Fartleks & Flatulence Read online

  To pay for my tea and laziness I decide to do a bit of running. Looking at my watch I decided to run for 45 minutes, the 45 minutes that I had spent languishing at the 5 star checkpoint had to be paid for somehow. As I ran I caught and passed a ‘runner’ then continuing on I could see another one. Though my 45 minutes were up I decided to carry on until I caught them. I did. I started walking again - eventually I came across the last checkpoint before the finish. This checkpoint had loads of room and was kitted out to accommodate the runners that decided to have a sleep: it was tempting but I decided to get out asap, spending less than 5 minutes there.

  Moving on, I could see a couple of runners moving slowly. When I eventually caught up with them I realised it was a couple of blokes from the tent - Nick and Charlie. We teamed up for a short while, until Charlie who was moving along quite well decided to push on, leaving me and Nick. We were both knackered but were happy to get on and finish this stage together. It was now late, getting on for 23:30, and we started talking all sorts of bollocks, the sort of bollocks that blokes come out with when the situation is desperate.

  As we were both waffling away the time, and the distance, we both noticed something up ahead - a shadowy figure just in front of us. The waffling stopped and the ears and eyes strained to make sense of what it was. Then, suddenly and without warning the whole place was lit up! The sudden brightness made me lose my balance - I wobbled and stumbled a couple of steps and then heard voices in my head. What the *&^%$ was going on? Then my befuddled brain worked out what was happening - I realised that it was a film crew eager to catch out unsuspecting weary runners. We both politely declined the offer of an interview (at that moment I would have struggled to tell them my full name and date of birth). They understood and switched the lights off. My carefully built up night vision was now non-existent and I moved with unsure jerky movements, unsure of where to place my feet!

  We continued along and noticed that the terrain was becoming very rocky and the green glowing snapsticks were becoming more numerous. Turning a corner to our right and following the line of lights took us right into the campsite and the finish line. We had done it. In a little over 16 hours we had completed the long stage day.

  We crossed the line together, congratulated ourselves with a very manly pat on the back or two, then BANG Nick collapsed. The staff on the finish line called the medics over, Nick was taken to the medical tent, put on intravenous drips and wrapped in foil blankets. He looked bloody awful and yet not five minutes ago we were talking bollocks! I was happy he was getting sorted out and was in safe hands but I was knackered and in pain, needed something to eat and drink as I was of no use to any one just standing around the medical tent. I made my way over to our tent. A few people were awake including Charlie who inquired about Nick but some lucky sods were sound asleep and had obviously been here for hours. A quick bite to eat and bed time. A little over four hours later and the camp was awake. Today was a day off, well, it was for those of us lucky enough to have finished.

  Looking around I noticed that some of the tent were still out there but stragglers were still coming in in dribs and drabs. The

  loud clapping and cheering when someone crossed the finish line gave us ample warning that another runner had arrived.

  I sat there watching camp life, had a cup of coffee and something to eat then made my way over to the medical tent for more surgery and a little sympathy. Unfortunately, they had completely run out of sympathy and weren’t expecting any anytime soon!

  On my return to the tent I saw that three people had arrived:- two girls and Alun. It was good to see them but they did not look happy. On entering the tent I immediately detected an atmosphere, my ‘atmosphere-detecting abilities’ are acute and have been honed and finely-tuned over many years of getting myself in the doghouse at home! The two girls seemed furious - something or somebody had upset them - maybe they had upset each other. I desperately wanted to know but to broach the subject would require a degree of tact and diplomacy - skills that I didn’t possess. Two very angry, tired females was something that most sensible men would be frightened of and I’m ashamed to say that my courage deserted me. I lay on my sleeping bag pretending that all was well. Eventually, however, and once they had calmed down a little (it takes a lot of effort to be that angry, effort that was for now in short supply) the whole story came out. Apparently it was all to do with the Italians, or should I say one Italian in particular. This one Italian had been in a desperate state, hardly moving, constantly stopping and sitting down and was generally in a bad way. The girls came across him, gave him some water and little bits of food, talked him into continuing when he had been so adamant that he would have to give up. They walked with him and encouraged him to keep going. However, a couple of hundred yards away before finishing line, the Italian machismo, ego or pride kicked in. He just could not be seen to have been helped by the girls so he ran off trying to reach the finish before them. They were furious and the red mist descended. They gave chase, caught him and beat him - to the line that is. It was the ingratitude and downright cheek of the Italian that had so angered the girls.

  Later on during the day Nick came over to the tent - he looked a lot better than when I had last seen him. However, he was out of the race, couldn’t remember collapsing and was more embarrassed than annoyed. He looked thoroughly dejected but vowed to return.

  It’s a strange mixture of emotions when someone who, for whatever reason, is unable or unwilling to finish - as the girls had demonstrated - you would do whatever you could to help someone keep going, be it a dose of encouragement or more practical help. However, the moment the decision is made you secretly think to yourself, yes, another one down. A guilty thought that no one will ever admit to but a thought that 90% of us shared. It’s not meant to be malicious, cruel or nasty - it is just a relief to know that you are not the only one suffering, regretting or crying your way round. Others are as well - only, you have for whatever reason, be it luck or stupidity, managed to hold on for just a little bit longer.

