We all have many things in common but Desert Racing and Off-Road trips has been a passion and bond for us throughout: we lived for the camp fire camaraderie, great people in this sport, and pushing the limits of man, machine, vs. the terrains of Baja..

This was sent to Quad75.com after the 500. It comes from James Woodford, and it’s his account of Ironmanning the San Felipe 250 this year in Class 25. Coupled with some great photos, James tells us about his experience in honor of a fallen friend. James exemplifies why desert racers do what we do – for the love of racing! He overcame some adversity, but we’re not going to spoil it for you, you’ll just have to read his article.

No matter how sore I was, how hard it was, how many hours it took to finish the race, or how many long nights I put into prepping the bike before the race. It was all worth it! To Honor Spencer, to accomplish our goals, no one can ever take that away from me! It wasn’t just a desert race. It was a life changing event!

James Woodard’s SF250 Story

I’m sure Spencer is proud James!

New for the 250 is “Team 2.” Also running Class 24, Team 2 consists of Jamie Kirkpatrick, who was a support member during the 1000, Greg Kirk, a longtime desert racer that contributed to Brandon’s start in the desert world, and Brian Watkins, a Northwest local who has shown strong endurance skills in races there. “Team 2 was Jamie’s idea and I was really for it. Desert racing is a lot of fun and it will be nice to have someone I know well racing with us. It’s great to know someone has your back in case anything goes wrong,” Brandon said. The team has been in Mexico since Sunday the 6th, and started pre-running Monday. “Things are going well,” team mechanic Kenny Sanford said, “So far no big problems. It’s been work, but we’ve had time to enjoy some tacos, too.” Brandon and Kenny continued to say the teams looked good and that they looked forward to the 252 mile race.

16 teams have entered Class 24. Team 2 will be running the 106A, drawing 6th off the line, while Team 1 will leave last off the line.

Friday March 11th is Contingency Day & tech inspection for the race bikes, as well as the riders’ meeting. Saturday the race starts at 6am for motorcycles and is expected to last about 6 hours, however racers have 11 hours to complete the course. ““I’m always excited about racing in Mexico. As we do more of these races, it doesn’t get ‘easier’ but you do know what to expect and what you should be preparing for,” Brandon Brown said, “We’re lucky to have a great support team of friends, family, and of course sponsors helping in preparations all the way through the finish of the race.” You can follow their progress via Spot tracker and Google Earth as they compete with 25 other champions in the 25th Annual San Felipe 250 and see their updates by visiting Quad75.com, Twitter.com/quad75baja, or Facebook.com/Quad75Dezert

Quad75Dezert would like to thank the following for their support: S&S Motorsports, Water Well Developing & Surveys, Fox Racing Shox, Maxxis, Klim, Teixeira Tech, HMF Racing, Uni, CBR Performance, MotoXNutrition, UPP Racing, Fullbore Innovations, HiPer, Pro Armor, TCS Motorsports, Spider Grips, Warn Industries, QuadTech, Maxima, Precision Racing Products,Fusion Graphixx, Asterisk, Wiseco, Fastenal Racing, Scott USA, Rekluse, Pro Caliber Motorsports, Trail Tech, Hot Rod Fabrication, KBH Construction, Dune Tech, PitTraffic.com, Team Money$hot, & Murray211.

The quad was great. As expected, we made some suspension changes during the ride and small jetting tweaks when we made it back to the chase truck with Kenny and Mike.  The only thing left to do was aim the HID lights that Warn Industries had supplied us for our chase truck.  And test them out on the way back to town.  Lighting is a huge factor for both the race vehicles and chase as well.  Race vehicles for obvious reasons and chase vehicles because every place in Baja is open range.  The cows seem to be drawn to the highways, and without good lighting your race, or even worse, could be ended in a heartbeat. Warn helped us out tremendously in the way of keeping our chase trucks safe.  The lights made a huge difference in cutting through the darkness. There are no streetlights in Baja, and the glow from city lights are few and far between.

Wednesday was contingency, tech, sign up and riders’ meeting.  We had a full team riders meeting over breakfast at the house to instruct everyone of their jobs and what pits they would be taking care of on race day.  In addition to that it’s a bit of a pep talk and safety meeting as well.  If the whole team doesn’t make it to the finish line safely, the outcome of the race doesn’t mean a thing regardless of finish position.

