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 most accommodating we have had yet and I had a strong start, running all the way to checkpoint 1. However after that, the wheels quickly came off. My taped torso might limit further skin chafing and the stingy ouchiness of salty sweat in my open wounds.. but it offers little protection to the existing bruising, and the pain crippled me to a lolloping walk. Which was very frustrating as the salt flats that came, not only provided the perfect terrain to run on, but also quickly became a heat trap as the sun rose higher in the sky, temperatures apparently reaching over 50C today.
The prim humour we found in the Y-fronted Frenchman on the first day is gone, replaced by the gritty realism of communal living with all the sanitary resource and privacy that the desert offers (none). And I now feel like I have seen enough parts of other people, to qualify as a doctor. Or at least a pervert. The quietly assumed ‘500-meter from anyone before anything can be done’ rule has been quickly unwound on practical grounds and there is a bizarre humour in dodging round other runners who, to answer their call of nature, simply stop and squat on route, looking like defecating Transformers in their tech running gear and rucksacks.
I literally crawl over the finish – and then had to sit for a further 10 minutes, before making the 200m walk to our tent.
Post-run, the tent has fallen into a familiar routine of comparing then dressing wounds, cooking supper and then retiring to bed. Normally by 8pm. ‘Cooking’ supper was quicker for me – and will be from hereon after I slung my 200g ‘cooker’/bunsen burner at an earlier checkpoint today, in another purge on bag weight.
Surprising nobody apart from me, my cold, half-hydrated curry was not as good as I hoped it would be.
I am now very tempted to make my Blackberry the next item that I leave to the sands of the desert – though a conviction that the day I sling it will be the day I get any sort of phone signal, keeps it with me. For one more day at least, anyway.
* 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 most accommodating we have had yet and I had a strong start, running all the way to checkpoint 1. However after that, the wheels quickly came off. My taped torso might limit further skin chafing and the stingy ouchiness of salty sweat in my open wounds.. but it offers little protection to the existing bruising, and the pain crippled me to a lolloping walk. Which was very frustrating as the salt flats that came, not only provided the perfect terrain to run on, but also quickly became a heat trap as the sun rose higher in the sky, temperatures apparently reaching over 50C today.
The prim humour we found in the Y-fronted Frenchman on the first day is gone, replaced by the gritty realism of communal living with all the sanitary resource and privacy that the desert offers (none). And I now feel like I have seen enough parts of other people, to qualify as a doctor. Or at least a pervert. The quietly assumed ‘500-meter from anyone before anything can be done’ rule has been quickly unwound on practical grounds and there is a bizarre humour in dodging round other runners who, to answer their call of nature, simply stop and squat on route, looking like defecating Transformers in their tech running gear and rucksacks.
I literally crawl over the finish – and then had to sit for a further 10 minutes, before making the 200m walk to our tent.
Post-run, the tent has fallen into a familiar routine of comparing then dressing wounds, cooking supper and then retiring to bed. Normally by 8pm. ‘Cooking’ supper was quicker for me – and will be from hereon after I slung my 200g ‘cooker’/bunsen burner at an earlier checkpoint today, in another purge on bag weight.
Surprising nobody apart from me, my cold, half-hydrated curry was not as good as I hoped it would be.
I am now very tempted to make my Blackberry the next item that I leave to the sands of the desert – though a conviction that the day I sling it will be the day I get any sort of phone signal, keeps it with me. For one more day at least, anyway.
