Restoration

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” 
― Haruki Murakami

Mile 607. A few miles outside San Ignacio. 

“I got two problems,” I shouted before I got my helmet off. “The GPS is not showing a course line, AND I fell into a cactus!” Arturo took the bike from me, and I pointed to my shoulder. Now that I had some better light and my helmet off, I could see needles bristling out of my jersey.

We got my pack off. It was cold now and a jersey wasn’t enough. The crew were all bundled up in jackets and hats. I sat down, and Andrew grabbed one of the toothpicks sticking up and yanked on it. “Owwww!” It hurt! I don’t know how, but these needles hang on. When you pull them out they pull your skin up an inch before letting go.

He pulled on another one, and another. When we got all the tall ones out, they helped me slowly pull my jersey off. Now we could see the ones that were only sticking out a little. There were two distinctly different types of needles in me. Dozens of the big toothpick-like ones, and hundreds of smaller fine hairy type ones. 

I had tweezers in my side pouch for this purpose, and Franz started working on me. Soon he realized that this job was for younger eyes, so he gave the tweezers to his son, Trevor. I don’t know how long they were trying to extract the little demons, maybe 15 minutes. I multi-tasked and ate and drank while I sat there. The little needles were so fine and so numerous, we decided to do what I did during pre-running to my forearm – shave them off. At least then they wouldn’t be rubbing up against the inside of my jersey. They’d work their way our over the next weeks.

“Where’s Tanner?” “He’s in second place,” they told me. “Wow,” I thought. 

A vehicle was coming that made its presence known. It was the first trophy truck passing me – 20 hours in as I had predicted. That means others would be coming soon.

Now that I was sitting down, I started to feel how tired I was. I had been awake for 23 hours after having four hours of sleep the night before. I had been racing for over 20 hours. In my race planning, I had rationed my cushion time over the second half of the race. 

I had planned on getting to mile 524 by dark and, so long as trucks were coming through, I’d take a rest there. But I was over two hours ahead, and no trucks had come yet. Now at 607, after that brutal section of terrain, it was dark, and trucks were coming through. Now was the time. Don’t keep going until you can’t go another mile. Invest a little time. Get refreshed. For all the distance I had come, I was only a little over halfway there.

I told the team I was going to take a nap. I put a jersey and a pullover on. Andrew set up the cot behind the van. Ralph, who did not anticipate the cold last year and suffered unprepared, had a huge coat this year that weighed 20 pounds. He wrapped it around me. I’ve got to say, it was a heavenly coat at that time. 

Last year I told the team to wake me up in 20 minutes when I took a nap at mile 430. They didn’t. I woke up on my own in 45 minutes. They said they thought I was done – out of the race. I admit I was in bad shape as I had been riding for 9 hours with a neck injury. But still, if I say to wake me up, then they should wake me up.

I gave them explicit instructions. Don’t mess around. Wake me up in 15 minutes. I lie down. It took me 5 minutes to fall asleep. But that’s all I needed to do. Hit the reset button. Allow all my muscles to relax. I don’t think it would make much difference if I was sleeping 30 minutes or 60 minutes. I was in a race. It was more of a therapeutic trick to my body than it was meaningful rest.

In 15 minutes, Andrew woke me up. “Do you want to sleep for 15 minutes more?” he asked. I thought about it. “Yes,” I said. He walked away. I thought about it more. No. I put one boot on the ground. Then the other. It was cold out. Maybe 40 degrees. I stood up and walked to the bike.

I put my riding jacket on. That was three layers. Backpack on. I hadn’t had any caffeine yet. Now was the time. I drank a five-hour energy. I am sure these are not good for you, but I was hoping for some good results right now. 

I was feeling pretty good about the whole race. Another trophy truck went by. I should still be ahead of my schedule by some. I was into the second night, and one of the two worst parts of the course were behind me. I wasn’t hurt. The cactus needles were flesh wounds that I could ignore. I felt like I was in good shape here. Then I asked the question again.

“Where’s Tanner?”

Did I notice an awkward hesitation? 

“He’s a mile up the road at his van.”

“What!?” Something is very wrong here. I thought he was in second place? He should be two hours ahead of me. 

“He’s where?”

“Just a mile up the road on the right.”

I shifted the 714x into gear. I couldn’t wait to see him…

Escape

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes to where life is not painful. – Fernando Pessoa

I tried to pull up again, but there was no way. There were hundreds of needles in me that were still very much attached to the cactus. I’d have to rip them all out at once to stand up. These needles have a hook-like action. They don’t want to come out easily.

A few months ago, I was looking at a photo of Tanner from last year’s race. “What’s that on your side?” We’re always trying to figure out the best way to carry things. We test fanny packs and holsters and all kinds of things when we pre-run. You can’t really attach anything to the bike because the vibration and violent up and down movement will loosen it and you’ll lose it. Your body and head are the things that move the least.

