Day 4

I was dreading today. It was admin day. The day they weigh and check your kit and pay particlar attention to your Medical certificates. Flares and salt tablets also get distributed. I knew it was going to be one long queue!

However, we arrived early at a sprawling hotel complex out in the desert and met a few more great comrades in the line and the time just flew by! The kit checks were basically signing a bit of paper declaring you had everything and that was that! I was expecting to unpack everything, then get a few raised eyebrows over my weird ECG reading. Not a bit of it! The French organisers really came into their own and the whole thing was very painless! Happy days! After this I bought a pair of desert goggles and set about hanging out the whole day! One thing that stands out is a woman that had a broken arm, apparently she had gone for a run on the first day out in Morocco and fell over. She was in a cast and you could see her bruised fingers....her race was over before it had begun.

It was mostly Sunny and we we went up on the roof of the hotel to hang out, we had a great lunch laid on for us and we had nothing else to do but wait for Patric Bauer's speech. When this finally happened he declared that because of the unique weather conditions we had to make some decisions together. Everyone suddenly felt very included and wondered what the options might be! Then he stuck it to us: "Cancel the race or carry on". Er, not quite what we were all expecting Patrick but I guess any more options would only of caused arguments!

We got back to our hotel at around 7 and enjoyed some more sweet tea. Tomorrow we are off!!!!