Dakar – lessons from the longest race on earth. Part 3

Did you ever have “imposter syndrome”?  Where you don’t feel like you belong here?  Where everyone else seems to know what they are doing and what is going on, and you are trying to figure it out?  When you ask “What am I doing here?”  

There is still a poor kid from Bridgeport inside, and now you’re talking about going to Saudi Arabia to race what?  

There is no school for racing in Dakar.  There is no school for racing in Baja, for that matter.  That’s why our Into the Dust movies are so popular on YouTube.  They show how to do it, start to finish.  You can’t see that anywhere else.

I learned that I’d have to go to Morocco to race a five-day rally there first.  Then, if I finished, I could enter the Dakar Rally.  Heck, I didn’t even really understand what a rally was.  All the racing I had done was start to finish, and it’s over.  A rally is different.  You have a course to run each day.  It’s called a “Stage”.  They time you, and add your daily times together.  If you do not finish one day, you are out.  At the end, whoever has the lowest time wins.

I didn’t really care about winning; I just wanted to finish.  Less than half of the top drivers in the world finish – even with a team of mechanics on your side.

So, I entered the Morocco Rally in October of 2024.  My goal was to go to Dakar in January of 2025.  I had raced 3 other races in Baja that year, and still had the Baja 1000 to race in November.  That’s a lot of racing.  A race is a one-week trip, usually.  Morocco would be a ten-day trip.  It’s a big commitment.

I’ve told the Morocco story before.  Here’s a brief summary.  Jamie recommends a co-driver from Argentina, Bruno Jacomy.  I need a good co-driver to navigate.  The navigation is not GPS – it’s a “road book,” and it’s very tricky.  It’s a five-day rally.  Day one goes well.  On day two, we get into big sand dunes.  I’m hot, and I get spatial disorientation.  These dunes are like giant buildings.  You can flip over the top lips easy.  It’s undulating waves of tan.  At midday with the sun straight up, there are no shadows, and what you feel and what you see are different.  I puked.  Many do.  Dunes are not easy.  I did not want to go on, but had to.  Can’t stay way out here in the middle of nowhere.  Bruno points – that way.  Nothing but dunes.  Mercifully, it ends on hardpack and rocks.

I’m told there are dunes for the next two days.  OMG.  

Morning number three, I wake up at 4 am.  Ut-oh.  I got it.  The bug.  I didn’t drink any water.  But I got the microbe in me.  Coming out of both ends.  Really sick.  Sweating.  Moaning.  I wonder if it will pass for me to race.  I can’t miss a stage.  I get up and get my gear on.  Can’t eat breakfast.  I am lying on the ground in front of my car, moaning.  Time to go.  I get in the car and strap in, wondering how I am going to go to the bathroom and thinking about how long it takes to get unstrapped and climb out of this thing and get this “onezie” race suit off.  

We get the green flag, I go.  But I can’t do it.  I am so sick.  The devil is in me.  Sore you can push through.  Hurt you can endure.  Tired, you can put aside.  But dizzy and sick like this?  No.  I pull over, get out, and get in the chase vehicle and lie down.  Bruno drives the car on the road to the next bivouac.  I thought I was out of the race.  In Dakar, I would have been.  In Morocco, as long as I start, I am still in the race!

Day 4 and big dunes are coming.  I am worried.  Will they be my downfall?  I have no choice but to face my fear and figure it out.  Here we go.  I see them coming in the distance.  Giant waves of danger and confusion.  I figured it out and did well. 

Day 5 – piece of cake.  Finished!  

I went home, and raced the Baja 1000 in November. Then I head to Dakar on Dec 30 as planned- right?  I was burned out.  Physically and mentally.  Worn down to a nub.  Shot.  I can’t go to the longest Rally in the world and race 14 days in a row when my gas tank is on E before I even get there!  What to do.  Arrangements are all made.  I have to bail.  I postponed to January 2026.  No choice.  It turned out to be the right thing to do.

A year goes by.  I dread the dunes all year.  Saudi Arabia has way more dunes than Morocco.  Sometimes you are in them all day long. 

I leave for Saudi Arabia in a few days.  

That’s when I thought it was over….

Dakar – lessons from the longest race on earth. Part 2

Sometimes, getting to the starting line is half the battle.  Getting to the first day on the job.  Getting to line up as a competitor.  Getting in the game.

The Dakar Rally is the longest off road race in the world.  It started in 1977 when Thierry Sabine got lost in the Libyan desert while riding his motorbike in the Abidjan-Nice Rally.  After being rescued from the desert, Sabine retunred home facinated by the sand dunes that had trapped him.  The Frenchman needed to share his discovery with as many people as possible.  Back hime he drew up plans for a brand new rally; starting in Paris, travelling to Africa via the Mediterranean Sea, crossing the scorching Sahara Desert, and finishing on the shores of the magical Lac Rose on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal’s capital city.  