A backpack is good, but you have to take it off to get anything out quick, and it can be an ordeal. (I can tell you there was no way to get my backpack off in this prickly situation.) I tested an awesome adventurer fanny pack, but in the heat it’s a bit claustrophobic. So I copied Tanner and got a little belt pouch from Home Depot. If you wear O’Neal riding pants, which I did this year, there is a belt that you can slide the pouch on.

I put the pouch on my right hip so I can grab things quick with my right hand. As luck would have it, my left hip was buried in the dirt, but my right hip was up. I unzipped the pouch and right where I had left it was a small pair of wire cutters. I carried them to cut wire ties, or to cut barbed wire out of my wheels or brake calipers.

I reached down under my left arm and began snipping away at the fleshy part of the plant. I separated it from the rooted part. I managed to get up and lift the bike up. I look on the back side of my arm and see green plates of the cactus still stuck to my arm via large toothpick sized thorns. I began cutting the thorns with the wire cutters one by one. I was able to release one of the plates and went to work cutting the thorns from the next. Then the third. Then the forth.

There was a lot in me. I had landed in a big angry plant. I reached behind my shoulder blade and could feel another one on me back there. I could barely reach and couldn’t see, but managed to feel around and cut the needles with my small wire cutters. Finally, the last plate fell off of me.

I could feel a myriad of needles sticking out of my skin through my jersey. I could not see them well as many of them were around the back side of my arm. When I touched them they poked my hand. I reckoned I was 20 miles or so from the van. Could I ride like this? If my muscles expanded and contracted and moved around with needles in them, would it be insufferable pain and discomfort? Let’s see…

It was a doable plan. Now I just needed to get to the van to get help. But I knew what was coming up and it was not good.

Some terrain is just really, really hard on a motorcycle. The deep silt whoops changed to a narrow river wash with tree branches hanging over it from both sides. Embedded boulders poked up 12” from the night time sand. Turns every 30 feet. Add all this together…

I passed a guy who was struggling in it. I looked at his number – an Ironman. He followed me. I knew it was for moral support. We came up on another bike struggling who had then stopped in front of us. We both pulled up to him and stopped. It was another Ironman. “Are you ok?” His voice was discouraged and frustrated. “Yeah,” he said while he was shaking his helmet “no.” “This sucks!” the other one said. Then he yelled some expletive over the sound of three engines in the night. I nodded in agreement and got going again. They both attempted to follow and stay with me, but I pulled ahead and lost them.

A rider from Norway, who had raced and won his class in the Dakar rally three times, another incredibly tough race, came to Baja this year. When he saw the Baja 1000 course on race day he said it was the most miserable terrain he had ever seen and said he would NOT be back! “I’m out!”

“When you’re going through hell, don’t stop!” – Les Brown

Suddenly the course turned up a rocky hill. Don’t let off the throttle. Holy smokes this is steep! But I knew the next hill was the worst. Down the rocks now. Dark. Two-foot vertical drops. Rocks. Down. Another ½ mile. Here it comes…

If I was a race fan and there was any place along the 1134-mile course I could camp out and watch, it would be this place. The uphill is so steep and full of rocks – I mean full of rocks – I mean no dirt, JUST rocks, that it must be an incredible spectacle and entertainment to see any type of vehicle try to ascend this angry slope. This was stupid dangerous.

My wheels danced off the rocks altering my direction every few seconds, but I kept my balance and held the throttle open, with my finger on the clutch ready for anything. I saw faces on the ledges to my left temporarily illuminated by my headlights. I avoided the biggest boulders that would surely cause a crash. Up, up, up, I felt like I was in a pinball machine bouncing around. How high can this hill be? My jersey pulled against the needles sticking out of me.

Mercifully, I got to the top. A few more miles to the military checkpoint and I start looking for my van.

I am so relieved that section is over. I had ridden every mile of this course in pre-run. It was one of the two worst parts of this entire course. I scanned the vehicles alongside the road, looking for a white van or the yellow 714x sign.

I knew I was still ahead of schedule, even though I had lost some time. I was excited, stressed, encouraged, and exhausted.

There they are! I pulled in. “Guys. I got two problems…”

Piercing my luck

“Only the dead have seen the end of the war.” – Plato

The desert is dry. Real dry. You’re sweating, but your motorcycle and the desert combine to create a 50-horsepower blow dryer. You never get wet. How much water do you lose? A lot. You keep drawing water from the tube hanging over your shoulder that comes up from your backpack with a 3-liter bladder, but you still feel dehydrated when it’s daytime in Baja.

Many Ironmen, like Jeff Benrud, got IV’s halfway through the race. This restores you and gives you energy. Jeff didn’t have time to let the IV drip in. “Squeeze it in,” he told the nurse. Thinking about it, I wish I had an IV too.

I had 80 miles to go to get to San Ignacio. The sun was going down and I was 2 hours ahead of my schedule. I headed away from my team at the crowded pit at mile 524, into the setting sun.

I knew the course would get really tough before San Ignacio. It wasn’t too bad for a little bit, but hell seemed to start a lot sooner than it had during the pre-run. The course breaks down the more race traffic (both pre-run and during the actual race) that runs over it. Silt gets deeper. Ruts get deeper. Whoops get taller and deeper. Sand gets looser.