  With Nick now out of the race it brought the total of non-finishers in our tent to 4. With still two days to go I wondered if there would be any more casualties. I hoped not - could I hold on? Physically it would be touch and go, but with a little bit of luck and a large dose of bloody-mindedness I might (fingers crossed) just make it.

  STAGE 5

  AMJERANE-IFERT

  Though I had been lucky enough to have so far survived, and by survived I do mean SURVIVED, I was under no illusion that today was going to be tough.

  At 42km it was the second longest stage, virtually a marathon. Any normal marathon runner would have been tapering off (gradually reducing their running prior to marathon day). Not us - from day one we had slowly been increasing our running prior to marathon day.

  It was my total ignorance regarding training that was now a blessing - had I known that you were supposed to decrease and not increase the mileage I might have been a little concerned. I wasn’t - all I knew that today wasn’t as long as yesterday and after this stage we only had one even shorter day, left, just 18kms.

  Walking over to the start line, we must have looked, like the zombies in Michael Jacksons ‘Thriller’ video. We hobbled, waddled, limped and dragged ourselves forward. We were a group of tatty, decomposing bodies that blindly moved forward.

  With yesterday’s rest day you would think that I would be fairly rested and fresh - wrong. My rucksack still felt as heavy as it did on day one, my feet were still in a desperate state and rigor mortis had set in from a day of inactivity. I was stiff and sore.

  As the countdown began, I needed to formulate a game plan. How the hell was I going to survive today? I got away with it yesterday but my luck would have to end soon. I just had to get to the end, in theory a very simple task:- keep moving forward no matter what happens, just keep moving!

  Three, two, one and we were off - shuffling along I soon found a nice steady, if somewhat slow pace and as the mass of runner
s thinned out, I looked ahead and spotted a runner with an orange-coloured rucksack, and that was it - my master plan, no matter what happened I would keep the orange rucksack in sight. I locked on to the rucksack. I didn’t know or care who was carrying the thing, male, female, old or young. All I knew was that the rucksack would pull me along. Like the worst kind of stalker, I followed, altered my pace and concentrated my very limited efforts on the orange rucksack. Nothing but nothing would stop me following that rucksack, it would always be in sight.

  I followed it to CP 1 - it left as I arrived. Minutes later I left the checkpoint and continued my now quite obsessive stalking. Nothing else mattered, the pace wasn’t fast but it was constant and I needed that constant pace.

  I followed it to CP 2, collected water, took a rough bearing (the ‘road book’ gave the direction to follow as 220 degrees). I roughly set the compass accordingly and left the checkpoint, then bugger me if the orange rucksack didn’t disappear in the opposite direction. Now I was confused, worried, and worse:- I had to make a decision. Do I follow the rucksack or do I follow the compass? I weighed everything up - the rucksack had so far not put a foot wrong, but there is an old saying that you should ‘trust’ your compass. I also knew that when navigating you should not just blindly follow the person in front and then just as panic had started to make an appearance the rucksack altered course, which was fortunately the 220 degrees course.

  Lesson learned, I followed on, still keeping one eye on the rucksack, and the other on the compass. Moving along, with thoughts of finishing, coca cola and ice cream running around my head, I suddenly realised that I was on a very steep incline and was breathing hard. Once I reached the top, I looked down on to was a very nasty-looking and steep descent. I would need to watch every footstep - the trouble with descending was that it hurt my feet more than they already hurt.

  Once at the bottom it was just a short distance into a village and, like all the villages so far the kids came out to ‘inspect’ us, one or two deciding to run along with us, laughing and chatting away thinking it was great fun running with, and beating, the so called athletes. At one end of the village was a well that a couple of runners were using and it looked like a bloody good idea. I reached the well and lowered the bucket - the water was wonderfully cold. I poured the lot over me, then I felt extremely guilty about wasting the precious water.

  Moving on I realised that my faffing about meant that I had lost sight of the orange rucksack.

  Moving through the village I was struck by how lush and very green it was, with crops growing and water-filled irrigation ditches running this way and that. There were even birds flitting from one tree to another - a little green island in the harsh and barren landscape from which we had just emerged.

  It was now extremely hot, the hottest day so far. Trying to find my way out of the village wasn’t easy, there were three groups of runners that I could see, one group were going one way, the second group were going the other way and the third group were sitting by an irrigation ditch cooling off. Again I had to make a decision:- eeny, meeny, miney, mo!

  It was very, very tempting to stop and dangle my swollen, sweaty, sore feet in the cold water - the trouble with that would be that I would be there for hours, unwilling or unable to get started again. As I was making a decision I took my hat, off submerged it in the cold water and watched as the group that had been cooling off moved off. I decided that they were the sensible ones and followed them.

  CP 3 came and went, a curious thing about checkpoints was that each time I left one I spent all my time and energy trying to reach the next one. As I struggled along it was the thought of reaching the next checkpoint that kept me going, kept me motivated. It was the reward I craved and yet as soon as I got to a checkpoint I wanted to leave and was annoyed if anything delayed my departure. I wanted to get there but didn’t want to be there.

