I was struggling, but I kept my composure. My abs were burning as I had to hold my knees up to my chest for long periods to keep my feet from dragging in the silt. It was up to the seat in places. Thirty-year truck racing veterans would say later that it was the worst silt they have ever seen. Even some 900 hp racing trucks got stuck in it.
It was 3AM, 23 hours into the race. When I saw the silt coming I tried to look ahead to see how long it went. If it went far I’d try to get off the course and pick through the brush if that was possible. Sometimes, I’d wind up a hundreds yards off the course and lose track of where it was. If I was on the left side of the course and it turned right, I’d be getting farther away. My GPS was indispensible. I’d have to zoom it out to find the course line.
There are some plants that are like groups of 16” balls of spikes. They are very hard. If I hit one it would stop my bike. If my front wheel got on top, my bike would teeter on it as the spikes held up the full weight of my bike and me. We have a video of these plants stopping a race buggy.
I’m desperately picking through thick brush in the dark and don’t have the option to turn the way I want to turn. All of a sudden, I feel a sharp pain in the top of my foot. It is not going away. I look down and see a stub of something sticking out of the leather on the top of my boot. I stop and take pliers out of my side pouch, grab it and pull it out – all 2 inches of it. It was under my skin. I didn’t take my boot off to inspect my foot – there is nothing I could do. I put the spike in the side pouch with the pliers and kept moving. “Obstacle immunity”…
I went down about four times in there. The last time I bent my shifter and couldn’t shift easily. I had to slam it with my heel and rode most of the way in the same gear.
Mile 538 was a big milestone for me. It marked then end of this horrible silt and the beginning of easier terrain. Of course, easier is a relative term and it was broken by periods of hell – but the worst was over. I was sure of it.
Finally, I got out to the road and found my van. I sat in the chair in the dark while they replaced the shifter. I started the night an hour ahead of my schedule. Now I was an hour and forty five minutes BEHIND my plan. If things didn’t improve, I’d be against the 36 hour time limit to finish the race.
This night was a dark night of the soul.
I had a moment with Bobby. He asked me how I was doing. I had been battling the worst race conditions I had ever seen – maybe anyone had ever seen, for the last 9 1/2 hours in the dark. I told him “I’m fighting for it ”. I almost broke – but I didn’t.
The team told me that Liz was there a bit before me. She got to the road and couldn’t find her chase truck. She saw ours and knew Victor and my crew would help her. She got in the van and was cold, shaken and delirious. She was in the silt for ten hours. My crew video recorded her sitting in the back of the van for nearly an hour. She was in rough shape, but she was still in the race. She was tough.
I got myself together, looking forward to a new course ahead. It was 3:28 AM, and my team cheered again as I disappeared into the night.
“Impossible is not a fact, it’s an opinion. It’s only impossible until someone does it.”