cheat in the race because it awards no prize money.  To officially complete the race, riders must finish the 3,000-mile course within 12 days, covering a minimum of 250 miles a day. Strasser did it in 8 days 8 hours 6 minutes, averaging nearly 400 miles a day. A little more than 200 solo racers have completed the race in the past three decades. The deadline to complete this year’s race was 5 p.m. Monday.  “More people summit Everest than complete RAAM,” said the women’s winner, Leah Goldstein, a 42-year-old personal trainer from Vernon, British Columbia, who is a former professional cyclist, a champion kick boxer and member of the Israeli military’s commando-training unit.  Goldstein completed the race in just over 11 days despite dealing with Shermer’s Neck, a painful condition that afflicts many ultracyclists who spend upwards of 22 hours a day hunched over their bikes and makes it difficult to keep their head up. Eight days into the race, Goldstein’s team kept her on the road by braiding tape in her hair and tying it to her heart-rate monitor or bra to keep her head pulled back. Goldstein, who has competed in the women’s Tour de France, said she considered RAAM the world’s toughest endurance race.  “With the Tour de France, you stop at the end of the day — you rest, you get a massage, eat a meal, sleep and then start fresh the next day,” she said. “But with RAAM, you don’t. You’re sleep deprived and disoriented.”  One other woman, Kathy Roche-Wallace, 50, from Marshall, Mich., finished the race. It took her 12 days 16 hours.  This year’s field included a host of racers competing in solo and team competitions, and in the age groups of 50 and younger, 50 to 59, and 60 and older. Notable participants included teams made up of British and American military personnel, and the adventurer Katie Spotz, a 23-year-old who became the youngest person to row solo across an ocean in 2010. Spotz broke her pelvis in a training accident a week before the race began but decided to compete while riding on a hand cycle. David Jones, a 65-year-old from Winnetka, Calif., completed the race in 12 days 7 hours 10 minutes, which was the fastest time in the 60-and-older age group.  Riders cross the country on secondary roads and highways, and safety has been a problem. Racers died in 2003 and 2005 after collisions with vehicles. Last year, a racer was hit by a car and paralyzed from the waist down. Last September, Jure Robic, 45, was killed after being hit by a car while training in his native Slovenia only weeks after winning the race for the fifth time.  Strasser rode the first 24 hours of this year’s race in earshot of Marko Baloh, an asthmatic 44-year-old civil servant and father of three from Slovenia who was hoping to win the race as a tribute to Robic. Strasser stopped for his first rest, a 10-minute nap, at the 24-hour mark, while Baloh powered on to take the lead. But Baloh, who finished third, stopped for a 90-minute nap 36 hours into the race, while Strasser kept going.  “I passed him while he was asleep and then I never saw another racer again,” said Strasser, who first attempted RAAM in 2009 but had to quit in the Rockies because of altitude-related breathing issues.  After more than 40 hours of riding on just 10 minutes of sleep, Strasser settled into a ritual of sleeping for about 70 minutes each morning with the help of his coach, who used hypnosis to help him fall asleep. But sleep deprivation began to take a toll.  “By the sixth day, I was going a bit crazy,” he said. “I was waking up and asking my team, ‘Why am I riding a bike?’ and ‘Where are we going?’ I was surprised when they told me we were in a race to Annapolis.”  After the race, Strasser, said he was craving a steak dinner, but it was 2 a.m. and the only viable option was a can of the nutrition drink he had been using all week. Instead, he took his first shower in more than a week and fell asleep for 12 hours while still wrapped in his towel.  “I don’t know if I’ll go back to being a bike messenger,” he said after his rest. “I like people who are successful but keep their ordinary jobs, but if you do something great, you should maybe make something out of it.”  Goldstein celebrated with a pear, a banana and an apple but no Champagne.  “I’m not a big party person,” she said. “I’ll probably just lie down and watch some TV.”
This was the 30th year for cyclingâs ultimate test â the 3,000-mile Race Across America, which takes participants from California to Maryland in less than 12 days.