Contingency is where everybody goes to show off their machines the day before the race with a parade into the vehicle tech line.  We always opt for the direct route to tech so we can get in and out as fast as we can.  I’m not much for the crowds that contingency draws in, especially with the stress that we’re under the day before the race.  At sign up, all riders have to get banded with a wrist band that labels you as an entered contestant into the race.  Then they ask you to sign your life away and your ready to go.  So we got banded, blazed through tech and we were on our way back to the house.  Once we got back to the house everyone started their “day before race” rituals and getting focused for race day.

For Kenny that always seems to include last minute mods to the race bike and going over it one last time before it’s sent out on it’s journey.  He had an issue which required setting the bike up on end.  The bike had been in that position a handful of times over the last several weeks for various reasons, however this time we noticed a new characteristic that it had developed.  On the floor directly below the kick starter there was a small puddle of oil.  After inspecting it, Kenny noticed that we had a crack in the side case cover.  Perfect timing right?  Kenny called in Nick and myself for a powwow to go over the issue.

We knew we had to get the case cover off there no matter what.  Luckily we had another gasket so we were good there.  We had a handful of other machines sitting there that we could rob parts from, but the we lacked a fresh seal for the water pump.  With little to no time to deal with it Kenny said, “Get every one out of the garage and I’ll deal with it!”  That’s all I needed to hear.  We evacuated the facility and left him to his work.  About an hour later we had a race machine back in full order.  Kenny had made the swap and left me to stress out on the water pump seal until we made it to La Paz.  We leave no stone unturned when prepping a machine for one of these races.  It’s insane to go in half cocked, considering the amount of money,time and effort it requires to take on something like this.  Unfortunately, that old dude Murphy doesn’t care how prepared you think you are, he’s still going to lay down his law when he can, and I don’t trust him!  Kenny assured me that all was well and and I took it as the God’s truth. He hasn’t let me down yet.

Everyone else in our crew had been busy loading trucks and readying themselves for the next days’ task.  All that was left to do was to GO RACING!

We took off from Race Mile 872. At Race Mile 876 we found a silt bed that could ruin your day in a hurry without the proper line choice.  We spent an hour or so making sure we had a good line for race day, knowing the track would deteriorate as more racers pre-ran.  We had good timing. We found a good line around the silt and were on our way down course just before dark.  Next was a really fast section that promised to be a blast come race day.  From there we had a short stint on the asphalt which lead us into a hellish  40+ mile section of whoops not all that different from the ones I train on at home.  Naturally, we decided that would be a good place for me to be on the quad come race day.  It opened up a bit after the whoops and it was time to put the hammer down!

We stopped briefly for fuel near Santa Rita where Nick and Paul were waiting for us on course, then rode down the trail again to El Conejo, a surf village an hour or so out of La Paz.  That section was fast and fun, but it had a half mile silt section that had no way around it.  I would be carefully picking my way through it on race day.  We met up with Chase 1 again and Nick rode the last leg with me into La Paz.  This section was littered with a little bit of everything for your riding pleasures.  From high speed, to short washes, to a tree section, and even some nasty whoops for good measure.  One of the coolest things it had was the infamous stair steps into La Paz.  It looks like a road…sorta. It’s mostly all rocks with 3 foot drops, no rhyme or reason for timing, and it sort of resembles an obscure set of stairs…Oh! It was also lot’s of fun!

Well we made our way to the truck and got everything loaded up while sharing our war stories for the day with one another.   We drove into town and found what I am told to be a great taco stand.  I didn’t get to enjoy it all that much, but for my three companions it made it all the better.  We were all hungry when we got there, and like a dumbass with a stomach full of empty I grabbed a pepper to chew on while I waited for my order.  I’m generally pretty good with spicy food, but on this day it was another story.  This thing ruined me.  Within minutes I went from numb lips, to ridiculous hiccups, to stomach cramps that had me curled up in near fetal position.  Like any good friends would do, Nick, Paul and Kenny just sat there and snickered and made fun of me as they enjoyed their meal.

Kenny and I got up early the next day and let the Nelsons sleep in.  Lucky for me, my ailment from the night before had past.  This was especially good because I needed to pre run the last 60 miles of course from El Conejo into La Paz.  This section was also a blast with plenty of variety and nice scenery that we weren’t able to enjoy in the dark the night before.  When I made my way out to the road I asked some guys that were waiting for other people if they had seen our chase truck.  I told them what it looked like and they replied with “You mean the one with the quad on the bed and CRF with that gigantic, ugly fuel tank on it?”   I said “Yep, that’s the one! But don’t knock that tank because it’s been our traveling fuel tanker while pre-running all week!”.  They explained that they had just ran into them and they were down the road at a crepe stand.  Ya, a crepe stand in Baja.  I almost questioned them but I’ve been down there enough to know that any thing was possible.

