I have, after some thought, decided not to enter the Dakar Rally next month.

Here’s why. This was my method for a day out in Spain with Red Bull KTM star Sam Sunderland, the only British rider to win the notoriously tough event.

Start. Ride slowly, looking carefully at road book, but still get lost at second waypoint. Sigh, backtrack, reset odometer, and continue. Encounter steep rocky section. Sigh. Somehow get up it without killing myself. Look up to where Sam is already a distant speck on the horizon.

Sam cleverly reducing wear on the front tyre

Now here’s Sam’s method during the Dakar.

Get up at 3am and ride at up to 100mph for up to 13 hours a day across rough ground and sand while simultaneously following the road book and diverting around countless obstacles then working out a new compass heading to get back on track for the next waypoint. Repeat for up to 14 days.

It’s a bit like running an ultra marathon, every day, for two weeks – while doing Mensa tests. If you want to see how good he is, just google Sam Sunderland Red Bull and watch the videos in awe.

Mind you, he has been riding motocross since he was seven. Now 30, he entered his first Dakar in 2012, and was in seventh place until forced to retire by an electrical fault.

Sam is astonished anyone can ride so slowly and not fall over

After stage wins in 2014 and 2015, when he was leading but missed the last waypoint before the finish line and lost two hours, he missed the 2016 event after breaking his leg at the Merzouga Rally in Morocco.

He finally won the Dakar in 2017, then while leading in 2018 injured his spine so badly it was feared he’d be paralysed, but was back on the bike in less than a month, and won this year’s World Championship with a round to spare.

In the 2019 Dakar, he lost 10 minutes stopping to help injured rider Paulo Goncalves, but won the stage after the organisers gave him the time back.

He is, as you can imagine, one tough cookie, but funny and thoughtful with it – he’s currently reading Tools of Titans, in which Tim Ferriss interviews 200 high achievers, to help him pick up tips for improving physically and mentally.

Sam finishes the rowing race while Geoff's still warming up

I could have done with some after our first session of the day – an hour of rowing and cycling sprints, plus strength work in the gym in Igualada, the town near Barcelona where he and manager Jordi Viladoms are based, and where Sam splits his time between Andorra and France to be with his girlfriend Florence.

Now, as a former international volleyball player, I was once in the gym every day, but it’s been a while, so I emerged wobbling slightly to find our bikes waiting for us – two light and agile KTM 450s.

Geoff, left, and Sam, right, painting their road books

But first we had to paint the road books, the scrolls of paper contained in a Perspex box on the handlebars with horizontal grids containing a kilometre figure for where you reached a waypoint, a diagram of which way to turn there, and a disturbingly large number of signs saying “Danger!!!”.

Sitting with Sam, I went through each waypoint with marker pens, highlighting the turn directions in green and the dangerous bits in red.

On the Dakar, Sam’s given this at the end of each riding day, then has to sit down and spend up to four hours painting hundreds of waypoints, although this year, rally organisers are trying out a new system of pre-painted ones.

“Er, Sam, is this route we’re doing difficult?” I said as we walked out to the bikes.

“Not really. Couple of technical bits,” he said. Now, to riders like Sam, technical means fun. To idiots like me, it means checking your affairs are in order.

Oh well, my motto for this year is to live in the moment and have no fear, so off we went.

Geoff loading his road book

After making a complete mess of navigating at the start, I got steadily better and faster. Heavens, I even made it into fourth gear at one stage, but as I say, I don’t think I’ll be entering next month’s Dakar, being held in Saudi Arabia for the first time.

There, yet again, Sam will face a daily mental and physical battle racing across a route he’s never seen before while battling constant fatigue, and being very aware that while he’s alone out there, he has the hopes and dreams of the 30-strong Red Bull KTM team on his shoulders.

“I love the racing, but I also love the adventure of being in so many different countries and having these experiences,” he said.

“I’m so fortunate to work hard and be surrounded by people who have the same mentality.Before I turned professional, I served a four-year apprenticeship for a lift company, so I could be fixing lifts for a living.

Sam waiting patiently for Geoff... again

 “The worst bits are getting injured, then fighting back to fitness, but it makes winning after that all the better.

“When I was 17, I saved for months to buy my first car, a Peugeot 106. I really appreciated that car because I’d worked hard to get it, and I feel the same about the Dakar trophy, because I know how hard I had to work to get that.

“And the privateers work even harder than the factory team guys, since they have to do all their own mechanical work as well. I talked to one guy at the end of the Dakar, and his overall riding time was 270 hours, three times mine.”

However, winning the Dakar hasn’t been his biggest challenge. That was when he was riding between stages in Argentina and stopped at a red light. A woman stepped out of the crowd, handed him her baby for a photo, then got swallowed up by the crowd surging forwards for autographs as the lights changed.

She did, you’ll be glad to hear, get it back.

Follow Sam at redbull.com/gb-en/athlete/sam-sunderland

Geoff finally gets the hang of it... Next stop the Dakar

The name’s Triumph... Triumph Tiger

This just in from M – Triumph’s Scrambler 1200 and new Tiger 900 will feature in the 25th James Bond film No Time To Die, released in April.

MirrorBiking has already reviewed the Scrambler on its launch, and we’ll be at the Tiger 900 launch in Morocco in February, so you’ll be reading all about it before the movie comes out.

The Triumph Speed Triple 955i featured in a great chase scene in Mission Impossible 2 in 2000 and, of course, before then, a TR6 in The Great Escape, ridden by Steve McQueen and Bud Ekin.

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