The sun went down on me. At this time of year, a day is composed of 11 hours of daylight, and 13 hours of darkness. That 13 hours seems like an eternity. When it’s dark, our spirits dim, and challenges rise taller than they seem in the day. The night is lonely, visibility and perspective drop, and there is no energy outside your body to draw on.

When we have tough times in our lives, night time can be desperate. The best thing we can do is go to sleep and in the morning, we will have light, hope and clearer thinking. Of course, that was not an option for me right now.

My mileage goals were more modest for nighttime because I knew about the night. I had to make it until daylight. I knew I’d feel reborn yet again with the coming of the sun – but that was far from now. Keep moving.

It was getting cooler, but not cold yet. I had a thin jersey on. I thought I’d be okay for another two hours. 

The whoops get deeper. Silty. Deep silt – up and down and up and down. I had to keep my front wheel from washing out or knifing in. If I had four wheels, I wouldn’t have to worry about falling over. 

The course deteriorated. It was bad. Really bad. Conditions like this took 10X the energy per mile than fast sections did. “Pay the toll, boy.”

I check my GPS screen often to be sure I am on course in the dark. Then I see the line on the screen that represents the course ends! As I progress, I watch the arrow move right off the line into space. Damn! Now I had to follow the tracks. There are many intersections and forks out here. I’d have to worry about that when I got to the next one.

I struggled to keep some speed up. I could ride in just about anything. Skills weren’t my problem. Keeping a reasonable race speed in this crap in hour 18 was. Then, in one second, I was down. A strange sensation… My engine shut off, and I could hear another bike ahead of me struggling with these deeply silted whoops like I was. The drone of his motor faded away ahead in the darkness.

I was on my left shoulder at the edge of the course. My hands were still on the handlebars. Normally a crash like this was nothing. You get up, start it up, and keep going. So that’s what I tried to do. But when I went to rotate my torso up off the ground, I was stuck. Pain…

I reached up with my right hand and clicked on one of the backup lights on my helmet. I turned my head down to see my predicament. I had fallen into a cactus – a prickly pear. The thorns were deep in my upper arm and shoulder. The plant I was attached to was firmly rooted in the ground. That’s why I couldn’t get up.

My bike is horizontal on my left leg. My left shoulder and arm are pinned to a cactus. The GPS and tracker on my handlebars are sideways with me, illuminated in the dark. 

The pain…

No time for rest

“At any given moment we can step forward into growth, or back into safety.”  – Abraham Maslow

I didn’t want to blow the bike up, so I wasn’t going the maximum speed of nearly 100. I had it backed down to 85. Ahead I could see what I was looking for. My van stop at 524. This was an important van stop in my planning. I thought if I could get here by one hour past dark, I would be doing good. The sun was still up.

My average speed including all stops was 33 mph. That was very fast and exceeded my estimations. I was 2 ½ hours ahead of schedule – the same schedule that had me finishing in 41 hours with 7 hours of cushion for emergencies or extra rest, or a turtle’s pace at the end.

I was very much encouraged by this fact. Trevor did the math and told me I’d finish in 34 hours at this rate, but I knew the later the race wore on, the slower I’d go. Further, I was facing the second night that was to begin in an hour or so. Thirteen hours of blackness. This is why my planning had me finishing in 41 hours, not 34.

I had planned to take a rest of 30 minutes here and get horizontal. But I did not want to take any rest during daylight hours and waste them, or before the racing trucks came through. If I was going to rest, I wanted the trucks to be coming through while I was down. Every truck that passed me then, was one I didn’t have to deal with on course.

Trucks are dangerous to motorcycles on course. Truck drivers openly admit “I wouldn’t want to be a bike rider with me driving my truck on course!” They go twice as fast as the bikes and come up on you with incredible violence. Once they pass, the four giant thundering tires spitting dust, and the wind created by the truck body itself puts so much dust into the air you are blinded.

Some truck drivers used to ride motorcycles. They switched to trucks in their old age of 30 or 35 so as to not push their luck, knowing how difficult and dangerous it is. “With age comes a cage.” Roll cage around them that is.

No truck had come through yet. Its presence would be preceded by a chase helicopter that radios down course conditions and hazards ahead to the truck driver.

My crew was excited to see me, and I was equally excited to see them. The location, where the old lady had the store in the middle of nowhere, was crowded with race vehicles and fans. They put my bike on the stand and I sat to let my body stop vibrating and try to release the tightness. I hadn’t seen the truck for 5 hours. I ate and hydrated on more than just what was in my hydration pack, which was being refilled again. I had dissolved hydration powder into water into a concentrate. We’d pour some concentrate into my pack and dilute it with water. During the day we’d throw a little ice in there too.

“Where’s Tanner?” He had led the 19 rider Ironman class for 205 miles. An incredible feat in this class of hardcore riders. Now he was “in second or third.” I was happy for him and knew he was pushing hard up there in front of me. This course and this race is so damn crazy anything can happen, and I hoped he’d stay clear of misfortune.

