The night before stage 2 was great fun, everyone was in their bag by about 8 after eating dinner whilst the sun went down. The initial nerves had lifted having got a stage out the way and we all enjoyed some good banter. I didn’t really sleep well on any of the nights in the desert, though I never felt tired during the day. Being a side sleeper, my foam sleeping mat didn’t offer much in the way of comfort!
Morning broke with another glorious sunrise whilst we made breakfast and packed away our kit. The stage for the day consisted of 38.5k with a number of areas of dunes, some long flat plateaus and a climb and descent of Jebel El Otfal.
The start line was buzzing, with no indication that stage 2 would become known as the “tough stage”. We set off into some dunes, which opened up after CP1 to flat stone plateaus banked on the left by small dunes. Up to now it had been clear and calm but the wind picked up steadily, punctuated but strong gusts directly on the nose. I could see sand being blown off the top of the bank of dunes to my left and occasionally visibility would reduce with blown sand in the air, necessitating having your buff up over your nose. I recalled the briefing about sandstorms.
“If you end up in a sand storm and can’t see where you are going, stop. They seldom last more than 20 minutes”.
At this stage you could still see the course markers so, it wasn’t a sandstorm yet as such but occasional blown sand. I departed CP2 with the wind now steady at what was formerly it’s gusting speed. We turned left into dunes towards the huge Jebel El Otfal with sand whipping off the top of the dunes into our faces. There are different types of dunes, these ones where smallish, maybe 8-10 feet tall but under and in between them was the hard stones desert floor. I ended up in a stop start pace, walking up the steep side (with the flat foot technique), and running down them and along the hard to the next.
At the base of the jebel we became sheltered from the wind. It stopped suddenly
accompanied by a sudden increase in the apparent temperature. The pebbly path grew steeper before turning into a mini gorge made of large granite slabs. For most of us these climbs were not really runnable so as you reach them you drop into a power walk. Perversely, I began looking at large climbs in the distance and longing to reaching them as that would be my next “break”.
From what I saw, those of us using poles towards the front of the race were probably in the minority. I had been undecided about wether I would bring them or not but given my objectives I reasoned that should I get injured or suffer with feet they might be my get out of jail free card. I used some collapsible poles by Leki which were perfect, as I could fold them up and put them in my saloman belt when I wanted to run, and pull them out for climbs and descents.
As the climb up Jebel El Otfal intensified I was pretty glad I had poles, both to take the strain of my legs but also to aid with balance up and down big steps. I was able to make really good time up, passing a few people struggling with the gradient and sudden onset of heat. The morning briefing had highlighted the climb and descent as technical one requiring care, and had even imposed a cutoff time before beginning to tackle it to make sure there was enough light. As I reached the top and the return of the fiercely strong wind, I turned to look back at the rest of the race, engulfed in a huge sandstorm.
The descent down Jebel El Otfal was a different story altogether. It was 300 meteres of soft sand at a 20% gradient. If your reading this you have likely seen photos of athletes gleefully bounding down the slope ankles buried in the sand. It doesn’t disappoint and is as fun as it looks, like skiing in soft powder! In hindsight I wish I had let loose and bounded down as fast as I could but my sensible side got the better of me and I went at a steady pace to avoid twisting and ankle on a buried rock or falling over and cartwheeling down the slope. I did gain in confidence as I descended and soon as I had decided to move faster my hat was blown off my head, straight back up the slope. I stopped, knee deep in sand wondering how on earth I was going to get back up there (it’s is very steep), and how much time it would cost me doing so. Could I do the next 5 days in a desert without a hat? Fortunately I didn’t need to decide and another runner whom I had had chated with earlier in the day changed his course, scooped it up without stopping and delivered it to me. Scott, you’re a legend.
As I reached the bottom of the climb we were now in full-on sandstorm territory, not enough that you lost your bearings but enough to needed to cover your nose and mouth. I pushed on, power walking with poles into the wind. I used my poles more than usual throughout the stage, into the wind, both running and walking and as such my shoulders and lattimus dorsi were starting to spasm. CP3 was only 3.5k from the bivouac. Looking back they were probably the most unpleasant kilometres I experienced during the whole week. The wind was howling by now and blasting me with sand. The course ahead was coming in and out of visibility. Eventually I could see the the finish arch and felt the relief that I would soon be able to sit down in my tent out of the wind and sand, stretch off and have a recovery shake.
