But let me take you back nearly a year before  to a phonecall that changed my life.

‘EVANS’ shouted my boss Tim down the phone to me while I sat at my desk. ‘ I’M WATCHING THE BBC ON THE TELEVISION AND THAT FIENNES MAN HAS CROSSED THE SAHARA DOING THAT LITTLE RUN YOU WANTED TO DO… HES ABOUT 100 YEARS OLD SO IT CANT BE THAT TOUGH…..SO I’VE SIGNED YOU UP FOR NEXT YEAR. I’LL ENJOY WATCHING YOU SUFFER’

……and with that I put the phone down and watched a few online videos about the Marathon des Sables , googled some pictures of Camel spiders and got VERY VERY EXCITED.

 

 I was going on an unexpected journey ….death waiver in hand !

 

I spent a year preparing for this event. I decided that in order to be fit enough for the MdS I needed to complete a Centurion 100 mile non stop race .  The idea being that if I can move continuously for 28 hours or so then I can handle the multi day marathons in the desert with relative ease.  I decided to test kit to destruction in the UK so I got no surprises in the desert , and got some serious ribbing online for breaking so much gear.  The good news was the kit that I took to the desert with me was ‘ leeproof’ and gave me no surprises.

 

 

I stacked the deck further in my favour by running in a heat chamber  In Kingston Uni and acclimatising to the heat in the 2 weeks leading up to the event.  The Uni boffins let me know my ‘danger heart rate ‘ where my body was dangerously hot so I could aim to keep my heart rate below that.

I had a sweat assessment from the fantastic guys at Precision Hydration which meant I had customised salt tablets for EXACTLY my body salt loss so I had no guesswork.

I spent a day running a marathon in January  with ‘sand yoda’ Rory Coleman who has a million world records for running and has completed the MdS 13 times.  He offered advice on how he gets round and what works for him , and although I would now differ on a couple of his recommendations I would say his ‘travel stupidly light’ ethos was a lifesaver.  His choice of sleeping bag was absolutely the right call too.

I went full circle with my shoes and used the fantastic Altra Olympus I used for Centurion 100 mile races in the UK. Loads of cushioning , loads and loads of wide foot room for when your feet expand in the heat and a nice cool mesh on top to keep your feet cool.  The thick cushioning also meant the super long wooden thorns didn’t penetrate either as many people had problems with them going straight through their shoes and into their feet.

 

Not many people used the Altras and pre-race I was told it was a risky idea  but I tried the popular Brooks Adrenaline and they fell apart in training in 4 days ( as many others found out to their horror whilst out there ).

 

The whole race has more of a desert running festival feel than a race. Its no surprise that the organiser Patrick Bauer was a concert organiser in a previous guise , because I felt like a rock star . The entire course is meticulously and cleverly choreographed, with helicopters swooping over, cheers from the army of volunteers and dune buggies and 4x4s zooming around with cameras and smiles.

Patrick was there at the start each day dancing to ‘Lets Stay Together’ by Al Green.  During the week I saw famous Ultra runner Marco Olmo ( not wearing the bag named after him). I also saw some american guy with a beard who looked epic and people were swooning over ,  Elizabet Barnes (the previous years fastest woman) who has time for everybody, David Hellard ( fastest brit this year ) who I spent some time with queueing on the check in day WHO SMILES ALL THE TIME  (google him ‘winning ‘ the first 1km of the London Marathon) , Sand Yoda and MdS veteran Rory Coleman and I got hosed down at an Oasis on the long day , he had a very tough race and didn’t know it at the time but was about to be hospitalised for a crippling auto immune disease that he is now recovering from in his usual gruff way.

 I met Gavin Sandford  (first person to to do the MdS TWICE back to back) who did a lap of honour and looked like he had been tortured in  prisoner of war camp, The unflappable Steve Deiderich (UK organiser of the MdS)  who would turn up unexpectedly on the crest of a dune or near a checkpoint and check you were OK and going to leave a good review on Trip Advisor for your Beach Holiday from hell.  Finally amid all the chaos and hitching rides on helicopters with his SLR was Ian Corless like a Vietnam 1970s war correspondent taking superb photos and generally always missing me in camp ( it became an in joke that I’m small and Ian needed to look down when looking for me )

TENT 140 was the best tent in the race. We cleverly selected the tent the absolute furthest from the start and finish each day.   All 7.5 of us finished and I described it round camp as  ‘Hogwarts’ because many of my tent chums had long cool names that matched the castles they own , one was even called Harry and every person brought a dynamic and positive attitude to the race that made everything more than bearable…they made it hilarious. I watched one single coffee being made with over half of the weeks stove fuel supply,  a guy called Tom who ended up with feet that looked like they had been eaten by weasels STILL finish the whole race when many others had given up, and a guy called Arthur who was like Hugh Laurie on speed who my wife wrote sexy emails to all week. Ed and Max took an incredibly relaxed and calm approach to the whole thing and came top 200 without even really running a lot , Harry was grumpy for most of it because he was being babysat by his Auntie in camp and there was Bruno,  who got upset when I shaved my beard at the end of the race and he realised he wasn’t the prettiest boy anymore.

