Keep
Going.
Three friends. One line across America. 5,222 km in 22 days, no rest, in six acts. The challenge is complete. Relive the journey.
The line, coast to coast.
Every stage on the map, the full line they rode, New York to the Pacific. 22 days, end to end, traced in red.
start
The numbers are the story.
From sea level to 3,655 m and back. Every metre climbed, mapped end to end.
Elevation Profile
NYC → LA · 5,222 kmFourteen states, one line.
New York → CaliforniaHow each day unfolds.
Distance vs. time of day · flats are rest stopsThe country, in six chapters.
Each act is its own fight: ridges, plains, altitude, sandstone, furnace. Read them in order.
22 days, end to end.
Distance and difficulty for every stage, New York to Los Angeles. No rest days.
Five on the line.
A closed group: three riders, one driver and mechanic, one on photo and video. Everyone has a job. Everyone keeps going.
How did Lubo survive it?
22 days measured minute by minute, by WHOOP, CORE and the head unit. The numbers tell the story better than words.
Three weeks at an average WHOOP strain of 15 out of 21, with the power meter logging about 4,460 calories of riding a day, roughly 98,100 over the crossing, and near 143,000 once basal metabolism and everything off the bike is counted. (WHOOP's own calorie estimate reads far lower; heart rate models badly undercount a low HR aerobic engine grinding out long hours.) The body answered in stages.
First the shock: HRV collapsed from 51 to 35 ms and recovery went red within two days as the system absorbed the load. Then adaptation. Through the second week recovery swung green (66, 77, 79, 81%) and HRV rebuilt into the 60s, the body settling on a new baseline.
Heat was its own test. Early on, 40 °C afternoons drove core temperature above 38 °C for up to seven hours a day. By the desert the pattern inverted: 52 °C air on Day 20, 47 °C on the finish, and core temp barely touched 37.7 °C with essentially no time over 38 °C. He'd acclimatised.
Only the 4 AM Mojave start broke recovery back to 23% on four hours of sleep, and he rode into the Pacific the next day anyway.
WHOOP recovery each morning. Red under 34%, green over 67%. Two red days in the first three, one on the 4 AM Mojave start.
Heat adaptation: core vs. air
Same axis, on purpose. Early on, 40 °C afternoons pushed core temperature past 38 °C. It peaked at 39.9 °C over the Continental Divide. By the desert the pattern inverted: 52 °C air on Day 20 and 47 °C at the finish barely moved core temp off 37.7 °C. The flat white line against the climbing red one is the body learning to shed heat.
| Day | Recovery | Strain | HRV | RHR | Ride HR | Sleep | Calories | Core pk | Air pk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Poconos | 48% | 20.7 | 51 | 44 | 129 | 5.5h | 7,085 | 38.7° | 38° |
| 2 · State College | 29% | 18.9 | 37 | 53 | 115 | 7.2h | 6,385 | 39.3° | 46° |
| 3 · Murrysville | 28% | 16.9 | 35 | 53 | 105 | 7.2h | 6,649 | 38.1° | 35° |
| 4 · Dover | 39% | 14.9 | 44 | 48 | 98 | 6.3h | 6,306 | 39.3° | 42° |
| 5 · Cedarville | 55% | 14.7 | 54 | 45 | 96 | 7.0h | 6,949 | 39.2° | 40° |
| 6 · Indianapolis | 66% | 13.1 | 58 | 43 | 95 | 7.2h | 5,781 | 38.8° | 40° |
| 7 · Greenville | 79% | 14.5 | 66 | 43 | 95 | 7.1h | 7,230 | 37.9° | 41° |
| 8 · Washington | 61% | 11.0 | 57 | 44 | 90 | 8.0h | 5,320 | 38.6° | 36° |
| 9 · Sedalia | 77% | 13.3 | 68 | 41 | 93 | 7.6h | 6,687 | 37.9° | 32° |
| 10 · Lyndon | 59% | 15.8 | 59 | 43 | 101 | 7.1h | 7,018 | 39.0° | 37° |
| 11 · Hoisington | 38% | 14.4 | 45 | 46 | 97 | 6.8h | 6,586 | 39.1° | 40° |
| 12 · Colby | 49% | 15.9 | 51 | 46 | 102 | 7.6h | 7,079 | 38.2° | 44° |
| 13 · Lindon | 43% | 15.3 | 47 | 47 | 101 | 7.5h | 6,637 | 38.8° | 41° |
| 14 · Golden | 47% | 12.8 | 49 | 46 | 97 | 6.5h | 5,125 | 38.7° | 40° |
| 15 · Eagle | 61% | 18.7 | 51 | 48 | 109 | 8.1h | 6,555 | 39.9° | 37° |
| 16 · Grand Junction | 34% | 13.0 | 42 | 51 | 95 | 6.7h | 5,611 | 38.3° | 36° |
| 17 · Hanksville | 78% | 14.9 | 58 | 44 | 86° | 7.1h | 6,985 | 38.6° | 40° |
| 18 · Circleville | 81% | 14.2 | 58 | 45 | 86° | 7.3h | 6,160 | 38.1° | 37° |
| 19 · Mesquite | 77% | 15.8 | 57 | 45 | 97 | 7.5h | 6,860 | 38.0° | 41° |
| 20 · Las Vegas | 81% | 16.3 | 59 | 45 | 101 | 7.2h | 5,412 | 37.7° | 52° |
| 21 · Mojave | 23% | 14.7 | 44 | 52 | 91 | 4.3h | 6,231 | 38.0° | 45° |
| 22 · Santa Monica | 47% | 16.4 | 55 | 45 | 90° | 5.4h | 8,163 | 37.7° | 47° |
Recovery / strain / HRV / RHR / sleep from WHOOP · ride HR, core temp & air temp from the head unit. Calories are whole day: measured power meter riding work (kJ ≈ kcal, ~98,100 total) plus off bike metabolism estimated per day from BMR + that day's sleep and hours ridden (~2,000/day). ° = HR strap coverage low that day.
