Dakar – lessons from the longest race on earth. Part 4

People ask – “Do you ship your car over there?”  “Who works on the car?”  “Who supports you?”  I asked all those same questions.  There are 1000 logistical things to do to race Dakar.  It’s 5500 miles!  You wake up in one place, and go to bed 600 miles away!  You are in a foreign country.  You need food, shelter, parts, instruction, and assistance of all kinds.

Fortunately, there is a guy who can help you.  His name is Scott Abraham, and he has a company out of Germany and Portugal called South Racing. 

“Hello, is this Scott Abraham?”…

Weeks before the race, my co-driver, Bruno, tells me he can’t be my navigator.  He got hired by a team who is racing a lot of rallies and he has to take their offer, as I was just racing one rally – the BIG one, but just one.  This is how he makes a living.  He’s a pro.

So where am I going to get a co-driver this late?  I call Jamie.  I call Andrew Short, a former motocross pro who is a codriver now.  He gives me a name of a guy in South Africa – Dennis Murphy.  He’s navigated in the last 6 Dakar’s.  Are you available?  I got lucky.  He said yes.  I hope he is a cool guy because we are going to be sitting side by side in high-stress situations all day for 14 days, and I have to listen to him tell me what to do.

I finally leave for the Dakar Rally on Monday.  I wake up Saturday at 4 am to use the bathroom.  I am walking like a drunk.  I almost fell down.  I had to catch myself on the door frame.  What is going on?

I get back to bed and lay down.  The room is spinning violently.  I close my eyes and wait.  I almost puke.  It subsides.  I worry and wonder, and eventually fall back asleep.  I wake up later – the room starts spinning again.  Each time I move my head, it starts, and lasts about 15-20 seconds.  When I move again, it starts again.

What is going on?  Oh no!  I have to go to Dakar!

I use Chat GPT to find out what it could be.  

Vertigo.

Vertigo?  

“How do I fix it?”

If it is a certain kind of vertigo, and it sounds like it is, the Eppley maneuver can fix it.  I go to YouTube.  I try this series of movements.  It takes five minutes.  I almost puke, but it fixed it!  I feel crappy all day.

Basically, it’s a crystal that gets into your semi-circular tube, and when you move your head, it tells your brain you are spinning. Imagine a snow globe with one flake in it.  The Eppley maneuver gets that flake to go all the way around the circle and drop out of the tube.  A miracle. 

The next morning I wake at 6 am.  The room is spinning again.  I do the Eppley maneuver again.  Chat GPT said that half the time you have to do it twice.  I hope this works.  I have to get on a plane tomorrow, and I can’t even walk! It works again – but will it stick this time?

I am finally on a plane to Dakar.  I have my friend and videographer Ted Waldron with me. 

Getting to the starting line is not easy. 

But I am not there yet…

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.

Not giving in to old age

I can probably talk about this some, now that I am 61 years old.

I think mentally we all see ourselves as young men and women for a long time.  But then aches and pains we never had begin to show up.  Our bodies change.  Our skin gets thinner, and our hair turns gray or falls out.  Flexibility and strength wane.  Maybe there are injuries and diagnoses that get in our head.  We start to limit our activity.

“I can’t do that anymore” sets in.  Once we start to use that excuse, we accept it again for other things.  We act like older people.  This is an arc that most travel.  

But is it compulsory?  Is there a choice?

In getting older – there is no choice – it is going to happen.

But in giving into aging and acting old, I think we can do much better than average if we resolve to.  We can delay “acting our age”.

My advice?  Stay active.  Workout.  Hang around with younger, healthy, active people.  Keep challenging yourself physically.  Eat right.  You cannot outwork a bad diet.  Don’t drink sugary drinks.  Don’t eat fast food.  Eat lots of plants.  Don’t drink much alcohol (maybe none.) Don’t do drugs. Don’t smoke or inhale anything.  Avoid injury if you can by being smart.  Get enough sleep.  Have your bloodwork done once a quarter and make adjustments to make it better.  (I use Lifeforce for this).  Most of all, don’t feel like you have to do what everyone else your age is doing and not doing.  Have a young mindset, a young heart, and young ambitions. 

If you do get injured, don’t give up.  I had my knee replaced.  It was very tough and still is.  But I worked through it and go on.

I hurt my back or neck many times.  I did not go to a surgeon who wants to do what surgeons do.  I went to a chiropractor, stretched, and moved as appropriate.  I have been going to a good chiropractor for most of my life.

Take responsibility for your own health and physical fitness.  Use professionals, but know that many of them only know what they have been taught – and now they make money doing that.  You have to make the decisions.

I am not an expert, but I have learned some things and made observations I’d swear are better than average.  

For those of you who are young, at the age of infinite wisdom, and who will live forever – you’ll see.  

When we are young we have energy but little wisdom and no money.

Then we enter a period where we have energy, a bit of wisdom and a bit of money.

Then we have wisdom and money – but what about the energy and health?

Extending this period where we can have all three, wisdom, money, and energy, as long as possible, can make the best years of our lives.

Set yourself up.  Only you can do that.

It’s work, but in many ways, I’m going to be 45 next year!  

Delusional?  I take it!

What about you?

Living a life that matters

Building your resume and building your legacy are different.

What “matters”?

Relationships – that people were better off for knowing you.  Love and kindness in all its forms and amplitudes.

Growth – that you didn’t settle for far less than you were capable of.  You developed your talents to build your ability to make an impact.

You mattered – You made a positive difference for someone else, or a lot of other people.  Maybe for people you know, or maybe for people you don’t know and will never meet.  Things were better because you showed up and made it so.

There are different seasons of life.  What matters in our teens falls away in our 20s, and our 20s seem immature in our 30s, and the seasons continue to change.

It’s good to think about what really matters – what survives the seasons.

Make adjustments – while you still have time. 

Are you a slave to your phone?

Each time your phone gives you a notification of some kind, do you grab it and look?  

Do you splinter your precious attention and give it over to every person, robot, corporation or machine that wants a piece of it?

To do high-quality work, it requires focus.  To be your best, you need to put sustained attention on what you are doing/creating.

Every time you shift your attention from one target to another, you are reducing your cognitive capacity.

Reduce the number of things you have to pay attention to.

Protect big blocks of time from distraction.

Take charge of your attention.

Bet on yourself

When you bet on yourself, it’s a low-risk wager.

It’s amazing what you can do.

Set a goal.  Make a commitment.  Resolve in your mind you will complete the task.

Unlock your reasons – to get unstuck, to move forward, to show you can do it, to “show them”, etc.

Do the work.  

It requires getting out of your comfort zone?  Go BOLDLY.  Learn.  Break new ground – it’s called growing.

Bet on yourself.