Kids came up and asked for stickers. Franz and Ralph obliged. John dug his fingers into my traps and arms. I don’t know how long I was sitting in the folding chair – maybe 15 minutes, but I relished in being 2 ½ hours ahead. I was getting tired now, but it was an even fatigue that I only recognized now that I stopped.

My friends were good friends. I have fond memories of the camaraderie we shared at that stop and others. The chips were down, and we all came together.

Shadows were getting longer. I changed my helmet back to the night helmet with the backup lights on it. I changed my tinted goggles for clear ones again. I didn’t put my jacket on as it was still very hot – maybe 93 degrees. I had been holding off consuming any caffeine during this race. I had energy gels, but I resisted, knowing I would need them later. I didn’t want to start the roller coaster. I decided to wait some more.

I knew what was ahead now. I had to go on to San Ignacio. In my plans, I had a bit of a rest before tackling this section. It was gnarly. The second toughest part of the course – the 30 miles before San Ignacio. It was second to the 43 miles before Loreto at mile 831. But that would be later. One thing at a time. There would be no rest right now.

I was at mile 524. The next time I could see my crew was at 607 in San Ignacio. It was 83 more miles and it would get dark again soon.

Little did I know, the Goddess of Good Fortune was about to take a break…

The Goddess of Speed

“Studies show that the number one most important habit for success is self-discipline, sometimes called willpower, over long periods of time.”

Last year I went 600 miles in 27 ½ hours – but 400 of that was with serious whiplash – three vertebrae in my neck were way out to the left. This year my goal was to get to 524 in 16 ½ hours. If I could do that, then even with some short rest periods planned, I’d have 7 hours cushion to finish in the 48-hour time limit.

I rolled into the town of Bahia Los Angeles, or “Bay of LA” as we called it, at race mile 400. The calm picturesque Sea of Cortez to my left, and the memory of Santana pushing the bike with a blown engine. I rolled through the seven blocks that were the town at the speed limit of 37. One dirt block off the pavement and the speed zone was over. Back to 50-70 mph range.

The 124 miles from Bay of LA to a road crossing at 524 was a fast section – the fastest of the whole course I thought, and I had to take advantage of it during the daylight hours. The sun was getting lower now and I didn’t want to waste fast terrain in the dark.

The diversity of plant life out here was amazing. I was especially fascinated by the cactus plants – or do you call them trees? Saguaros were 30 feet tall. Organ pipe cactus were thick with many dozens of 4” round spiked spires maybe 12 or 15 feet tall. Prickly pears looked like spiked plates balancing on each other. There were dozens of other varieties; cool to look at, but I was glad I didn’t hit any!

In pre-running, I hit a cactus at 40 miles an hour and had 200 little hairy thorns in me. I wound up shaving them off at the hotel that night because they were too fine to extract them all. Lucky there were no big thorns on that one. Getting ever smarter, I carried tweezers in my hip pouch.

I was on a fast road full of loose aggregate at about 60 mph, when I heard a bike close behind me. It’s funny that you can’t hear a loud bike until it’s on you. I rolled on a little more. He pulled up alongside me. It was 249x – the first Sportsman bike I had seen. I thought about it and was pretty encouraged. Sportsman teams had a bunch of teammates taking turns – always a fairly fresh rider. This guy could have been the third or fourth rider to get on that bike. Here I was at mile 460 or so by myself, and they were just now catching up.

Ironman and Sportsman are two different worlds. Ironman is a pro class. Sportsman is an amateur class. While I knew some Sportsman teams would be faster than me by myself, I just didn’t want it to happen right now – especially since I saw the gravel coming off his rear wheel like a Gatling gun. I raced him and passed him back. He hung back there a while, but I pulled a ¼ mile gap on him.

The course approached some mountains and switchbacked left and right up their shoulders. As the road switched left, I could turn my head just ¼ turn to the left and see him behind me down there. But there was someone else in the chase. At the next switchback left, I looked down and behind again, and the newcomer had blown by 249x with authority. “Who is that?” I wondered.

The switchbacks started down now and ended at the next valley floor where the road straightened out some. All of a sudden, a bike passes me like I am standing still. It wasn’t 249x, but I couldn’t make out his number. I knew it was a 250 rather than a 450 like I and most of the motorcycle riders in this race were riding. While the size of the frame of a 250 and a 450 are the same, I could hear the difference in the motor sound – a higher pitch and faster revving. The 250s were a Pro class with numbers beginning with a 1.

Thirty miles later, I see a bike and rider upright in the middle of the course ahead not moving. I pull up to a stop and see 114x, his rear tire shredded with big chunks hanging off the rim. A flat tire that shredded on the rocky ground at such high speeds before he could stop. He’s lucky as it could have caused a crash.

He was Mexican and spoke broken English. He asked me to tell them up at the next Baja Pit that he was back here with a flat. He wanted me to tell “Abelardo.” I promised I would.

