When the alarm went off at 03h00 this morning it felt like I had been hit by a sledgehammer. I was on the road by 03h30 and rode the first 2 hours in the dark however, first light is always a special time and watching it happen over the Baja desert was truly a privilege as the peninsula is incredibly beautiful, albeit very very cold at this time of day!!
The ride proved to be unbelievably difficult and required me to draw on deep deep resources of strength and energy to keep going. By 07h30 when I stopped in El Rosario, 300km from Guerrero Negro to fuel up and collect a receipt I was feeling hypo glaecemic and frozen to the bone because the temps had dropped to about 5 degrees just before sunrise. A healthy breakfast of a litre of coke and a couple of snickers bar however set me up for the remainder of the ride. The road conditions haven’t improved and the ride continues to be slow and although I was pushing hard on the straight stretches I did not manage an average speed of greater than 100km/h at best, however, I managed the 1600km half an hour ahead of schedule and into Tijuana, 1668km from Cabo just after 11h20 (including the 1 hour time zone change) so Iron Butt challenge completed but it required 18 out of 24 hours of pretty hard riding!
After this I needed to get across the Mexican/US border at Tijuana which is the busiest road border in the world and required me to snake through about 3km of car queues to get to the front. I finally got into San Diego at about 13h00 exhausted but feeling great that I got this accolade behind me.
745km from Guerrero Negro to Tijuana…
Justin Lake
June 7, 2013 at 8:15 am
Maximum respect – that’s a bucket list thing for most of us. Well done.
Iain
June 8, 2013 at 5:22 pm
Congrats Iron Butt! Awesome achievement. Well done.