Dakar – lessons from the longest race on earth. Part 5

I have never been to Saudi Arabia.  I never thought I would be.  What’s it like?  Is it safe?  

I’ve never been to Istanbul, Turkey, either.  We landed there after an 11-hour flight.  It looked like a place I would go back to.  Beautiful spots.  Great food.  The people looked cool to me.  Then a 3 1/2 hour flight to Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.

We got in late.  We went through customs and immigration without any problems. The Rally sent a bus to pick up a full load of racers from many countries.  It’s dark.  On our way from the airport, the clock strikes midnight.  New Year’s.  It’s 2026 now.  Nobody really noticed or said anything, except me and Ted acknowledging it to each other.   Dakar is weightier than New Year’s – noted.

We pull into a dusty parking lot.  All places there are dusty.  There is no rain.  No vegetation.  Ted and I aren’t really sure what is going on.  

We all get off and walk up to a light inside a tent.  They check our names against the registration list and give us wristbands.  Back in the bus.  We get to enter the bivouac.  It’s a French word that means camp.  Bivouac.  It’s a small city.  We find our way to the South Racing set up.  They are there to meet us.  They show us our RV.  We meet Dennis, my codriver.  Three of us sleeping in a small RV.  

The next day we met more people from South Racing who were taking care of us.  They had semi trucks set up – a mobile kitchen with two chefs from Poland.  A guy from South Africa running the food in front.  A expandable glass semi-trailer you could sit in and eat and get out of the cold/wind that had a coffee machine and snacks all the time.  Multiple semi trucks for parts and tools and even spare engines.  A tent set up over every race car.  A real professional operation.

There were guys and a few women from all over – Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, France…and that is just with the 80 people that South Racing had to take care of 11 race cars.  They were all in my class – “SSV”.  And they were all CanAm Maverick R models.  Five of them were the CanAm factory race team.  South Racing has a partnership to support five factory-backed CanAm teams.  The other six teams were privateers like me.  They were from England, Turkistan, Scotland, Spain, France, etc.

Then we had to go register for the race, get interviewed, and take the car and our gear to tech inspection.  The bivouac was amazing.  When I was a kid, I liked Matchbox cars.  But a pack of them invariably had some weird-looking cars.  As a kid, I said to myself, there are no cars like that.  I had never seen cars that looked like that.  Well, now I know where they came from – Dakar.  They have some unique designs there that they have been running for many years.  Euro race cars are no joke either.  It’s funny to see a Mini and think it’s cute.  Then they start it, and it sounds like a big block Chevy with headers on it. 

Dennis was 54.  I am 61.  He was chill like me.  We were very compatible.  I was happy about that.

The next day, we had to “Shake down” the race car.  It would be the first time I was driving the car.  A 20 Kilometer loop was set up.  Dennis navigated, and I drove.  We got to know each other and know the car.  We did a second lap and were satisfied.  When we got back, we talked to our mechanics about a few adjustments, and we were ready.  

Tomorrow, the race starts with a short 40-kilometer “warm-up” called the “Prologue”.  Finally, after a year and a half of getting here….

I went to bed about 10 pm.  I woke up at 11.  Oh no.  I had two fears coming here.  The dunes, and getting sick again.  I did so much to prevent it.  I brought some of my own food.  Nuts, dates, healthy snack bars, peanut butter – calorie-rich stuff I could carry.  The race is tomorrow.  I was puking and….

Based on this story, you might think I am fragile and get sick a lot.  No.  Not me.  I never got sick in Mexico, where I have raced over twenty times.  But this stomach bug in the Middle East has my number.  I was moaning all night with every exhale.  I was lying two feet from Ted.  Poor Ted.  Both guys heard every biological rumble and squeak – all night.  No sleep at all for me.

In the morning, I managed to get up and go to the medical tent.  They gave me some stuff to take and I went back to the RV to lay down more. I was still under attack.  Our start time was 3 pm, as it was only 46 kilometers of racing on dirt.  Surely another hour and it would be over…right?  9 am.  Moaning.  10 am.  Can’t sit up.  11 am.  Still.  I did not think I could race.

Are you kidding?!  All this…trying to finish the longest race in the world and I can’t even make the Prologue?!  Am I out before it starts?

Noon.  Finally, the cloud lifted, and Satan left my body.  No sleep, but I was glad to be able to sit up.

By 3 pm, I was able to eat a little and get my gear on.

I feel like I should be given a medal for starting after all I had been through!  Or at least a hug.

Green flag.  I am racing the Dakar Rally!  Finally!  

46 Kilometers.  The car was running good until we lost our turbo and could only go 90km an hour instead of 135 as a top speed.  One other big problem – my kidneys were killing me.  It got so bad I didn’t want to hit bumps anymore – and it’s all bumps!

Tomorrow – Stage 1.  460 kilometers. (285 miles).

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?”