I watched a DVD called “Dust to Glory” about the Baja 1000 moto-race. The millionaire stars on it kept saying “1000 miles.” It’s a 1000 KILOMETER race. 632 miles. Still huge, of course. I wondered what was going on when they showed how racers were doing in the night at mile 610 and the narrator said “only 50 miles to the finish!” Hello? OK, I just googled it further and the race varies between various distances, apparently from 500 miles to a full 1000 miles, from circuit events to point to point. This movie was about a 1000 km version, though.
A good finish time was 20 hours. That’s a 30mph average. Great for 2-track action, for sure. But that flies a bit in the face of all the 70mph and 140mph talk. Still…the speeds shown were crazy fast, astonishing to see sometimes. But that’s what straightaways are for, huh?
Then I watched a DVD that covered an adventure race. At least one of the racers refered a couple times to paddling more than he ever had. He never thought he could push himself that far. —280 kms! Whoa, that IS a lot. Far more than any extreme pro canoe race on earth. Dang! I checked out the race: it’s 28 km! Doh! Hmm, I think he was being interviewed at the finish. Maybe that explains it.
Motorists are often WAY off their distances, but I’d think racers—or their documentary film-makers—would know. And in human-power sport folks usually have a REAL good feel for even a single kilometer. A mile can seem long. Maybe it was the media’s fault both times in this case? : )
