Baja Xtreme, Baja Mexico (August 2004)
Fifteen miles south of Ensenda teams gathered for the Baja X-treme, 24-hour adventure race. The field included a number of Mexican teams both novice and experienced and a handful of U.S. teams that made the three-hour drive from San Diego. Team Epi was billed as the favorite, certainly the team with the most experience, but in a race like this you just never know. There can always be a fast local team or two that surprises everyone.
Team Epi, Karen Lundgren, Paul Romero and veteran teammate Roger Williams, were prepared to go hard taking nothing for granted.
At 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning teams lined up on a beautiful white sandy beach ready to sprint with their boats to the calm, clear Pacific Ocean waters. The start was a 15 mile paddle heading south down the coast of Baja. Team Epi took a commanding lead from the start making it to the turnaround point more than one mile in the lead.
A quick transition and the threesome left the boats and headed out with fins and kickboards across the bay to a short ropes section. With no teams in site, Roger ascended up the 60 foot cliff-side using hand ascenders and trailing a soggy bag of swim gear. Several loose rocks on the cliff plummeted to the water as Roger made his way to the top. Paul was next and ascended the rope without a hitch but still managed to knock several rocks loose from the cliff-side. Karen headed up last as the second place team was just approaching the shoreline. The loose rocks would become more of a hazard as several teams approached the ropes together.
After Team Epi completed the ascent and started off on the bikes, race organizers cancelled the ascending sighting a concern for the safety of the competitors. Several competitors were hit with falling rocks, narrowing dodging injury.
The 50,000:1 scale maps made navigation a bit tricky heightened by the fact that none of the contours lines were marked with elevation. Karen, Paul and Roger began the bike section that would climb several fire roads and then onto the difficult to follow “cowboy trails.” These “cowboy” trails seemed better suited for cows then bikes and headed up some hillsides that made carrying the bikes difficult. Carrying and sometimes riding their bikes, teams dodged a variety of cactus to avoid the inevitable flat tire.