Cycle News

MOTOCROSSER-TURNED-RALLY-RACER ANDREW SHORT P58 Interview kind of fatigued. Then once you start the race, you have a lot of mental energy you're burning, thinking from navigating and try- ing to read where everyone else is at. You get scared every once in a while. You have a close call and your heart rate spikes. Then also the physical aspect. Some days are really long. Ten, 12, 14 hours of riding. And then you get back and you have a lot of orga- nizational stuff, prep, meetings. There's a lot of other stuff going on in terms of the road book and trying to study where you're go- ing the next day, where the other riders are at, and talking about the bike and all these things. It all blends together, and once you start a rally it's like the world just disappears and you're only focused on what's in front of you at the moment. The other thing I think that's difficult that doesn't really sound that bad is you go from bivouac to bivouac. So you ride from one place in the morn- ing, you end at another place, then you're trying to find where your gear bag is because it got stuffed in some truck, trying to get organized again, find clean socks or maybe you have to do laundry so you're trying to find some clean water somewhere. All these things you take for granted. At home it's a lot easier to do all this stuff and to prep for it than when you're on the road in the desert and all these foreign places. Trying to find clean water for the CamelBak and stuff like this. The challenge and the ad- venture and the places you see, though, are really cool. You have a lot of memories that you'll never forget. It's hard to describe. That's the bummer thing about rally is you go see all this cool stuff and you try to describe it to people and it's hard to communicate it. Even for TV, they show some stuff from the helicopter, but you see some really cool stuff in all these countries. To get to ride 10, 12, 14 hours a day, it sounds like a lot but last year for Silk Way I started in Russia, went through Mongolia a little bit. But then when you're empty and you're pulling into the fuel stop, you're pinning it and the bike's reacting like a motocross bike and you're just sending it. It's super fun. So, the hardest thing to wrap your head around is how much fuel you have at that mo- ment. You pull into the fuel stop and you were just pinning it, hitting bumps and the bike's reacting awesome, and then now you're full again on fuel. It's hard to switch your brain over to thinking, "Okay, I got to brake a little earlier. I got to "YOU HAVE NINE GALLONS OF GAS IN YOUR BIKE, AND THE FIRST BUMP YOU HIT, AND THE THING GOES SIDEWAYS, THAT'S WHEN YOUR MIND OR YOUR STOMACH JUST SINKS." and ended in China in the Gobi Desert. While it's long days, you really get to see the country and the cultures and the people. You see parts of these countries that nobody else really ever gets to see. It's really cool to have all this experience going on. What is it like to ride a rally bike compared to riding a typical off-road bike or a moto- cross bike? It's kind of like a moto bike. The hardest thing to get used to is the fuel. When you start the day, you're ready to go, like gung-ho. You have nine gal- lons of gas in your bike, and the first bump you hit, and the thing goes sideways, that's when your mind or your stomach just sinks. You're like, okay, I got to chill out be a little more mindful of what I'm going to hit." Things like this. So that's the hardest thing about rid- ing a rally bike is just being mindful of how much fuel you have at the moment. But for the most part, those bikes feel like a moto bike when they're empty. They're really fun to ride. You have a two-year deal with Yamaha. Your plan is to do two more Dakars, and two more years of rally? Yeah. That was one of the main motivations for me. It was guaran- teed to go do two more Dakars. I know that you can't force anything at Dakar and sometimes you need a little bit of luck on your side. I want to make the most of it for the next two. I'm really thankful for the opportunity. CN

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