Day 3 of running

So, there I was on the start line staring down the barrel of nearly 60 miles across the Sahara with diarrhoea. Does immodium even work??? Insanity, but what were the options? Between the ears I felt great, I just had to make sure I did not dehydrate and keep moving forward. If I could do that glory awaited! Sure it was going to hurt more and take a lot longer than I had planned but hey, I was actually pretty at ease with the whole situation.

It was so inconvenient having to stop and shit every 30 minutes or so but mentally I felt fine. I would bump into familiar faces at CP's and most of them said I did not look great. Oddly I felt a little offended because mentally I felt fine. I had already started considering a decent rest after CP 4 though to make sure I was not pummeling myself into the ground too much. I cant be arsed to talk about the details of the route but if we got to CP4 (50km) within 16 hours we were quids in. CP 4 also blessed me with a pack of tissues from another runner who took pity on my request for toilet paper. Thank you.

The stage between 4 and 5 was pretty brutal, we got this monumental rock climb that required being on all fours at times and would of been hard on fresh legs in daylight. I found out the next day that someone had fallen and had to be helicoptered out. Ouch! After this climb they hit us with a really hard set of dunes, navigation was hard and I was dead pleased to have my super bright little torch. These Dunes went on forever and I mean forever. This was the time I asked myself some of those serious questions about how much you want to finish. I remember having a little sit down on one of the sand dunes and wondered if it was steep enough to slide down on my bum! It was, Hooray! With this little morale boost I pushed on. It was at this point an Austrian gent and me teamed up. It was obvious that all we could think about was the next checkpoint. My brain was constantly asking where is this FUCKING checkpoint. The Austrian gent with me was in his 60's and I was feeling too polite to swear in front of him. With thinly veiled desperation I said; 'where is this checkpoint'. He replied with; 'yeah where is this fucking checkpoint'. Perfect. I smiled to myself.

The dunes eventually ended and in the distance I could see CP5 (64.5km). I marched on but 10 metres before the line I had to drop my shorts again. Heartbreaking. Even worse I was running very low on toilet paper. It was too cold to be standing there bollock naked and trust me when you squat on feet after 16hours of walking/running they hurt. I mean really hurt. My feet literally felt like they were going to burst. It was yet another miserable few minutes.

After crossing the line I got my water and requested more. This incurred a time penalty but after the day I'd had I was hardly heading for a podium finish. Better that I avoided dehydration. CP5 gave me the best treat of the race, perhaps my life! A campfire!!!!! I sat next to that bad boy and took stock. It was 1.20am and I had been on the move since about 9am the previous morning. My feet were hurting and the balls of my feet def had something worrying going on. I boiled some water on the campfire and made a meal. I ate and dozed, ate and dozed. The heat from the fire was bliss. A little after 2am I got up and went to the medical tent for more immodium. I felt a little funny and had to concentrate, nope, still felt funny so walked back to my fire and rucksac and collapsed. Blackout baby!! The worrying thing was I was not sure if I had fallen on my bag or the fire. Genuinely scared for a second but my pretty face got to live on.

I layed in the dirt for a while with the wind blowing and wondered why I was not feeling cold. I was also hoping no one had noticed my faint. The medics might of pulled me out the race if they had noticed.

The faint was not an unpleasant sensation, it felt quite nice in a strange way and it made decisions quite easy. I had time to burn until the final cut off and 'only' two stages to go - best to rest and let my body find some kind of equilibrium again. I got my sleeping bag out and slept under the stars, every so often I would wake to see more sleeping bags had appeared around me. Naturally I had to get up and answer natures call a couple of times and within a minute of getting out of my sleeping bag I was shaking uncontrollably. It was cold but it meant my PHD Minimus sleeping bag was doing me proud!!!! In the morning light I remember watching sand blowing off the top of a Dune about a km away, it flowed off in a clear vortex and it looked amazing. I wont ever forget that.

