After all the pre-amble and all the hype, we were ready for the off, when the mad cacophony ended and we would be left only with the silent sound of the desert. Patrick gave a wave and we were surrounded by the blare of the Marathon des Sables signature tune: ACDC, ‘Highway to Hell’. I’ve never particularly liked the song, but it has become such a part of the fabric of my life that, for better or for worse, it will have to number among my eight Desert Island discs.
Screaming, shouting, helicopters thundering overhead, blasting us with the downdraft. Runners waving for the cameras, Patrick bellowing out his countdown and ACDC drilling right through to the core of my brain.
And we’re away and the mad ones tear off into the desert at a flat-out sprint, and the joggers amble out at a more sedate trot, and after them are the brisk walkers, striding along with their poles, and then, right at the back, are the walking wounded, the people like myself, who are wondering just what on earth possessed us to sign up for this insane race.
There are a lot of reasons why people enter the Marathon des Sables. We do it for the challenge and we do it avert our impending mid-life crisis and we do it because it’s called the toughest foot race on earth. It’s a rite of passage and a test of manhood, so that, in small part, we can have a taste of what our grandfathers went through in the wars.
As I ambled over the start line, with my poles glinting in the sun, it seemed like just about the most stupid thing I’d ever done in my life.
Trek 150 miles through the desert, with all my food and kit strapped to my back? What was the point? And it was such an arbitrary distance too. Why not 300 miles in a fortnight? Why not make us carry all our own water?
Any way I looked at it, the Marathon de Sables was just painfully ridiculous. And in the unlikely event that I ever did finish this nightmare, then I’d pick up the medal and get my kiss from Patrick and – so what? Would it make it me more of a man? Would I wear the medal in Hyde Park and watch as all the tourists fell at my feet? Would it give me bragging rights at the smart London dinner-parties, or…
It was ludicrous. I was plainly insane.
And the endless monologue of thoughts would continue to spin through my head, this cycle of daydreams, as one abstruse thought moved seamlessly and inconsequentially onto the next.
And I would take the next step and then the next step. That is the way of the Marathon des Sables. Even when you’re delirious and on the very cusp of giving up, you still always have to take the next step.
The Sahara is not really the endless sand of most people’s imaginings. There are rolling dunes, but much of it is dusty and hard and littered with stones that can tweak at your feet and burst your blisters.
The front-runners were already so far ahead that they were nothing but a sand-cloud. They’d probably finish the second stage in less than three hours.
I wondered if I’d make the eleven-hour cut-off. I might not. Whatever happened, I’d keep on walking.
At least my feet weren’t hurting. After the first day, I’d only had three blisters. Compared to the others, that wasn’t too bad at all. On the Marathon des Sables, it doesn’t matter how awful your injuries are: there will always be somebody faring much, much worse than you. As in life.
I hadn’t been paying much heed to the desert. I was heading northeast through stones and scrub and camel grass, the sun searing down and the drab sand crunching underfoot.
As you start out each day, you send out probes through your body, checking out how everything is holding up. My feet and legs were OK, but my guts were tremoring. It all just felt like incredibly hard work. My energy levels had fallen through the floor. If I’d been walking in London, I’d have stopped in a café, rested my weary feet and bought an ice-cold bottle of water.
Absorbed in the minutiae of my own little world, I had not been aware of the other competitors. But I gradually realised that somebody was walking right on my heels. They were about two yards behind me and walking at exactly the same dawdling pace as myself.
First time that day I actually smiled.
She divined my very thoughts.
‘Pick it up at the back there,’ she said.
I didn’t bother to look round. ‘What are you doing back here with the waifs and strays?’
With two smart steps, she was alongside me. ‘Making sure you don’t get caught by the camels.’ She was giving me her very cheekiest smile, with just a coy glimpse of her tongue tucked into the side of her lower-lip. That was the thing about Kate – she didn’t just look lovely; she was lovely. She threw her head back, gesturing behind her. ‘They’re only a hundred yards away!’
I thought she was joking. I looked back – only to find that, if anything, the camels were barely three cricket pitches behind me. The two camels were called, believe it or not, Charles and Camilla. They were led by a couple of Berbers and would trudge the Sahara at just above a leisurely two miles per hour. It was their job to pick up the stragglers. Once you had been overtaken by Charles and Camilla, then off came your tags and you were out of the game.
‘They are a little close,’ I said. ‘So what have you been doing?’
‘Looking for somewhere to pee,’ she said. ‘They’d taken down all the latrines. I had to find a dune. It was miles away. You know how I need my privacy.’
‘Just so long as you weren’t waiting around for me,’ I said. ‘You should be running now. I’m fine.’
‘I like walking with you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Who said this was a race, anyway?’
‘Yeah – it’s an ordeal. It’s a rite of passage. It’s a…’
‘Despicable form of torture?’
‘Yes, most definitely a form of torture, as well as being a challenge, and a bit of a schlepp. But a mere race? Well maybe for some people, but for the rank and file such as myself, then absolutely not.’
And I looked at Kate, and even though she was wearing mirrored sunglasses I could see that she was looking at me. She didn’t have poles and was striding along, arms pumping, the very picture of blooming good health. Kate hadn’t followed the dire MdS fashion of having her hair tied in tight, greasy cornrows. Instead, from the bottom of her white casquette – like the French Foreign Legion kepis – peeked the end of her ponytail. Taut, toned legs, with delicious tanned knees and thighs; skimpy shorts in the most brilliant crimson and a white shirt that, compared to my stained smock, was absolutely pristine. Even her gaiters looked good. My orange silk gaiters made me look like some bumpkin yokel who was out for a bit of rat catching; but somehow on Kate, they looked cool and sophisticated. From top to toe she looked the part; she was a woman who was ready to run the sands.
Now this might seem wrong for a middle-aged married man.
There were any number of reasons why I’d entered the Marathon des Sables. But I must also admit that one of the reasons was, pure and simple: I found this twenty-six-year-old woman quite intoxicatingly beautiful.
The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted Page 28