Less than an hour after I rolled in to mile 480, I rolled out at 11:35 pm. I put cold weather riding gloves on. I wish I had put them on 100 miles ago. They were insulated, but were harder to operate the levers with.
Now I had to face the next section. It was 58 miles, and I knew there was silt in it. Again it was not there when we pre-ran, but I could see lots of areas where it would be. I could recognize silt in it’s baked form. After a racing season of pulverizing silt into flour, at some point in the year the rains would come and saturate it. Then it would dry into a hard crust. I pre-run three weeks before the race and it’s mostly hard still. Everyone else pre-runs it after me and come race time again, it was back to flour. Every race truck or buggy that goes past me makes it even worse by the time I get there.
I had no idea it would take me three hours and forty-five minutes to go 58 miles. It was unexpected hell. I am glad I didn’t know how bad it would be. If I had, I’d have had a hard time not worrying about it. Ignorance is bliss.
I came around a turn and saw lights ahead. There were three race buggies stuck in the silt in a row. Even they could not turn out of the deep ruts to avoid it. The navigators were out and jacking the back of the two wheel drive buggies up and putting boards they carried under the tires. But they’d go three feet and get stuck again. After a race the locals would walk sections of the track to look for things left behind. They’d find dozens of these special made boards in the silt.
I managed to get off the course and go around the stuck buggies. Jose Carrasco was not as lucky. He was a Baja racing champion and won in the Ironman class one year. He had a brand new bike this year, but it got stuck in the silt. Jose is a local guy who rides and races there all the time. His dot wasn’t moving on the tracking map so they sent a medic in on another motorcycle to see if he was ok. Jose had a choice – ride out with the medic or sleep in the desert. He left his bike stuck there and it took them hours to ride out.
Kevin Daniels is a great rider. He has done well in the Baja 500 and San Felipe 250. But he is 0 for 3 in the Baja 1000. Would I be 0 for 3 too? Sections like this would determine if that was my fate.
Boe Huckins won the Baja 1000 Ironman a few years ago. He also did not finish another year. He wouldn’t finish this year either. No matter how fast or skilled you are, Baja is an equal opportunity punisher.
This hell had beat me the last two years.
I was still fighting.