Morning came and a vid camera was shoved in my face, I tried to look cool and relaxed, not sure what they wanted from me. Then Louise shouted my name out! Nice to see a familiar face. She had arrived at CP5 at around 4.30am! I would not of swapped places with her for all the tea in China! I was dead chuffed with my sleep!

I decided seeing Doc trotter about my feet made sense and joined the queue just as she went for Brekky and ended up waiting for an hour and finally got going at around 7am i think, or maybe 8?

The final two stages were hot and I was glad to finally hit the finish line at around 2.30pm in the afternoon. With tears in my eyes I hugged Angelique and Charlie at the finish line. Angelique smelt a lot better.

Day two of running

The morning brought good news about Penny. She had made a full recovery and was ready to rock! Was genuinely pleased for her.

On to business; This day was a shock. The first stage really got to me, I am guessing it was because I drank so much water on the start line and diluted my electrolytes, who knows? I do know it was hard though, I had to stop at about 10 minutes in to adjust kit and told Charlie to get a move on. After that point I spent the day pretty much on my own having the odd chat with other runner. I even got asked by a complete stranger if I knew a girl called Justine. I did! she had told him I was running and to look out for me! small world!

This first stage dragged, tricky terrain and finding a rhythm was hard I slowed to a walk and felt pretty daunted by the whole thing. Stage 1 of only day 2 and I was buggered! CP1 eventually came in to view and I was pleased to get there! I got my water ration and popped a Nuun pill. This really helped but what helped most was hearing people who got to the CP a little after me who were really pleased with their time! Its all a matter of perspective! Feeling rejuvenated I headed off. The next two stages were long and hard but I felt like I was making forward progress so it was bearable.

The day finished with a hard but relatively short stint in some dunes. I was pleased to be finished and was surprised when Charlie said he had only been back about 30mins. I had taken around 6 hours. Everyone felt pretty beat up after day two and it was reassuring that almost everyone had found the days course hard.

On the down side. this was the night I starting making regular and I mean regular trips to the latrine. Tomorrow was the longest stage of the race a massive 81km (the longest in the history of the race). With a funny tummy it was going to be a long day! I am not sure what time we got the news that night but before we went to sleep we got word that to make up for the cancelled day they had boosted the day to 91km. By far the longest stage in the MDS's 24 year history! We were daunted but pleased, we may of been robbed of a day but now we had a new bragging right!

Day 5....first day running!!!

woke at 5.30am and FELT SO DAM HAPPY!!!!!!

Got ready and was on the bus for 7am and at the start line area for 9.30am. Man it was cold hanging around the start but god it all felt good, chatting with official photographers and getting our first ration of water! This was real baby!!

The race started just after 10 and man it was awesome, hugging and kissing anyone and everyone, wishing new friends and strangers good luck, listening to Patricks speech, helicopter hovering overhead, race countdown 10, 9, 8, 7, 6.........2,1 GOOOOOOOOO!

We were off and the dunes were a couple k in the distance. God they were beautiful. Me and chaz ran together for all of day one and it was awesome. Few problems with the straps holding my roll mat on but Stocko did me proud and the adrenaline and smiles were still brimming over at the first checkpoint which signalled the end of the largest dunes in Morocco! We def ran from Checkpoint 1 to CP2 a bit tooo enthusiastically but what the hell it felt great! When we got to CP2 it was set amongst some beautiful ruins and the helicopter swooped low over us. AWESOME!!!!!

CP2 also gave us the funniest quote of the day. When taking a leak before setting off again Charlie, calmly delivered the following unforgettable line: "there is a fly on my peanus". We laughed. Alot. The next stage was a mix of kind of grassy hills followed by another Dune field which was smaller but even more stunning than the first. Happy days. Arrived at the finish line around 5 and a half hours after we had started.