So I headed down down the road a couple miles and sure enough there was Chase 1 sitting in front of Cafe Chic a Crepe stand of all things.  Which happens to be the best Crepe’s in Baja voted in by the committee!  Who’s the committee you might ask?  We are, and these things where great.  Owned and operated by a French couple, that were some of the nicest people we’ve met down there.  Which is saying a lot because we’ve met a lot of great people in our adventures.  Fortunately for us we have Paulina as our on call interpreter.  But even she had hard time understanding them at times due to never having heard Spanish with a French ascent before.  Never the less, it’s hard to misunderstand friendly and even harder to misunderstand great food!

At this point we started heading North, with a couple short stops for fuel and taco’s we made it back to the silt beds North of Loreto shortly after dark.  We decided that Nick would be getting off the quad in this area on race day.  He and Kenny both would need to find lines around two particularly horrible silt beds.  They spent a couple hours finding good lines around the silt.  By the time they were finished with it, Nick had managed to blow up Kenny’s quad and made a gallant effort to take mine out as well.   This is the reason we pre run.  So that we can get this out of our system prior the the race.  The silt is unimaginable to anyone that hasn’t seen it. In mere seconds it can and will destroy a machine and dash any hopes or dreams of a win, or even a  finish for that matter.  So if it costs a rebuild on on a pre runner to get it figured out, then so be it.  Lucky for us Nick had it figured out at that point, and it’s a good thing because we were running out of machines…

We had all racked up about 600 miles each of ride time during this trip and Paul had us all beat with her chase truck miles.  We still had to make it back to Ensenada for the start pre-run for Nick.  We headed North to Mulege where the Bender crew was staying for the night and they kindly put us up when we arrived around midnight.  Mulege is another place that is hard to leave, due to the sheer beauty in the area.  We awoke the next morning refreshed and ready for a long day’s drive.  Everyone got a much needed shower, we ate breakfast, and then got back on the road to Ensenada.  We made a couple of quick stops along the way to take in the sites, but for the most part it was hammer down and we made it to our house out side of Ensenada around 10P.M. that night.  The rest of the team had already made it there ahead of us and the stories of everyone’s escapades flew well into the night.

Everyone required some much needed rest after the long pre-run expedition and the night before was none too easy on any of us either.  I was one one of the first one’s up and opted to run to the store and get some groceries for breakfast.  When I got back everyone was starting to rise.  I dropped the goods on the counter and got started on organizing the rest of the week.  Paulina is undoubtedly one of the best chase drivers out there and in addition to that she’s a pretty phenomenal cook as well.  She made us up a great Mexican breakfast and we had a short team meeting to help plan logistics and take care of anything that needed to be addressed after everyone saw their sections.

Check back for the third and final installment about pre-running the 2010 Baja 1000….

My trusty mechanic, bike builder, and co-rider Kenny Sanford, our guard dog for the week, Matt, and I all crossed the border early the morning of November 11th shortly after day-break.  We headed directly to the house that we always rent, which is about 30 minutes outside of Ensenada.  We unloaded my truck and reloaded mine and Kenny’s pre-runners on the back of Chase 1 (the truck piloted by Paulina Nelson). We then got our gear and such ready for the next several days of pre-running at the bottom of the peninsula.  What we brought down but weren’t going to use while pre-running was locked up in the trailer.  Matt would be watching over the house, my truck, and my trailer for the week, and after we went over the pre-running plan and the laws of the land with him we were ready go.  The Benders (Mike, one  of our riders, and his daughter Sadie) and Baja Willie (their trusty chase truck driver), showed up shortly before we took off so that we could caravan down south to where Mike Bender’s section would start at Bahia de Los Angeles (Bay of L.A).  We had Matt follow us down the road to one our favorite taco stands and made sure he wouldn’t starve because of communication break down. Then we were on our way.

Now riding 4 deep in Paulina’s & Nick’s Chevy truck, all of us suffering from sleep deprivation except for Paul, who fortunately got in a power nap while we were getting loaded up at the house.  We made our way down to the Bay of L.A. on the highway and the Bender crew peeled off to start their pre-run adventure.  We continued south to the half way point of the Baja Peninsula to Guerrero Negro.   Thanks to Wes Miller and Harold Goodman, who we hooked up with and had been traveling our way down for the last several hours of our journey that day, we found a nice little hotel to stay in.

