Race Report!

For those that don’t know – I race.  Desert racing to be exact.  Long distances.  Two wheels sometimes, and four wheels sometimes.  It gives me a reason to stay in shape, something to look forward to, and teaches me mental and physical toughness that makes the rest of life easy.

I am racing 6 races this year.  Two on a motorcycle, and four in a desert race car (UTV).  Three races down, three to go now.  I am behind on reporting.  The second race was the longest race in the United States – Vegas to Reno.  I soloed the 555 miles with my navigator Dustin Gebers who is from Nashville area.  

There is no pre-running this race.  You show up and race it by following a GPS and course markers.  

We started 5th of 8 in our class. By mile 20 we were in third but we hit a big rock in a silt rut I couldn’t get out of fast enough and got a flat. Dustin changed it but it took longer than normal (11 minutes, should be 4-5) because of some technical difficulties. 

15 vehicles went by us in that time and we were now last with 535 miles to go. We worked our way back up. 

Trying to pass is tough in the dust. You are blinded the closer you get to the guy you want to pass. But lucky there was some wind to help blow the dust away. 

There are 13 pits set up. Our strategy is to only stop twice for fuel at pit 5 and pit 10. Our chase team would throw ziplock bags with sandwiches to us and on smooth sections Dustin could hand me pieces of sandwich while I was driving. That and Kind bars kept us going for 12 hours of non- stop driving at race speed. 

This strategy worked as we passed a couple of our own class competitors while they were pitting and we weren’t, but we passed many race vehicles from other classes who were making dust in front of us. We didn’t change drivers like most other teams either. That takes about four minutes each change.  So no race vehicle in this 555 mile race stopped less than us. One flat and two 90 second pits. 

We caught up, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd….we passed our main competitor from Baja and the Factory Honda team who both broke down. We were told that we were 8 minutes behind the leader. (When we drive through a pit we are close enough for VHF radio communication to our team, and they’d tell us how far back we were). 50 miles later they said 10 minutes. 

Our Honda Talon is underpowered with only 105 hp compared to most others who have 130 or so. (We are a non-turbo class). So on the high-speed straight sections they were doing about 10-15 mph faster and that’s where they’d pull away on us. In the technical sections, (which means rocks or tight turns) we’d catch up. 

Then the leader had to pit once for five minutes and another pit for 7 minutes to work on their car. We were only 4 minutes down with 80 miles to go. At one point about 50 miles out we saw a UTV on the side with the driver out working on the car. We thought (hoped) we could be in the lead. But it was not them. 

The last 35 miles, were brutal rocks up and down the mountain. We made it through fast and with no flats. The leader got a flat there but had it changed in 4 minutes and he had pulled on us again on the fast sections before that. 

We crossed the finish line fourteen minutes behind him so it was not to be. We finished second. 

Besides the one preventable flat (my bad) we ran a perfect race.  Dustin called the turns perfectly for 12 straight hours without a break. We were physically run down for sure.

So far this year I have one motorcycle race and one UTV race completed- with two second place finishes. Four more races left including the two most epic races on the planet – The Baja 1000 and Dakar in Saudi Arabia. 

I’ll give you report on my September Race soon – solo the Baja 400 on a motorcycle!

Do YOU DO hard things to test yourself?