Unfortunately, arriving into the bivouac didn’t pan out that way. My shoulders and latts were in such a state that I couldn’t lift my arms up or out at all making even taking my backpack off difficult. I carried my water ration painfully toward the tents. It was chaos. All but a handful of the tents were collapsed, flapping in the wind in various states of disrepair. Tent 56 was not only flapping in the wind on the floor but torn making it impossible to erect. No more than 100 runners were back at this stage so I found a tent nearby with two people sheltering inside and joined them to shield from the storm.
I decide I would take care of my personal admin; get my pack off, have a recovery shake, stretch, and take some ibuprofen from my shoulders.
Then I would set about getting the tent rebuilt. Everything in a sand storm takes longer than you expect and sand gets everywhere. Within minutes of taking my bag off and putting it down it was covered again, god knows how much sand mixed in with my recovery shake! One kit descision I made paid off. That was having photochromatic sunglasses that adjusted to the light levels. I was able to keep them on right through to night time and have some eye protection from the sand.
I manage to get the berbers to help me replace and rebuild the tent. The berbers are made up of people from around Morocco, most of whom come and spend a week doing this away from their usual jobs. I spoke to taxi drivers and waiters etc. They work hard but are not necessarily expert tent builders. By the time the next members of tent 56 got back I had something resembling a shelter built and had collected as my large rocks as I could to pin down the windward side but it still needed work. Fortunately it was the sappers that arrived, and with their army background and engineering skills we had a passable shelter after a half hour or so.
The rest of the afternoon follows your now familiar routine, except this time everything is getting blown and has sand in it. All but two of my tent mates had arrived back safely as we began to approach the cut off time. Chris arrived reporting that the last time he had seen our final pair Ross was struggling, unable to keep water and food down and Dom was helping him along. It wasn’t looking good.
The MdS asks you when you sign up to identify as a runner or a walker. They say “everyone walks some of it but walkers walk all of it”. The conventional view is that ‘runners’ are working harder, or having a tougher time but I am convinced that that isn’t the case. The faster you are going the less time you spend on your feet, the fewer steps you take, your time exposed to the desert elements is shorter. You also have more time to recover. Apart from maybe the very front of the race, people are running within themselves from a cardiovascular point of view, making sure not to blow up. If you want to see the really tough people they are at the other end of the race.
Ross and Dom made it back to the bivouac a little inside the cutoff. Ross looked dreadful and had clearly made it through by a combination of toughness, stubbornness and his best mate Dom, who stuck with him with a smile on his face the whole way. Tent 56 pulled together to get Ross into his sleeping bag. We watered and fed him as much as possible whilst the sandstorm continued to rage until the early hours. “20 minutes” my arse.
Top Tips Number 3
Try to test your sleeping kit properly. I will do a separate post on my kit, what worked and what didn’t, but had I have tried a night sleeping on my expedit foam matt I might have chosen a heavier option. I say might as I didn’t really do the research to see if there was a better option for a side sleeper, but it would have been good to know.
If you are going to use poles during the race, do plenty of training with them. I did train with mine a few times but perhaps if I had done more my shoulders wouldn’t have had quite such a shock! For the rest of the event I made sure to alternate between poles and no poles and so managed to avoid the problem coming back.
Attach your hat to your bag some way, perhaps with some elastic. I was fortunate that my hat was rescued after being blown down the Jebel but it could just have easily been blown off on a big wide plateau or along a high steep ridge, away from anyone, never to be seen!
Have your compass somewhere accessible. It was only once in the sandstorm that I realised should I need my compass to keep me going the right way I was going to have to stop, open my bag and dig out my mandatory kit bag. My desire to keep moving was pretty strong and I could easily imagine it getting the better of me finding myself disorientated because my compass was too inconvenient to get out. For the rest of the week it lived in my running belt.
I supplemented my tiny esbit cooking stove and titanium cup with two folded sheets of aluminium foil weighing barely anything. One acted as an adjustable wind break and the other a lid, primarily to speed up and lessen the fuel required to heat my water but I found just as importantly kept the sand out of my cup! It became the communal tent 56 cup cooking lid.
Look after each other, especially if someone is having a tough time and just wants to lie down and sleep. Cook their food for them, make them drink, remind them to take salt tabs. It could be you tomorrow and it might be the difference between them getting up the next day and making it through.
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