Run God’s Risk
“Live. If you live, God will live with you. If you refuse to live, he’ll retreat to that distant heaven and be merely a subject for philosophical speculation. Everyone knows this but no one takes the first steps, perhaps for fear of being called insane.” – Paulo Coelho
Nine months before the Baja 1000 I had decided I would race the entire four-race desert racing series in Baja. The experience would be valuable for me to achieve my ultimate goal – to become one of less than 20 riders to ever finish the Baja 1000 Ironman class and be the oldest among them. The schedule looked like this –
San Felipe 250 April 320 miles
Baja 500 June 542 miles
Tijuana Challenge September 128 miles
Baja 1000 November 806 miles
March in Connecticut is still winter and I can’t ride here. So to have a 340-mile race on April 3 is a little sudden. I had been working out at CrossFit a lot and running in the cold.
Baja, a 1000-mile long peninsula in Mexico that starts just south of San Diego, is the off-road racing capital of the world. It is a wonderland for off-road racing. There is no way that the United States, with all its land use regulations, laws, lawyers, and other ideas about how to use seemingly endless tracts of unused desert wilderness would let this happen in their country. I have come to love Baja and the people there for so many reasons.
When you race in Baja it’s a good idea and pretty much protocol for all serious racers to “pre-run” the racecourse. Each year’s course is laid out a little different through the Baja desert. When you pre-run, you only ride during the day so you can see what you are getting into. You can also make a race plan, deciding where you’d see your chase truck, and learn what and how to strategize each section of the course.
For the San Felipe 250 I had a new driver named Victor Abitia. Victor had dual citizenship and lived in just south of Tijuana in Rosarito on the Pacific Ocean, but often rode his motorcycle across the border to work. Victor looks like a gringo, but he spoke perfect Spanish and perfect English. When locals saw us together they’d talk to us like we were both Americans; sometimes trying to sell something, serving us, or the occasional hustle. But when Victor opened his mouth, they knew he was one of them. We had fun with this sometimes, as Victor would wait to reveal himself. Victor was always smiling and had fantastic people skills. Restaurants, border crossings, military checkpoints – it didn’t matter, Victor would have everyone smiling. We became good friends very quickly.
Our plan was to pre-run 170 miles on Monday, 170 miles on Tuesday, and race the 320 mile San Felipe race on Friday. I had raced 831 miles five months earlier. Surely 320 miles was a piece of cake – right?
It wasn’t.