  As the day wore on so did my fatigue. I was getting slower: quite an achievement considering I was already going bloody slow. The distance I had already covered, the heat, lack of sleep and inability to eat properly were now taking their toll. I was now like an automaton, programmed to do nothing except move forward.

  This day had been my toughest, I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth. Up ahead I saw a couple of runners and beyond them what appeared to be derelict stone buildings. I really hoped the this was the campsite, it wasn’t, but I could see it up ahead maybe a mile, mile and a half away. Normally, I would try and speed up but my speeding up days had long since gone. It took me another 50 minutes before I arrived, I was now beyond knackered, so much so that when I collected my water I was shaking. I made my way over to the nearest tent. I didn’t care that it wasn’t the right tent, it was a tent and it would have to do. Fortunately for me a guy from our tent, called Tony, came over and not only led me to the right tent but also carried my rucksack:- the bloke was a hero. Though he was out of the race he had been watching the runners coming in and realised that I was struggling (I must have looked a right mess), so came over to help. On getting to the tent I was lucky to find a space at one end thus affording me just a little more space.

  Tomorrow was the last day, a short 18km (a little over 10 miles). After a cup of coffee and a few sweets, I felt better, and decided to sort through my kit, throwing away anything that was no longer required. It was mostly packets of food and drink. I was shocked by how much I had left over, the implication being that I had eaten nowhere near enough. I was loathe to throw perfectly good (if not horrible tasting) food away, so decided to have a feast. I got the cooker going - this evening’s chef’s special was casserole, two CupaSoups and a rice pudding, washed down with sports drink, hot chocolate and a very sweet coffee. Fed and watered it was time to visit the medics tent. This would - I hoped - be the last time, it certainly turned out to be the longest time. The poor old medic cleaned, cut, dabbed and sliced, patched and prodded my oh so tender stumps. I was clenching my teeth and buttocks, whilst trying to stifle the little high pitched and involuntary yelps. Whilst hobbling my way back to the tent two things crossed my mind:- one: had I done any permanent damage to my feet? All the toes, a large percentage of the soles and both heels were blistered. They had been blistered and re-blistered and of the ten toenails I had started with, only three remained, the second thought that crossed my mind was, how the hell am I going to get my shoes on?

  Getting back to the tent, I noticed someone had moved in next to me. It was Alun the worlds greatest snorer. The tent had an altogether more relaxed and lively atmosphere:- we all knew that this was the last night together, and consequently spent most of the evening swapping stories. These stories I’m sure will take on a life of their own when we get back home - the hills will be steeper, the packs heavier, the dunes higher and the heat hotter but for now the stories were real and didn’t need exaggerating.

  THE LAST DAY

  Even though I was sleeping next to the worlds greatest snorer, I had the best night’s sleep so far. Was I that tired, or was I safe in the knowledge that I had all but completed the ‘Marathon des Sables’?

  This morning was a totally different atmosphere, not only because it was the last day but because of the guest runners. The race organisers had ‘invited’ people to take part in the last day - consequently the field of runners had practically doubled. They looked very out of place:- they were clean, smelled nice and walked properly. Once we were all lined up and the countdown began, they did seem to get a little apprehensive - maybe they thought they would end up looking like and smelling like us. Once we got going the bulk of them shot off - they probably weren’t fast runners but they were fresh runners and that counted for a lot.

  The terrain today was more urbanised, buildings and people were more prevalent, tracks more defined. This made the going easier than it had been but my feet dictated my speed.

  I hobbled along and approached the town of Tazzerin. Entering the town, and expecting a hero’s welcome, I was disappointed most people didn’t even notice. Some c
lapped and some looked annoyed that we were disrupting the routine of the place. I was now desperate to finish, hanging on by a thread, willing the finish line to appear and then I saw the wonderful 1km to go marker. I tried to speed up but failed, then the two girls from the tent appeared and with the finish line in sight we grabbed each others hands and ran. I wanted to, no I needed to, reach that finish line. I wanted the excruciating pain to end. Two years it had taken me to get to the finish line:- two years, a small fortune, blood, sweat and God knows how many layers of skin.

  And then the shouting and the clapping intensified as we got closer and then suddenly it was done, we had finished! Patrick Bauer put a medal around my neck and that was that. It was over, my two year dream had come to a very abrupt end!

  HOME

  Flying home I ate and I ate. I had lost 16 pounds in weight, my feet were so swollen that I had to cut the leg of my trousers just to get them over my feet.

  It took me many days to recover.

  Had it been worth it? The cost, the pain, the time and the effort, the answer I’m afraid was yes. Would I do it again? No. Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes!

  But having said that I had learned a lot about myself, I had not once thought that I would not finish. Not once did I think about giving up and stopping, I had loved it, the challenge the people the whole atmosphere.

  WHAT NEXT?

  Day 1 Still fresh enough to pose, note the “Tubi Gripped” Gaiters!