The next morning we woke up refreshed and ready to rock!  We got showered up, ate a great breakfast and headed out.  We had an hour and change to drive to San Ignacio that morning.  San Ignacio is where Bender’s section would end and Nick or I would get on the quad for our section.

Prior to leaving house in Ensenada for the race, we had the first half of the course pretty much set in stone as to where each one of the three riders in the north half of the course would ride.  We also had a rough idea of were the last three of us would end up.  We pre-determined that Nick would ride the start to Ojos due to his experience with that portion of the course.  The start seems like a bit of a cool thing but in reality it’s the 15 minutes before you start when you are conversing with the competition that is anything near cool.  After that it’s 35 miles of  dust and fog that is extremely hard to enjoy to say the least.

Mike Kelley III that would take the controls from Nick at Ojos and ride to San Felipe.  From there it would be Jorie Williams who would have to immediately get on and tackle the roughest, nastiest 20+ miles of rocky whoops that Baja has to throw at man and machine.

Following that rough section, Jorie would be making his way to Bay of L.A to hand the quad over to Mike Bender.  Bender would ride a long 200 mile section to San Ignacio, and from there we were somewhat winging it after that!  A major component of this whole “Baja Thing” is to use people to their strengths where they will help the team as much as possible when on the machine.  We knew the strong suits of the first 3, and picked their jobs accordingly so that they could pre-run and not have to worry about anything else.  Between Nick’s logistical knowledge of Baja, and my experience that I have acquired in the last 5 years of racing down there, we figured we could get away with winging it on the rest of the mileage down south, especially since we would be the ones there to do the wingin’…Makes sense, right?  Not to mention these are some really long sections and we prefer to pre-run in pairs when we can.

Nick and I suited up and headed out of San Ig, where the course would lead us out of town and onto a new section of asphalt that neither of us had seen when we had raced this section in the past.  This appeared to be a perfect place for Nick so see how fast his trusty CRF450X could go!  So we stopped and I lent him my GPS so he could try his metal.  He nearly hit the triple digits before we hit the end of the asphalt, he gave me the news over the radio and we continued with our pre-run work.

Once we got off the black-top the course was same as usual for a little while, but then it zigged where it used to zag and we made our way through a new section that neither of us had seen.   The section was a little rougher than the old route and had a couple of silt sections. We spent a little time finding good lines around the silt as it can slow you down, or worse, eat your motor.  When we were satisfied with that section we made our way into San Jaunico, a little fish and surf village on the Pacific Coast. We grabbed some fuel and tacos then headed toward Loreto where our chase truck would be waiting for us just north of town.  We were about two miles from where we should leave the off-road for the highway, well after nightfall, when we came upon a fellow pre-runner on a dirt bike that was having lighting issues.  He flagged us down, we got him started up and we led him out to the road with our lights.

Once we made our way out to the road our chase truck was nowhere to be found.  Fortunately, another Northwest team (with a slightly larger budget), had their chase truck sitting there.  We were unable to get service on our cell phones and the TSCO Trophy Truck chase crew was gracious enough to let us use their Sat Phone to attempt to contact our chase driver.  Our truck was down the road a couple of miles at a similar spot adjacent to the course. After thanking the TSCO guys we continued on to meet our chase crew.

Baja has a way of reminding people of this little thing we call Karma.  Whether you have good Karma or bad Karma coming your way, it will generally find it’s way to you in one form or another.  We helped out our new friend John on the lightless XR650 and the TSCO guys helped us sat phone-less guys out, without question.  It’s nice to have good karma, don’t you think?

We made our way to our chase truck, figured out our logistics issue and noted it for race day.  Then we loaded up our and Lightless Guy’s machines and headed into Loreto for the night.  Loreto and the surrounding area is one of my favorite places on the Baja Peninsula.  It’s  on the Sea of Cortez and surrounded by beautiful beaches, lots of fishing, and great riding! You really can’t ask for much more than that.  We found a good taco stand for dinner, rejoined John with his group, and found a cheap hotel.  It was a bit of a roach but the parking lot looked secure and there appeared to be a lot of other budget racers like ourselves staying there.

Check back for the continuation of the story…

*Brandon Brown: I’m proud to be representing Wiseco In the desert! Thanks for your support!