Chapter Fourteen – No pressure, no diamond

“You can waste your life drawing lines, or you can live your life crossing them.” – Shonda Rimes

Your mind changes your body, and your body changes your mind.  During the past year when I was sick or injured or sleep deprived, I had trouble believing I could finish this race.  But when I felt good, I thought I could do it easily.  That was my body telling my mind what was possible.  Now my mind was telling my body what was possible, and trying to override it’s protests – successfully for now.

I was at mile 401, 15 hours into the race.  The silt patches were deep.  I tried to go around where I could, but so did everyone else.  The problem is you couldn’t get off the course to go around in most places because of dense fields of cactus, thorny plants, boulders and topography. 

The course improved some and I was going along at about 25 miles per hour now– an improvement.  Race trucks came through every few minutes to refill the air with bits of earth.  I heard there was bad silt at mile 403 – two miles ahead.  They didn’t say anything about the hell I had been through already.   I started to think that maybe they were off on what mile the crap was; that I had been through the “bad silt” already and a few miles ahead I would not find any more deep stuff.

False.  403 was another horror show.  I had to lift my legs up, wearing riding boots mind you,  so my feet didn’t drag in the silt.  In places the ground level on the side of me was up above the seat from years of racing this route and the ruts that developed.  Those ruts had more than a foot of silt in the bottom of them.  It was a slot a motorcycle could not get out of by turning. The only way out was straight through. 

Joe Desena, the founder of Spartan Race talks about “obstacle immunity”.  You push through obstacles that would have stopped you before without much mental anguish.  You see an obstacle, you tackle it with whatever action is required, and you move on.  This is good training for life.  When you have big goals you get big challenges.  Little goals – little challenges.  No goals, no challenges.  So to make any noteworthy progress, obstacle immunity is a valuable attitude to develop.

I see strange lights on the landscape in front of me.  I wonder what is happening.  They come and go. They get more pronounced and brighter.   Of course, it’s a race truck approaching from behind me.  I have time to find a spot to get off the course between a cactus and other obstacles, jumping a rocky berm to accomplish it.  The truck goes by.  I can’t see.  I wait.  I can’t see.  I wait more.  I try to go forward at walking speed with my feet out to feel the ground under me as I can only see five feet with my headlights illuminating the dust.  I stop and wait more. 

Visibility is so slow to improve.  I have to get out of here.  I try to go forward, duck paddling some more, perhaps breaking my own rule of not riding where I can’t see – but I am going two miles an hour – a crash at this speed can’t be very catastrophic.  The course rises uphill, and just like that, I can see again.  In the low areas, there is more silt and no wind.  In the higher areas there are more rocks, less dust and just a hint of a breeze. 

My progress is so slow.  There is nothing I can do.  It’s not a question of courage or physical output.  It’s a lack of visual information to my brain.  All I can do is do the best I can in this moment.  Excellence is the next two minutes – it’s the next 100 yards.  It’s doing my best now, whatever the conditions, that makes the section after that possible. 

It’s cold.  I can only see in black and white, and only what is in front of me.  The terrain to the sides does not reveal itself to me – a mystery.  My choices for when to get off the course and go around silt are a crap shoot. 

415 is coming.  A big steep hill climb with loose rocks and boulders.  The ground will fall very steep down to the left, and nearly vertical to the right.  It’s really “off camber”.  This means it slopes side to side under my wheels and with wheel spin, your rear end will slide downhill.

In the dark, without warning, all of a sudden I’m going sharply up.  This is it.  Call on the Honda horsepower – twist the throttle and don’t stop.  Bounces off rocks change my trajectory but I keep it pointed uphill.  You could easily bounce right off the cliff here. 

I get to the top.  Whoops, that’s not the top, there’s more.  Finally.  That hill climb was a landmark obstacle.  It’s past me now.  Mile 405 in an 806 mile race.  I’m over halfway home.

From my recollection and notes from pre-running I know the course is rocky for another five miles and then improves considerably and turns into a fast sweeping sand road.  But that was before hundreds, maybe thousands of passes from pre-running race vehicles.  Now the easy part I was hoping for was only there in remnants.

At higher elevation, it was notably colder.  Combine that with my faster speed and the 40-degree atmosphere was penetrating me now.  Exposed and open to the wind on a dirt bike, cold can end your race and leave you on the side of the course shaking, unable to function.

My fingers were going numb.  Twenty-five more miles and the worst part of the course would be over.  Wouldn’t it?  This 100 miles in the dust and cold night was the longest stretch of the course without seeing my team.  I could not feel my fingers now.  Every bump caused pain in my hands.

I am very worried about my hands.  It was bad enough that a few minutes trying to warm them wasn’t going to do the trick. 

Lights ahead.  Mercy.