Finally in my tent  was James Mowbray. James flies in the face of all popular opinion about the MdS.  He is a checklist of potential failure in every respect. Big bloke , heavy bloke , heavy pack unlikely to finish….and yet ….. it turns out …perfect for the race. MOWBRAYING became my new buzzword to describe someone who bulldozes in one gear THROUGH anything in his path , mountains , dunes , flats , night sections always at EXACTLY the same average speed.

 

 Imagine Duracell chose a Rhino instead of a Bunny for their adverts…

 

The entire race is as beautiful as it is harsh. What surprised me the most was how varied any one particular days racing could be. We ran through the epic Merzouga dunes which looked like something out of a Star Wars movie , but on the same day ran past an abandoned remote mine and metal works that had purple dust blowing around.  We crossed vast flat dried salt lake beds where you could walk for an hour in the mid day heat and see no indication you had moved at all , and we also crossed vast plains with mountains on either side with small sharp rocks that felt like I was traversing a Martian landscape.

 

Oh and there were some mountains we had to get over …in the heat.

 

I didn’t bring enough food ….. I was basically the kid at school thats eaten his pack lunch by 10.30am.  By day two I had major sugar wobbles and began scouring the bins at camp and on checkpoints for food. …..and I found it …IN ABUNDANCE ! loads of people get sick in the heat and ditch their ration packs….by day three my rucksack was getting heavier , I was eating thousands of calories a day and by mid week I had a tent 140 swap/meet for food stall running most evenings.

 

My tragic claim to fame for the MdS was that I put weight on during the race. Most evenings I had a choice of meals and I usually opted for both.

 

As the week wore on and I got more tired I cared less and less about my behaviour.  Mowbray had most of his beautiful vista photos ruined by me taking an unapologetic wee right in the middle of the track , I even got ‘caught very short’ on a featureless plain near a checkpoint and found myself doing an emergency poop in front of an Al Jazeera film crew who looked on in utter horror.  This type of thing became known as ‘day 5 behaviour’

 

The race is designed to ‘ hide and reveal’ . It is very very cleverly thought out so that Checkpoints where you are desperate for your next water ration are hidden until you are almost on top of them. Being mid pack made navigation easy/ too as there was always someone in the distance to follow.

The long day was long. It took ages.  There were mountains and in the great British tradition we did some fantastic queuing on the famous Jebel el Utfal , I was pleased to get a chance to soak up the sun and sunbathe for an hour on a 15inch wide ledge with no water.

 

The real heroes of this race were the organisers , volunteers and people that worked behind the scenes to keep a village of 2000 people on the constant move for many days without a hitch.  The logistics for supplying water to 1000 runners and an equal number of volunteers is mind blowing. We were all the guests of the King of Morocco Mohammed VI and we were kept very safe in a discreet way , not an easy task.

 

A ‘friend of a friend’ Nimisha blasted through most of the race  literally a walking camels pace with a broken ankle, despite this she was one of three people to be last across the line on the last timed day and got to the finish line with nearly a thousand runners cheering her in as the sun set.  It was one of the most beautifully choreographed and genuine moments I’ve ever seen running and a great example of the spirit of the race. They came into camp with a 1000 people cheering them in and a convoy of support vehicles alongside as the sun set.

 

Bill became the oldest brit to finish ever (beating Ranulph Fiennes from the previous year) and I learnt of a chap competing with terminal cancer.

 

As an ambassador for Intova cameras I got to test a new prototype super lightweight video camera (42g !)  ‘ to destruction’ but the plucky little thing survived the whole week.  I was also fully fueled by the superb guys at Pulsin who were kind enough to stock me with pulsin bars for the week which were a great balance of protein , carbs and fat which a ‘mid pack’ runner/walker needs rather than the gel fest of the front runners.

 

Oh and if you ever were unsure of what music works for the Marathon des Sables I can tell you that  Tesseract , Muse  and the music of John Barry works a treat with the scenery.

We finished 8 for 8 in our tent, a rare achievement.  I came 503rd ( ish ) so basically can claim being ‘top half’  although my race results times are all over the place on the website and mostly very wrong but who cares ? I finished …got the medal…got the t shirt . Job Done.

 

 A race of this magnitude takes time to process and the memories will stay with me forever.

 

 I doubt its the toughest footrace on earth , but it is bloody hard and I’d challenge anyone to create an event that is  accessible to such a broad range of people, harsh yet beautiful and inspiring as the MdS.