How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
How To Read a Roadbook Like a Dakar Vet
There’s a reason we keep going back for more. For some, it’s the freedom, the control, or the ultimate personal or competitive challenge. It’s the need for speed, the thrill of being on the edge and always heading into the unknown. It’s pure adventure and the chance to test our character and better ourselves. Or even to prove ourselves against the best. But nothing quite beats the feeling of achievement after overcoming a grueling week, sometimes two, of roadbook racing, which demands more than mere riding ability, testing even the most talented and prepared riders.
Looking past the roadbook for a moment, what sets rally raid, or roadbook racing, apart from other off-road events? Well, rally dishes out a lot of everything off-road motorsports have to offer and more. The pace changes continuously. It sends you through every type of terrain and landscape. And it’s not a sprint event; motorcycles have to carry enough fuel to cover 250 km, and vehicles in the auto category have to be able to complete an entire racing section on one tank. The days are long, ranging between 500 and 900 km, including liaison sections, which means you’ll easily do between 3,000 and 8,000 km in a single race. And if you happen to have trouble out there, be it mechanical, navigational, sometimes emotional—like when you’re trying to pick up a 400-pound bike in the dunes for the 37th time while screaming, crying, or questioning your life choices—your racing day could continue well into the night. And that’s okay! Because it’s rally. It’s tough; it tests you. Things can happen to everyone and anyone, and the race will undoubtedly push you to your limits.
Working on bikes in the Malle Moto bivouac.
Sponsor Ad
On to the main difference: The roadbook, that vital bunch of paper that from a distance appears to be a lot of numbers and symbols. In rally, it’s true you can only race as fast as you can navigate. As a rider, you are a fine-tuned multi-tasker—a racer, a mechanic, a faultfinder, a shrink, and your own navigator—reading from a map in the form of a scroll with hundreds of instructions listed down its length. With multiple buttons at your fingertips, you’ll continually be matching your roadbook notes to the odometer. And as you reach instructions, landmarks, or waypoints, you’ll have the opportunity to set your odometer to match them perfectly. Out there, you’ll race waypoint to waypoint, and to “open” and validate each one, you’ll have to navigate through and hit each instruction between. And, oh man, does the beep of validating a waypoint become thrilling! My kind of real-life gaming.
What is a Roadbook?
The roadbook is a simple bunch of information. But just because it’s “simple” doesn’t mean it should be underestimated. It can, after all, leave even the best navigators confused. The first box in a row will always have the exact kilometer of the note, and right below it will be the partial distance from the previous note. The second box (to the right) is for the diagram, explaining an environmental situation and any information about the immediate section using pre-established symbols and abbreviated text. Part of the illustration will always have a line with an arrow showing the way. The third box will provide additional information after the indicated kilometers, including speed limits. Sometimes a single note can have several instructions and extra pieces of information.
All in all, it’s quite logical and comes down to how you, as the navigator, interpret each instruction. Every rider may interpret these instructions differently. Doubt in your direction or heading can creep up fast, which happens to the best of us, but confidence comes with experience. And many errors in the beginning.
Learning to Read It
Making time to mark a roadbook.To keep the roadbook as simple, quick to read, and comprehensible as possible, symbols and abbreviations are used, and are referred to as “lexicons.” There’s a lexicon for almost everything you’ll encounter out there racing. If some new change to the race course pops up, organizers of an event will write about and draw it out in more detail, then relay that information to the competitors to mark for themselves. At the moment, the abbreviations are still in French for all major races across the globe, which is easy enough to learn and understand. But some events are adopting English versions.
Another critical skill in navigation is understanding and using CAP headings, often taking up a big part of the roadbook for any given day. “CAP heading” refers to degrees on a compass, like north being 0 or 360 and south being 180. The reason they use CAP headings, often followed by ciphers explaining exactly how and when you should follow the heading, is because a lot of rally racing is “off piste,” meaning there are no visible paths or tracks to follow, or that you should be ignoring said tracks. Pilots are often racing into the unknown or into dunes where there are no roads, and a straight line isn’t going to happen no matter how talented they are. So, essentially, competitors are forging their own tracks as they navigate through certain terrain. Another reason there’s a CAP heading may be because the race course often encounters multiple crossroads weaving in and out of one another—quite a mess if you will. Off-piste parts of a roadbook are often the trickiest because you have to trust your own interpretation of the note and its outcome.
All That to Say…
Rally is beyond racing. It demands full focus for days on end. It’s as much a mental game as a physical one, with late nights, early mornings, limited sleep, and limited time to eat properly, among other things. And to give some perspective, most motorcyclists who take on the Dakar Rally, a two-week off-road race, lose 10% or more of their body weight due to the physical toll. You also must take care of your machinery and make sure it gets to the end of the race in one piece. So, there are many things that must come together when you take on a rally: riding ability, navigation, fitness, focus, preparation, backup, and, of course, a reliable machine.
Like so many others from so many different racing backgrounds, I’ve come to call rally racing home. With close to two hundred races to my name—multiple international rallies and two Dakar Rallies—I’ve been through a lot to reach where I am now. As a woman, and quite vertically challenged too, I like to believe I’ve made quite the art of learning quickly and adapting. I’ve been breaking boundaries and pushing limits since the first day I threw a leg over my 450cc back in 2013, and, now, competing with the world’s best co-pilots at Dakar is a whole other level. And, I have no plans to slow down anytime soon.
People like to say racing takes some serious balls (and it does, metaphorically). Well, rally requires balls, brains, and so much more! One thing is certain: finishing any rally is a significant achievement on its own. Some go for the finish. Others, like me, go to push our limits. For one, I am always after a challenge, always looking to better myself and my abilities, to test myself against the best. When everything comes together, being able to proficiently read a roadbook will undoubtedly give you the upper hand out on a stage, as well as make it all the more fun to chase down note after note. Just remember to always focus on where you are right now, kilometer by kilometer, day by day, because time does fly when you’re out there on the edge.
Taye Perry is a South African off-road racer who likes to push boundaries. With multiple SA championships to her name in both off-road and cross-country racing, she’s gone on to do the Dakar both on a motorcycle and in the T1 Auto category, where she navigated and competed with the world’s finest co-pilots. Taye has a passion for off-road and desert racing and can be found waiting patiently on international rallies’ start lines.