It was a long way to the next Baja Pit. Maybe 15 miles. They had no way to travel back 15 miles to help him. I asked for Abelardo, but there was nobody there by that name. I went through six guys before they realized I had something they needed to hear, and they got a guy who spoke English. I told him 114x was 15 miles back with a flat rear tire that was shredded. They knew already, and he pointed to a new tire and tube sitting there. I didn’t know how they were going to get it to him, but I did my job and took off back on course.

Most racers had tires that had a hard foam insert in them instead of air, so you couldn’t get a flat. They cost some and are really difficult to get inside the tire when you mount it on the rim, but they will save your race. 114x must have been on a budget, were rookies, or were just overly optimistic. Now the whole team had a big problem. Last year a rider appeared in front of me like a ghost at night in the mountains and asked if I had an air pump. I was glad it wasn’t me.

The course took a big soft silty turn onto the straightest, smoothest dirt road I had ever seen. The one where I ran out of gas pre-running and Santana kidded me about not knowing how to ride and using too much gas. I knew I could open it up all the way here with no surprises. And I knew it had a happy ending.

In 180 miles since I saw my van last, nobody passed me. It was a good sign that I was keeping a strong pace. I had been racing for 15 hours now. The sun had a ways to go to catch the horizon, and I was going 85 miles an hour.

The Goddess of Speed and good fortune was on my shoulder.

Performance-enhancing drugs

“Intention and theory don’t change the world – only decisive action does.” 

I left the fourth van stop near San Felipe 5 ½ hours after the start of the race with plenty of energy. I knew there was a Baja Pit in this area too. The white tape I had put on my front fender had the race miles of all my stops written with a Sharpie. Van stops in black, Baja Pits (gas) in red, and physical checkpoints in blue. My own headlight would light the tape up at night, so I could see the colors.

I looked for the Baja Pit close by but couldn’t see it. I stopped and asked another team waiting for their rider where the Baja Pit was. I couldn’t take any chances of missing one. ¼ mile ahead.

A question I am often asked is why doesn’t my own van fill up my gas tank? There are 22 Baja Pits and only 11 planned van stops. That’s one reason. It is odd that a half dozen van stops and Baja Pits are in the same spot, (maybe 50 yards to one mile apart) and I have to stop at both. But it saves the van from having to carry so much fuel, and the Baja Pits are only a 30 second stop. Still, it’s one more stop you have to remember.

The road out of San Felipe started out fast. You could go 90 mph for 15 minutes, but there were four 90 degree turns in the stretch. I blew by one, with both wheels locked. Fortunately, it was a tee in the road with no penalty for missing the turn. I needed to watch the GPS carefully to see upcoming turns. Taking your eyes off the road at 90 mph on a dirt bike is against your instincts.

The smooth road ended abruptly into whoops. 23 miles of whoops, most of it with loose rocks in them. I found a rhythm and made it through. I recall in 2015 when we pre-ran this section, I struggled. Now this challenging section was much easier for me. I had been training in many ways to push through “this sucks,” and now it was paying off.

The course dropped me onto a paved road. A few miles and I’d see my van again. It was a great stop. I felt good and the team was encouraged by my condition and spirits. The idea they all had of their job of trying to keep a half-dead man alive had not materialized yet.

There had not been much for the mechanics to do yet. The bike had not been on the ground. Some mouthfuls of food, chia drink, quick shoulder and arm massage, and I was gone again.

I was on a performance-enhancing drug – dopamine. Our brains, yours and mine, make dopamine when we play games, and especially when we compete. My brain knew I was in a race and it was cooperating. The sun was getting higher in the sky and it was heating up for the day. I navigated the mixture of Baja terrain and put miles behind me.

The course went through a tunnel under the highway. I made a little mistake on a boulder and slowed for a few seconds. I heard another bike behind me and got some motivation to kick it up a notch. I had been riding dust free for some time now and I wanted to keep it that way if I could. I left him behind and didn’t see him again.

The desert is full of wildlife. The first time you see a jackrabbit you have to think about what you’re looking at. Their ears are so very big compared to their body, and they move so quickly that it doesn’t register to someone from the woodlands.

Monarch butterflies and other butterflies can be numerous, so much so that unfortunately they wind up splattered over your goggles.

Another unusual sight is Road Runners. These birds dart across the ground in blurring sprints – just like the cartoon!

It was mile 360 or so. One pastime over these hours of riding was math. “1123 minus 360 =…..oh man that’s a hard one. Let’s see. 1123 – 300 is 823. Then minus 60 more. Oh crap don’t hit that cactus…soooo, umm, 823 minus 60 is 763. 763 miles to go. Okayyyy….so what percent complete is that? Well, ummm….”

 

“Just keep going until the math gets easier.”

"Grab the bars and own it"

“He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man.” – Seneca

The end of night had to be close. I was heading east toward San Felipe and the Sea of Cortez. The deep, beautiful night sky began to relent at the horizon. I followed the course to a dry river wash with exceptionally deep coarse sand. Since Tanner crashed hard there in last year’s pre-run, I knew to watch out for partially submerged boulders, like manatees, that were the same color as the sand. Of course, at night, you see in black and white, not in color. Headlight shadows would help me.

