While it may be counter-intuitive, its better to break down during the pre-run, since it’s preferable to discover a problem before the actual race.
Pre-ran the Xtreme Outlaws 250 course with Crusty at the wheel. iPhone battery died part way in so here’s my report: Brutal. After 10 hours of sleep, I still feel like I’ve been in an MMA cage match, but my lungs don’t feel like they’ve been scraped with sandpaper, the headache’s mostly gone and my eyes look more like the day after a serious bender instead of yesterday when people said I looked like Darth Maul.
Today’s a light day. Tech from noon to five and a party tonight at the Grand Sierra Resort. We’ll tweak 1107 but for all intents and purposes the car is ready to go.
Here’s a recap of yesterday:
That’s us on the right. Notice how clean 1107 is.
Everyone gathered in the overflow parking lot of the Wild Horses Adult Spa & Resort (formerly the Mustang Ranch). Our planned 7 a.m. departure took off right on time around 8 a.m. Within about four minutes we were stuck in silt and some Good Samaritans in a Hummer H1 pulled us out. Crusty made a solo run to the top, made it, I humped it up the hill, buckled in and we were on our way.
This is a course – designed by Baja Legend Rod Hall – of cattle roads, goat trails and utility roads – all embedded with every type and size of rock on God’s green earth. There’s some great rally car-style two lane gravel stuff (with a steep cliff on one side) and few miles of actual paved road that took us into Virginia City.
This is us pre-running with the big dogs.
The biggest challenge for us on the pre-run is that we could get through a lot of the technical stuff faster than some of the folks who brought their stock trucks mainly because 1. We’re lighter and B. if we break something, it’s a lot cheaper to fix than it would be for them, so we take more chances. Where we ran into the most problems was getting stuck on a climb behind another vehicle, losing momentum and stalling. That means I have to lighten the car by 200 pounds, by getting out of it, getting next to the car and pushing. All this happens between 4,000 and 7,000 feet above sea level.
This course has a lot of loose shale on hill climbs (slippery), volcanic rock embedded in cattle roads (puncture-y) and some of the most beautiful scenery to be found anywhere, including herds of long-horn cattle, all manner of wildflowers and wild horses that don’t give you the time of day. I’d have more photos, but my iPhone battery has the lifespan of a fruit fly.
So we’re bombing along and I’m thinking “This is about as far from civilization as you can get,” we clear a rise and here’s this gigantic, vacant distribution center like something out of the X-Files, which never made any sense to me.
VORRA, the race organizers, arranged a great BBQ lunch for us in Virginia City and we headed out to finish the last 40 miles. I only had to yell at a Crusty a few times “WE’RE NOT RACING” but sometimes things just happen, like when we saw the Petfinder.com 1106 being towed up the last long climb and we thought we had a shot at catching him. With a mile to go, we were on his bumper and honking. Then his carburetor conked out and he pulled over. We told them we’d alert their pit crew. In the mean time another Samaritan with a tow rope came by, hooked up and nearly tore their front bumper off. Good times. We’ll be loaning them our welder.
I should have tracking data up shortly and photos of tech and contingency later today. Racing starts tomorrow around 8 a.m. I’ll be co-driving both laps and incommunicado for the duration.
Lastly, I wanted to say thanks to Ginger and Dogg for allowing us to take over their home in Reno and turn it into our remote workshop and crash pad.