2020 DAKAR RALLY WINNER RICKY BRABEC
P56
Interview
spiked heart rate for 20 minutes at a time.
In rally you never even hit your spiked
heartrate. You're just at a constant 140-
160 heart rate for nine hours. You have to
really be relaxed in the rally. If your heart
rate is spiked at a rally, I wouldn't say that's good.
Because if your heart rate is at 180, and then you
get lost, and now you're freaking out on top of a
high heart rate, that's going to cause you to make
so many more mistakes. Where realistically, if
you get lost, you need to take a deep breath, get
your heart rate down, relax and then just trying to
focus on getting back to where you were.
Speaking of National Hare & Hounds
and AMA District 37, that's what you
grew up doing; how does that translate
to the rally experience?
District 37 is a lot of reading terrain and
rally is also a lot of reading terrain. And District 37 is
marked with flags and dangers, but like I said, you
can't trust all that, so you have to read the terrain
and go fast. So in rally you want to eliminate the road
book by looking only at the important stuff, so you
look at the odometer, direction and dangers, and if
you see a double danger or triple danger or single
danger, you just look down real quick, you know it's
After three months
of hard training in
the Mojave Desert,
Brabec says the
Dakar Rally felt like
trail riding.
EVERY DAY
I WAS JUST
HOLDING MYSELF
TOGETHER AND
JUST TRYING TO
NOT LOSE A LOT
OF TIME AND
ALSO TRYING
NOT TO WIN.