The river wash made down a very long gradual slope. I knew it would dump me into a dry lake bed. When I got there, I opened it up to 88 miles an hour. The sky was getting lighter. Another bike was on my wing, and we held our relative positions to stay out of each other’s dust.

A dry lake bed is flat as a tabletop. But you still can’t let your guard down. Every so often they get wet and soft. Vehicles can make ruts and holes, and at 90 mph things happen very fast. On a dirt bike you are open in the wind. Fighting a 90-mph wind that wants to blow you off your bike takes work, and you have to find a position that works and hold still.

I was happy to be going so fast. I was watching my moving average on the GPS. I had to average 24.5 mph to finish in 48 hours. It sounds easy. But factor in all the stops and turns, and you have less cushion than you may think. Going 90 for 10 minutes helps your average.

The lake bed ended and funneled me and two other bikes near me into silty twisted paths. At times the silt got very deep. Silt is created when crusty dried dirt is pulverized by wheel traffic. 40” tires backed by 800 horsepower from pre-running trophy trucks are the perfect silt making machines. The silt can be 20” deep or more. Imagine riding along on a motorcycle and hitting 20” of flour, often with rocks or uneven terrain under it that you can’t see.

The silt, and silty ruts are the most dreaded terrain for a racer in Baja.

I took some alternate lines to stay out of the dust, and wound up off course. I had to thread a virgin line through brush, ledge, rocks and cactus to get back on course. It was half-light now, and a few miles of whoops gave way to a smooth dirt road. I knew the van was ahead.

Ralph was holding the sign – 714x. A welcome sight every time I see it. I pulled up and they sprang into action. Andrew and Arturo took care of the bike. I took my jacket off and dressed for the day when it would be 60 degrees hotter.

I got my shoulders and arms rubbed out, which feels great and is a huge help. Muscles that are under heavy use without a break start to cramp. I ate and drank. I swapped my clear goggles for tinted ones. A helmet cam change and I was back on the bike.

It was mile 200, and it was fully light out now. When Tanner passed here, he was in first place still!

I felt reborn with the sun. Each day is a new start no matter what happened yesterday or last night. I thanked my team. I really, really meant it. I was, and am grateful for them. I could not do it alone.

We all have people who support us in our lives. Whether they are family, friends, employees, customers, or people we don’t even know who make things we need to do what we do. I may have been the only rider, but I was far from the only one fielding the 714x.

My personal race plan had goals. We need goals; big ones and interim ones. Milestones to hit. I had planned to be at the dry lake bed by daylight. Instead, I was 20 miles past it.

 

I was encouraged…

No ordinary moments

It was about 4 a.m. This was the same stretch of course I had run on my last leg two years ago when we raced as a team, except this time I was running it the opposite way. I knew to look out for a raised concrete platform that crossed the course. I hit it at high speed two years ago and nearly crashed us out.

It took a couple months for us to replay the helmet cam footage and put two and two together, but me hitting this thing likely cracked the headlight brackets. Just a few miles later, I gave the bike to Tanner for his last leg, with us barely in first place. A few miles into his section, the headlight broke off the bike. Watch the movie on YouTube, “Into the Dust,” to see what happened.

I crossed it this time without incident. I noticed it was getting markedly colder. I recall it being very cold here before. We were at a higher elevation – on a high plateau over the valleys. My body temperature was dropping, and my hands were getting very cold. My fingers began to stiffen and ache from the cold. I wondered if I had made a mistake not adding a layer or putting my cold weather riding gloves on.

The course started down a section very familiar and distinctive to Baja racers – the goat trail. A steep decent marked by boulders and then slick rock. Down. Down. Down. As I descended it, I could feel the air getting warmer. Relief.

At the bottom of goat trail, it dumps you out onto the road. Whenever the course joined or crossed a paved road there were men stopping traffic to let you cross safely without slowing down. Yes, even at 4 a.m. There was no traffic of course, but it was comforting to know that the people of Baja knew there was a race going on and you weren’t going to get run over by civilian traffic.

I rode a couple miles into the pit at a tiny town called Valle Trinidad. Then a few miles more to a small hotel parking lot where we planned to meet our van for the second time at race mile 107. I pulled in feeling pretty good. I dismounted as Andrew and Arturo checked the bike over. Just then we heard someone yell and the sound of a motorcycle tumbling. We look that way and see the headlight beam rotating from a gulley, as it would if the bike was cartwheeling. A bike had gone off the road 75 feet from where we were.

Two of my team ran over and witnessed a bike at the bottom of a ravine that was 20 feet deep. They climbed down and helped the rider who miraculously, while shook up and injured, was walking. It could have been much worse for #709, and Ironman. I do not know the outcome, but I assume he was out of the race.

I resumed my race, still dark as could be, and hit my next Baja Pit for gas. At mile 99, in the middle of an otherwise fast section, there was a narrow and dogleg left. I came in hot and wasn’t going to make the turn. In front of me, as I skidded with my wheels locked up in the silt, I saw the consequences of missing this turn. It was a 30” deep washout with vertical sides.

