Soloing 300 Race Miles in the Desert

Team Nick

• October 08 2009
• 2,974 views
• 2 comments

I raced my first desert race in 2001 and was hooked. I raced Baja 500, 1000 and the 24 hours of Le Fud endurance race that year. Since 01 I have only missed competing in only two Baja Races, and both of those were due to injury. Needless to say, racing ATV’s in the desert has swallowed up not only the majority of my spare time, but also now my families.

After the 2004 Baja 1000 in which I ended up riding about half of it due to a teammates injury, I became interested in trying to concur a Desert Race solo. My problem with this solo idea has always been the immense cost of entry fee, race gas, chase crews, lodging , etc. In a perfect situation I would love to train for six to eight months and then give it a shot. As it turns out, you don’t always find every opportunity just the way you imagine it.

After being sick for almost three weeks with a gnarly sinus infection, I finally was starting to feel a little better when the phone rings. My good friend Jesse Woeltje calls me to explain that the LKH Farming team of Jeff Hancock and Josh Edwards are currently tied with the American Honda Team for points in the BITD series. Problem being that Josh is battling a bulging disc and that Jeff had been airlifted from the SnowFlake 250 the previous week. Apparently since the pro class is only two riders in BITD the only way for the LKH Farming team to remain in the points chase is for Jeff to sign in as rider of record and the other rider would have to solo the entire race.

Jesse explained that they just needed me to guarantee a finish, and that my finishing would bump them down to third but still with striking distance for the rest of the series. LKH would pay all the expenses and all I had to do was finish, sounds easy enough.  After about 3 seconds of deep thought I told them I could get the bike across the finish line and asked when the race was. Contingency was in three days in Mesquite, NV and the race was the following morning. Oh well, so much for training. After pounding water for the next two days, and a red label package from my friend Jorie Williams at Moto X Nutrition we drove out and met the crew in Mesquite for contingency on Friday. The race started at 6:30 AM in Alamo, NV which is actually 90 miles from the Hotel in Mesquite, so we had to get up at 3 am to drive to the start.

Jeff had drawn 3^rd peel for the morning, with Matlock/Goodman and Stuart/Prather directly behind. Racers start 1 every minute with pro and expert motorcycles starting in front of the pro quads. The race was a 320-mile loop and our plan was for me to ride a decent pace that would not wear me out, so that hopefully I would still be in halfway decent shape for the last 100 miles of the race. With Matlock a minute behind me and Stuart behind him, my plan was to take advantage of the dust for a little while and then let them by when they began to pressure me.

After a quick morning wake up, that consisted of blowing the 90-degree turn at mile marker 1.  I quickly realized that extreme caution was needed if I was going to get the LKH Honda to the finish line in one piece.

The dust finally settled a little bit latter so I was able to pick up the pace again for quite a while. I was expecting the pressure from behind me to come early on, but it didn’t. The low visibility from the dust was evidently slowing down everybody else’s program this morning as well. Entering Pit one at about the 43 mile mark, I was right behind the 2^nd bike off the line. I was able to beat them out of the pit as they needed more time to swap a rider, while I had nobody to swap with.

With a super quick fuel pit from the LKH crew and a few words of encouragement, I headed out with clean air in front of me, now in Second place. Clear vision was replaced with 0 visibility dust as I quickly caught a handful of slower motorcycles that had started in front of us. Quicker than expected I was coming into Pit 2 and much to the surprise of my pit crew, still in 2^nd overall. Knowing full well that the atrocious dust was helping me to keep ahead of the faster 2 man teams behind me, I told myself that I was going to keep up the pace as long as the dust was helping me, regardless of how bad I wore myself out I was confident I could still limp it across the finish line after my body hit the wall. 120 miles into the race I was still feeling much better than I expected and completely free of dust as Brett Greenholz who was 1^st off the line had a few minutes on us and I had already passed the slower motorcycles, with the fast guys checking out way in front.

As most good things must come to an end, RM124 spelled disaster. I slightly stalled the bike, breaksliding into a corner a little hot and when I popped the clutch to restart it with my momentum, it didn’t fire.

Sitting on the trail trying to kickstart it for what seemed like hours (more like 1-2 minutes) until Matlock came by. After Matlock passed I kicked some more and then Stuart and the rest of the Pro ATV class by one at a time, while I continued to kick. After what seemed like an eternity I decided to try and push it over the edge of the steep canyon to the left of the course and bump start it. After almost letting it cartwheel 100 yards into the canyon, I was finally able to mount it and hammered down the steep, narrow chute between the pine trees.

Apparently the black cloud was still following me as it still didn’t start. Sitting 100 yards down in a hole I was able to watch the sportsman class motorcycle and ATV classes go by while I frantically worked on the bike. Not wanting to give up I tried swapping the CDI and the capacitor to the spares, when that didn’t work I checked out the fuel delivery and the entire wiring harness. After nothing worked I came to the conclusion that it was either the stator or the intake valves. After watching the UTV’s go by I decided to hike out and look for help. As a Pro ATV in the desert, there is hands down, nothing more disheartening than watching the UTV’s pass while you sit broken down somewhere.

As soon as I got back to the course, I was met by a BITD rescue guy in a Polaris RZR.  The first words out of his mouth were “wheres your quad, let’s get that thing out of here.” Seeing that this was my last ray of hope for a finish I regretfully pointed way down into the canyon where my quad was. You can not imagine my thoughts when he said “what are you waiting for, jump in and lets see if we can yank that thing out of there.” Twenty minutes of brush crawling, bruises, and a little bleeding and the RZR was pulling our race quad back down the course.

I instantly threw it in gear hoping for a miracle, after about 1000 yards of trying to tow start it, it decided to come to life. I quickly thanked and unhooked from my rescuer and hauled ass into PIT 3.  I rested while the guys did everything they could to try and get the thing to start under it’s own power, but as it turned out the pick up coil on the stator had gone out and we didn’t have a spare with us.  The lead Trophy Trucks and Class 1 cars had already cleared the Pit and we were about to time out, so I asked them to put it back together, crank the idle as high as it would go and give me a pull start.

I left the pit knowing that if I stalled it once in the next 180 miles, the race would be over. While trying to battle with a class one car that was apparently not running that well either, we both managed to get stuck in a super nasty silt bed. Much to my surprise there was another guy in a Polaris Ranger taking photos of the silt bed madness and he quickly came to the rescue and pulled us out, and after cleaning my clogged  K@N lid out, he even gave me a pull start. At the next pit, just when I was thinking that the bike was pretty hammered and my chances of finishing were going out the window,

Jesse informed me that Matlock had DNF’d with a blown engine and that my finishing would secure LKH with 2^nd place in the points chase.

With a quick maintenance in each pit, we struggled on to towards the finish. The last stretch was going to be very close to needing lights, yet we were to close to timing out  to install them so I set out with just a night rider. After a very close call in a silt bed 9 miles from the finish, we were able to finish right around 7 pm. The 12 hour and 3 minutes it took me to finish was 7 minutes from the cut off time, making me the last official finisher out of hundreds of entries. Celebrations were started quickly, laying in the dirt with a few cold ones next to the truck.

I got my first solo experience out of the way, it cost me nothing but a stiff back, a handful of blisters, and some serious arm pump. I’m grateful to get the chance to do it, but I might be rethinking my desire to ever do it again. A big thanks to Jesse and Josh for the bike prep, Jeff for the pit support, and Larry from LKH Farming for making the whole thing possible. I’m glad I was able to get to the finish and if the need arises, would do it again in a heartbeat.