*Running time: No longer counting Covering the distance counted but your placing did not, today. In a departure from previous years, the last day that mattered from a leader-board perspective was yesterday’s marathon – and today is one for commercial exploitation, only. Just as well, really – once equipped with […]
Day by (painful) Day
9 posts
* Running time: 8h30m 4 blisters and Achilles ugly Awakening again to the sound – and sudden cold – of the turbans pulling down the tent around us, something inside me snapped and I completely lost it, yelling in a redhead rage that –despite the language barrier– proved immediately rewarding. […]
*With a time deadline on stage 4 of 32 hours, today represented a rest day for all of us that managed to make it back overnight (or before) Having self-treated every blister so far, I was today forced to visit the travelling foot doctors ‘Doc Trotters’ after my feet crossed […]
* 1Running time: 17h5m 4 blisters. The ‘Long Day’ at 75km, this was the one we were all dreading. But against odds and sense, I absolutely loved it. Temperatures absolutely soared during the day, peaking at 54C through the salt flats, but highlights made it bearable. The elite runners start […]
Running time: 7h16m Feet fine so far. The male winner of the MdS last year dropped out today. Fiercest Sunday morning I’ve met in a while. We are woken by Gurkhas who – in order to wake us, pull the grandly-titled ‘tent’ down from above us. A pole in the head […]
Running time: 6h18m 1 blister. Today was tough, seriously tough. And though shorter than yesterday, several times harder. Sleep is proving evasive, as the level of snoring in the camp left me genuinely concerned that there were runners among us that were about to inhale their own head; and all […]
* Running time: 6h48 3 blisters. Now taping my back, shoulders and hips each morning, there is, I suppose an irony in that through my participation in the MdS, I have developed what appears to be a sloth’s bedsores on every backpack touchpoint. Flat and hard, the terrain was the […]
We queue endlessly and nervously for ECG submission, pack checking and the issuance of our salt-tabs, bazooka-sized flare and ASBO-style ankle tracking-tag. Slow-roasting in the sunshine in each respective queue, it was a chance to get to know the other competitors ..although this often stretched to the uncomfortable extent that […]
After a 6-hour journey into the desert, army trucks deliver us to our destination. A mad scramble follows as we rush to secure both tent location and tentmates (which will then remain the same at every camp, for every stage to come) A brief 5 minutes of self-satisfaction after this […]