I tried to finesse it and turn left just enough, but my front wheel fell in, and my back wheel followed. It was 6 feet wide and my front wheel was wedged against the far side, and my rear wheel wedged against the near side. I struggled to pull the front wheel to the left and the right direction for an escape. I saw that someone else fell into this trench too, and saw evidence of a struggle to get out. Later I’d learn it was Tanner.

I pulled my front wheel up the side with my bike running, and standing alongside it, I tried to drive it up. But my bike was nearly vertical, and the rear wheel pulverized the crust into silt and sank. As I struggled, another bike came in and nearly fell in with me. As he passed in front of my headlight, I could see his number – it was Rick Thornton whom we had pre-run with.

He didn’t stop for a second. Would he have stopped to help me if he knew it was me? I don’t know. Racing is funny like that. You want to be the good guy you are, but not at the expense of lost time. Some guys will stop, and some won’t. It depends on how they feel their chances are, and how dangerous of a situation they perceive you to be in. Of course, if you are their class and viewed as their primary competition, they usually will not stop to help you.

I was stuck right now. I looked around for a moment and tried to figure something out. As I did, I see two faces in the darkness! I did not expect to see race fans out here, with no light source around anywhere. That’s how the whole course is, you always have this eerie feeling that you are being watched – because often you are. These people will just appear from nowhere in a place where you’d bet $1000 that no human was within many miles of you.

This turned out to be a father and his young son watching the race. I yelled to him, “Can you help me?” I didn’t have to say it in Spanish, because it was obvious what anyone in this predicament would be pleading to anyone else. He came over and grabbed the fork tubes from the top and pulled as I pushed from alongside the bike and feathered the clutch. With the two of us, we got it out. I only lost 90 seconds or so.

A few minutes ahead, I see two headlights coming at me. I wondered what was going on. Then I saw it was two motorcycles. They took a wrong fork and were backtracking. One of them was probably Rick, but I couldn’t make out who it was in the dark. I looked at my GPS and saw that I had made the same mistake.

I turned around and followed them back 100 yards to get back on course.

It’s pre-dawn somewhere in Baja. It’s cold, and it’s dark. I am 3000 miles from home. I have over 1000 miles to go.

There are no ordinary moments.

We must do our best in this moment, because this moment is the gate to the next, and will determine how it will be for us when it gets here. If I don’t get out of this ditch, I don’t get to go the next mile. If I don’t go that mile, I don’t get to the one after that.

 

Do your best in THIS moment. It’s all you can do.

A body in motion…

“A body in motion tends to remain in motion until acted on by an outside force.”

These hills were different. Up and down like other hills, but these were whooped out. Three-foot-deep waves, 12 feet from crest to crest. Waves up big slopes and down them again; and on side hills too. Like moguls on black diamond runs on a ski mountain.

When the terrain is turbulent, you try to make it quiet with grace and inner tranquility. If you fight what is, you will lose. So you go with it, and accept it, and don’t make it mean something it doesn’t have to be. You determine what it means.

When the front wheel hits the face of a whoop, you have two choices. You can push with your arms to resist the front end coming up at you. Of course, once it comes up all it will, it will go down again. You have another choice. You can tighten up as it pulls you down. This resistance will find your torso going up and down and up and down – using a lot of energy.

Instead, you can stop fighting. You can allow the handlebars to come up at you, and know and trust it will not come up forever and knock you off. You relax your arms and grip and bend your elbows in an act of non-resistance. With your elbows bent, you are prepared for when the front-end drops. No need to resist, just keep your arms relaxed and straighten your elbows out. You are using far less energy and your center of gravity is not going up and down very much at all.

Once in a while, when the whoops are spaced right, you can look ahead and use the face of a whoop to blip the throttle and jump completely over a trough, missing it altogether. When you do it right, it feels like a dance.

We can accept what is, or resist it. When we resist, it causes suffering.

Acceptance does not mean being satisfied or resigned to it. It just means recognizing it for what it is, and not resisting its existence. If we can do that, a lot of personal suffering will melt away inside many of us.

My first Baja Pits gas stop came at mile 50. “Baja Pits” is a service – a business that sets up gas stops along the course every 50 miles or so. You pay ahead of time, and you get an orange diamond-shaped sticker to put on your front fender that says, “Baja Pits.”

The pit itself consists of a small trailer and a 10’ square pop-up awning. A big 3’ x 3’ orange sign is set up in front that says, “Baja Pits.” You shouldn’t miss it, especially in the middle of a stark earth-tone desert. At some pits, they’ll put another sign a few hundred yards before the actual pits saying something like “Baja Pits ahead.” If you pull in and they see their big orange sticker on your front fender, they know you are a customer of theirs.

They have quick-fill gas cans and, combined with your spring-loaded quick-fill gas tank (no gas cap to screw off, just press the gas can against the cap), you can fill up in about 6 seconds. They’ll wipe your headlight and goggles off, offer you a water (not necessary with our hydration packs) or a banana, and ask you if you are okay. They’re volunteers and race fans, and happy to help you.