Sabine came up with a motto for the rally – “A challenge for those who go.  A dream for those who stay behind.” 

From 1979 to 2007 the Dakar travelled throughout Europe and Africa.  Brave competitors came from all corners of the world to test themselves against “the toughest race on the planet”.  Legends were made as an ever-changing route took the rally all over Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, France, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Miger, Protugal, Congo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Spain, and Tunisia.  

In 2009, they moved the race to South America – Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay.  Half a million fans greeted the arrival of the Rally with a street party in Buenos Aires.  

In 2020, an entirely new landscape of desert playgrounds was unlocked as Saudi Arabia became the 30th country to host the Dakar.  

“How do I enter?” I asked my friend Jamie Campbell who I had a shop that built my Baja race car.  Jamie was selected by team Honda to drive an experimental hydrogen car in the race last year.  

“Well, you can’t just enter the Dakar.  You have to qualify” he said.

“How do I do that?”  

“You have to race a shorter Rally.  Like the Abu Dhabi race or the five-day Morocco Rally.”

This was going to be a bigger deal than I thought.

Do you give up when you hear that a goal or project will be far more involved than you imagined?

“How do I do that?” I asked…..

Dakar – lessons from the longest race on earth. Part 1

The Longest Yes of my Life

I live in Connecticut.  That’s 6500 miles and a big ocean away from Saudi Arabia.  What was I doing here?

Well, 8 years and one knee replacement ago, I became the oldest SOLO motorcycle rider to complete the longest NON-STOP off-road race in the world – the Baja 1000.  It took 34 hours.  I was and am very proud of that.  I worked for it.  It was the hardest thing I have ever done – well, maybe with the exception of the years I failed – four of them – two before and two after the year I finished it in the time limit.  

1000 miles in one shot on a dirt bike over rough terrain is…well…it’s a towering challenge.  It’s pain.  It’s glory.  It’s hell.  It’s everything you have – physically and mentally.  Less than 50 riders have done it.  My son Tanner has done it multiple times and won it in spectacular fashion in 2022.  

I was 54 years old when I checked that box.  So now I can “retire”, right?

But one of my mentors, Jim Rohn, said, “How much should you do?  Do as much as you can, as best you can, for as long as you can.”

How do you know you can?  You try.  Really try.

We made movies about our racing in the desert.  They are called the “Into the Dust” series on YouTube.  Free for all to see.  Into the Dust (1) has five million views.  Into the Dust 4 is when I finished the Baja 1000 Ironman class (solo).  It was a personal triumph of grand scale.  But one commenter (should I say “hater”) wrote, “Yeah, but Dakar is longer.”

I do not know who that guy was.  He was probably sitting on his couch swilling a beer at 6 pm on a Monday, I don’t know. 

In the years since 2018, I entered the Baja 1000 every year.  I failed in 2019.  I finished in 54 hours in 2020, but I was over the time limit and not an official finisher.  In 2021, I began racing on 4 wheels in a UTV, or “Side by side”, originally recruiting my friends to be on my team to drive and navigate.  My girlfriend Marie was my navigator for two years.  (I am sorry for beating her up like that, but she subsequently married me, and then retired from racing – lol).  In 2023, we won the Baja 1000 on four wheels, and I became one of only four riders/drivers to win on two wheels and four. (In 2015, my first Baja 1000, my son and I won as a team).

But that comment….”Dakar is longer”…..

I have a big jar of marbles on my vanity.  There is one marble for each week I will live to get to 100 years old.  Each weekend I take a marble out.  I reflect.  I look at the marbles left…..     

Time….

I made a call. 

“Chris, How can I get into the Dakar Rally?”

Achieving a goal is an effect. What are the causes?

You don’t just go and achieve a goal.

You have to break it down into steps, habits, and actions that you determine will cause the goal to become reality.

Cause – Effect

By executing each day on those steps, habits, and actions, if they are the right ones and if done well enough, you will achieve the desired effect – the goal.

What is your goal?

What would be the actionable/doable causes of the goal coming true?

If you take it seriously and do the work for as long as it takes, it’s amazing what you can achieve.

Have a discussion

Stuck?  Feeling angst?  Angry at someone?  Need to know something?  Need to figure out the next step?  Need to get clarity on something?

Have a discussion with the right person.  A good discussion can help a lot with all the above.

Make an appointment, sit down, bring sandwiches, catch them at a good time – whatever but have a discussion with the right person.

Chances are, some problems are from NOT having discussions with the right person.

Talk it through.