Possibilities

“People living deeply have no fear of death.” – Anais Nin

I had a lot of time to make up. I had 646 miles and 28 hours of race time behind me, and 477 miles and 20 hours ahead of me. Finishing was possible, I thought, if I didn’t take any breaks and had no more problems. That’s what I was going to do. No more calculating. Just ride – fast.

I hit 94 mph on an open dirt road section – but it didn’t last long enough to make up anything significant. I was near the Pacific Ocean now. I couldn’t see it, but I could smell it. I was getting near the pit 16 miles away from where I ran out of gas. There was no way I was going to miss it. I got nervous early and pulled over to ask a spectator. “Where’s the Baja Pit?” He motioned ahead. I found it.

The sand was deep and some gentle whoops began. I reached for my water tube hanging over my left shoulder to take a drink. It wasn’t there. That’s right – I used it to siphon gas. No water for me. I was riding good, and I felt good, and that’s all that mattered right now.

Later I’d learned that Jeff Benrud and others had lots of problems in the night. When the fog came in, it made it hard to see through their goggles. When a truck went by, all the dust stuck to their lenses. Wiping it off with your gloves just makes abrasions on the lenses that catch the light and make it hard to see at all. Jeff threw his goggles off and rode without eye protection for three hours. He had dirt packed around his eyes at the end of the race. I missed all the fog. 

The mile-to-effort ratio is low at night. It was daytime now, and I was flying like the wind. Maybe I was lucky. In fact, I was sure I was. Here I was, 53 years old, 31 hours into the longest non-stop race in the world. This far in, you start to think different. You are beyond normal function. You have dug deep, over and over again. You’re in a surreal state.

What human beings can do is not based on their date of manufacture. That’s how we teach kids. You’re ten years old now, and you, and all the other ten years old’s will learn this, and have to pass this test to get a good grade and have your parents proud of your progress based on the same yardstick all the other ten-year-olds are on. This continues through life – we act our age. We are supposed to.

I’m not going to act like a 53-year-old. I don’t want to. So if my behavior is not that of a 53-year-old, then what is age anyway? Is it a limitation? Too young for this or that? Too old for this or that? Your body has an age, yes. But what you can do with it is up to your mind. Are there limitations? Of course. But they are far beyond the fence we have accepted.

I recently heard of a man in his nineties who swam every day for decades. At age 95, he improved his lap times. He was still trying to get better – and he did.

I got to the salt flats and was happy about it. They were fast and required little energy. The course alternated to sand dunes and back to salt flats. I went off course and wound up in a tiny fishing village. I saw a young man and held my arm up, palm up. He motioned to the way. Just the other side of the berm – back on track. 

The air was getting a lot warmer now. I was sweating. I had three layers on since I left my van at 11:30 last night in 40-degree air. Now it was about 85 degrees and rising. I hadn’t eaten in 9 hours and I had no water. 

As I raced toward Scorpion Bay I thought, this was going to be a problem…