What the car carried
Breakfast was almost always at the hotel, and lunch and coffee stops on the road went unrecorded. What follows is the support car's inventory: everything bought to stock the vehicle for riding and refreshment breaks, plus most dinners, for the whole crew of five, not just the rider. It's an incomplete picture of what any one of us ate, but a complete picture of what the car carried.
Across 22 days and 33 receipts, from a ShopRite in Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania on day one to a Walmart in Ontario, California on day 22.
Where the money went
The car was a beverage cooler with some food in it.
Cadence, protein drinks, supplements and other drinks account for $2,122.46, 52.9% of the restock budget. Add bars and it's 59.7%. Almost nothing here needed a plate, a pan, or a stop. That's not a diet philosophy so much as a logistics constraint: anything requiring preparation didn't survive the first week.
Cadence at scale.
342 cans over 22 days, roughly three cans, or a litre, per person per day, on top of plain water. 96 came preloaded from Amazon before departure; the other 246 were bought on the road, at nearly every restock. Citrus and Melonberry ran roughly even, Cola third. The final stop in Ontario on July 22 is 15 Cadence cans and nothing else.
About 121 protein drinks.
97 Core Power and CP Strawberry plus 24 Jocko Mölk, a little over one per person per day. The most expensive per unit purchase of the trip was a Sinclair station in Hanksville, Utah on July 18: 14 Core Powers at $3.99 each, because there was nowhere else within an hour. Desert convenience pricing is its own tax.
Roughly 140 hard boiled eggs.
28 each, more than one a day per person. No raw meat, no cooking staples. The cooler ran on things you could hand out of a window at 30 mph.
Five diets in one cooler.
The category mix doesn't describe any one person's eating. The low carb spine is there, the eggs, the grapes, the cashews, the keto sourdough, the protein, but so are cinnamon rolls, Nutella, Gold Bears, Twix and chocolate milk. A crew vehicle isn't a nutrition protocol; it's a compromise between five people who are all tired and all hungry at different times.
$157.85 a day on the road.
Once the $542.97 Amazon preload is stripped out, that's $31.57 per person per day. Walmart handled 19 of the 33 receipts and about two thirds of the spend; the largest single stop was Junction City, Kansas on July 11: $296.97, 90 items, 51 of them Cadence.
The last three stops tell the story.
Henderson, Barstow, Ontario, heavy on Cadence and Core Power, almost no produce. By the end, the car had stopped being a kitchen and become a fuel depot.
| Category | Spend | % | Per person |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cadence electrolytes | $911.80 | 22.7% | $182.36 |
| Protein drinks | $531.49 | 13.2% | $106.30 |
| Fresh produce | $460.68 | 11.5% | $92.14 |
| Deli, meat & prepared | $413.62 | 10.3% | $82.72 |
| Other drinks | $376.74 | 9.4% | $75.35 |
| Dairy & yogurt | $320.53 | 8.0% | $64.11 |
| Supplements & shots | $302.43 | 7.5% | $60.49 |
| Bars | $274.98 | 6.8% | $55.00 |
| Snacks & nuts | $231.89 | 5.8% | $46.38 |
| Bakery | $167.26 | 4.2% | $33.45 |
| Ice | $24.33 | 0.6% | $4.87 |
| Total | $4,015.75 | $803.15 |
Resilience isn't a gift. It's a practice.
Relive the line.
A closed crew of five rode one line across America. No sign ups. Relive the journey stage by stage, and follow the crew.
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