Baja Pits are important – very important. If you miss one, you’re done. Our bikes would go about 80 miles on a full tank, and the Baja Pits were spaced 45 to 55 miles apart, depending on where they could get access to and set up.

I pulled in, and in 30 seconds I was off again. It always felt good knowing I didn’t have to worry about gas for another 50 miles.

At mile 74, I met my van and team for the first time since starting. I took a few mouthfuls of food and gulped some chia I had floating in a water/hydration powder mix.

So far, so good. Both my team and I were encouraged.

“Where’s Tanner?” “He’s leading!”

I clicked the bike into gear and sped off into the blackness.

 

“I got your back son.”

Active Pursuit

“Your life is not going to be easy and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard.  It ought to be radical; it ought to be restless; it ought to lead you to places you’d rather not go”.  – Henri Nouwen

I was rolling. I had 1134.4 miles to go over some of the toughest terrain imaginable, and 48 hours to get there. If there were virtual gauges in my consciousness for rest, attitude, energy, physical fitness, and plan, the needles were all pinned at green. I felt great and my confidence was high.

Four blocks and two turns on city streets lined with fans, I dropped into the river wash for ten blocks to the east. Back out on city streets for a few miles, then onto a highway that was under construction. Then, “into the dust.”

I climbed the hills east of Ensenada. Campfires from fans dotted the way. The course rolled up and down. I settled in, finding a place at the intersection of fast, smooth and economy of human energy. Last year I held back in the beginning to save myself. This year, I was in better shape, and I wanted to go faster sooner to put miles behind me early.

A critical part of the race was already over – starting it. The road to the starting line is a long one. You need resolve as you navigate the uncelebrated hurdles and challenges. All that was over. The bike was between my legs and the bars were in my hands. We were moving – and it felt awesome.

The dirt road rolled and wound. Some parts were hard and slick with granules. Some parts were full of deep silt. An occasional lone rock to be avoided; just by an inch would suffice. I could see the lights of Ensenada below, which ended abruptly at the ocean.

Since the last race, some people asked why I was doing it, and told me I didn’t have to. I thought about it. It would be easier not to. A lot easier. But I want to go in the history books – the Ironman finisher born longest before the race. And in order to finish, I had to start.

So often we take ourselves out of the game because we think we can’t win – or can’t finish. When we do that, we ensure we won’t. I’m here now. All I have to do is keep going until I see a checkered flag. 

I passed a couple guys from my class, and a guy passed me. When someone comes up on you on a motocross track, you fight them off – taking the best lines and riding a wide bike. This wasn’t motocross. With 1100 miles to go (unless I was vying for a podium position or at the end of the race), you let them go. 

Taking the chance of making a mistake or spending energy unnecessarily is stupid in a survival race. They are stepping it up to pass you, and if you step it up even more to prevent it, the worst that can happen is you crash, and the best that can happen is you have to hold him off at 100% of your energy and ability for many miles – and that is not good to be riding on your edge for so long.

I descended the hills into Ojos Negros where I gave the kids stickers a few days before. I was doing 75 on an open gravel road and a bike came by me at 85. The black of the night was like being in space. There were my own lights illuminating a conveyor belt of earth’s textures flying under my wheels. Then another set of lights coming from a second flying object breaks the ink around me. Our lights join as a team, until separating again as he gets farther ahead. Being behind him, even 100 feet back, was like getting machine-gunned with gravel.

I passed the military checkpoint on the right and flew over roads that rolled up and down like the roads would through farmland in Iowa – almost like a roller coaster. I could see by the shifting lights on the horizon in front of me that another bike was coming up from behind. I didn’t want to be in his dust right here, so I rode fast and smooth to delay the event.

There were two of them, and when they went by I could see one of them was Jeff Benrud. He was a military special forces guy. For the last two years, he crossed the finish line first but didn’t win due to penalties. 

If you go off course, you can miss Virtual Checkpoints. These are 50’ – 100’ round spots that you must ride through or you get a 10-minute penalty. Picture Pac-Man consuming all the little dots along the way. You can’t see them of course, they are a digital creation on the tracker that race promoters follow your every step with. When you miss one, you don’t know it until the day after the race when your path over the course has been analyzed and verified by race officials.

If there is a shortcut to potentially take, the course designers will put enough VCPs along the course there to make it not worth it to take the shortcut. If you get lost, you can miss VCPs too.

Last year, Jeff crashed hard in the rocks and was knocked out cold for 20 minutes. He suffered a concussion and broken wrist. He doesn’t even remember finishing, which may explain why he missed enough VCPs to be penalized back to second place – for the second year in a row. This time, Jeff was in it to make the win stick.

I couldn’t see in the dust, as two bikes passed close together. I looked down and stayed between the left and right sides of the road and hoped for a crosswind.

I wondered how Tanner was doing ahead of me.

It was mile 40-ish, about 2:20 a.m., and I followed the course up into the hills where Tanner smashed his foot up on day one of pre-running. 

Less than 1100 miles to go.

Feeling good…