More water rations and finally assigned to a tent. Tent 65! A couple of people tent mates were already back and one of them (Tim) had smashed the first day - he had been back ages! On a more worrying note, one of the people we had befriended Penny had gone down with salt depletion and was very ill - she was not overly interested in continuing the race. Yikes, felt really gutted for her.

Got some recovermax down me and got cooking. Managed to have two pouches before dinner and was in bed at 7.45. I have dreamed about laying under a desert sky for years and the night sky in the desert did not let me down!

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!!!!

Day 3

Well, today consisted of drinking sweet tea, watching the rain start, stop and start stop. We even went for a run in the rain which was awesome! At some stage today we found out that day 1 was def cancelled and everyone is really on tenter hooks waiting for more news.


We had a great little announcement from great French guy. His short speech finished with: "I have no more information - any questions?" It certainly raised a laugh from his (very) captive audience.


On top of all this we ate too much and met Michaela and Debs friends Zayne and Sara. Oh yeah and ate way too much. Boredom is a terrible thing.

Day 2

Early start after Charlie got his alarm wrong (its becoming a habit!!). Bloody good job though because Jeremy knocked on our door telling us that the coach was now leaving at 8am instead of 9! No dramas and headed off to brekky for another big feed before being shipped into the desert!

Once on the bus we were handed our roadbooks for the race. For me this was really, really special. It made everything so real. We had a couple of great girls on the bus behind us, Michaela and Debs. The Controleur with us, Angelique was also great. Let the conversation flow!

A short while after we set off, something strange happened. It started raining and 5 hours later it was still raining. My mind inevitably started thinking about how this could affect us. If the campsite is wet then we were in trouble.....the one thing no one can be prepared for is wet weather. Our sleeping bags in particular are totally useless if they get wet. Do I just attract bad weather?? Its the Sahara for Christs sake!!!

There was a crazily fat bloke on the bus who was jumping off at every stop and chain smoking. Angelique finally cracked and asked if he was running. 'Yes', came the reply! My curiosity also got the better of me and asked if he was taking ciggies out on the run with him. Again, 'yes' was the answer. 'How many' I asked. '20 a day' came the reply. I clearly looked surprised and he followed up with: 'well, there not heavy are they?'.

You cant argue with logic like that!

After a packed lunch and few pee stops we were at our destination and army trucks were ready to take us to the first campsite. Charlie and i missed the first trucks so got out the rain and back on the bus. Then we were told we were heading off on the bus to another place because access was becoming difficult because of the rain. So, there we were parked up in this little town while alternative arrangements were made. An hour turned into several and rumours started to get scary! The fact the french competitors could not even get past roads that we had travelled on a few hours before hand was worrying. Or, Perhaps they just surrendered to easily.

After lots of waiting around and more worrying rumours we were told we were going to be sent to a hotel and to expect an update tomorrow. Mmmmmmm.

First day of trip....

Despite no sleep the night before flying I had a cracking day travelling to Morocco. I knew I would forget something though and it was whilst eating a bowl of pasta at the airport that I remembered my lucky shorts had been left on the radiator in the Bathroom. Dickhead. Anyway the check in queue looked like a Raidlight convention with everyone carrying the same red and grey backpacks.....this was really happening!! Met up with Charlies mate, Matt as well. Ended up next to another runner from Ireland called Gary on the plane as well and it was clear that this trip was going to be as much about the people I met as the desert.

Getting off the plane was pretty hot and after a tortuously slow wait for passport control to show up and do their job...painful! % minutes of coach ride to the airport and we were at our hotel, the room was fine but the pool area was properly outstanding and I was having some pretty vivid fantasies about being back there in a week and being able to enjoy a cold beer!!

Before dinner we popped for mineral water and attempted a comedy haggle and I suggested popping for sweet tea at a little restaurant opposite our hotel. It went down very well and little did we know that we were going to have ample opportunity to enjoy lots more over the coming days!

Dinner that night was a hefty affair with more new faces and great banter. I think I totalled about 4 or 5 plates of food. Happy days!