by Dion Leonard
Tommy was too far ahead for me to see him, and Julian and Zeng were almost out of sight too. I was finished. There was nothing left. My legs were like strangers to me, and my head was drifting into thoughts I couldn’t control.
Maybe this was going to be my last race after all.
Maybe I was all washed up.
Maybe coming here had been one big mistake.
I heard the drum long before I saw the finish line. I’d been overtaken by a fourth runner in the final mile, but I was past caring. All I wanted was for the day to be over. For everything to be over. I could imagine Lucja telling me to sleep on it, that I’d feel better after some rest and food, but another voice within was telling me to pack it all in completely.
When I turned the final bend and saw the finish line, Gobi was there. She was sitting in the shade, on a rock, scanning the horizon.
For a moment she stayed motionless, and I wondered whether she’d recognize me.
Then she was a blur of brown fur in motion. Leaping from the rock, she tore over the ground towards me, tail up, little tongue flapping.
For the first time that day, I was smiling.
It had been the hottest day yet, and the sun was dangerously intense. The camp was near an old sheep station, and I tried to rest up in one of the barns, but the metal sides had turned it into a furnace. I settled for the tent, where the air was stale and the temperature was above 110 degrees. With Gobi curled up at my side, I drifted in and out of sleep. Part of me was looking forward to the chance to lie back and recover, but these times in the tent were the moments when I missed Lucja most of all.
Even before I came to China, I knew racing was going to be hard without her there. Work commitments meant she couldn’t join me, but this was only the second race we hadn’t entered together. And even though we hadn’t run side by side since that first marathon in France, where I’d dressed as a pig—with her as a bumblebee—I relied on her in so many ways, especially at the end of each day. She’d be the one who would get out of the tent and be sociable with the other runners, and whenever I became frustrated or was bothered by something, she’d always help take the sting out of it. In more than one race, she’d talked me out of quitting entirely. I needed her, especially when unexpected problems came up as they did with Tommy.
But today had taught me something else. I missed Gobi. She was a great distraction from the boredom of hour after hour of running across an unchanging landscape. The way she ran—determined, consistent, committed—inspired me too. She was a fighter who refused to give up. She didn’t let hunger or thirst or fatigue slow her down. She just kept going.
It was a bittersweet moment, for I knew what was coming tomorrow.
Day five was the long stage. Almost fifty miles in even hotter temperatures. I’d already made arrangements for Gobi to be looked after by the organizers again, and I knew they’d take good care of her.
Long days have always been my speciality, even more so when the heat is cranked up. But after only two days of running with Gobi at my side, something had changed. I was beginning to enjoy running with her, watching her little legs power through the day. I knew I’d miss her again.
I didn’t get much sleep that night. The air was too hot and still to get comfortable, and after four days of running without having a shower or even changing my clothes, my skin was coated in a thick layer of dried sweat and dirt. Gobi couldn’t settle either. She got up a few times, trotting out of the tent to go and bark at the sheep. I didn’t mind, and nobody else in the tent complained. I guess we were all too busy trying to get our heads ready for what was coming next.
8
I might have grown up in Australia, but I still have to train for the heat. Living in Edinburgh means going months without the temperature rising above 60 degrees, and if I didn’t take matters into my own hands, I’d not be able to cope out in the desert.
The solution was to turn the spare bedroom at home into a mini heat chamber. I bought two industrial heaters—the kind you’d expect to see drying out a house that’s been flooded—as well as two small portables. I bought a heavy blind for the window and discovered that if it’s just me in there, the thermometer will top out at 100 degrees. If I can persuade Lucja to join me, it’ll rise a little higher.
The sessions are brutal. I wear winter running tights, a hat, and gloves, and set the incline on the treadmill as high as it will go. The humidity is intense, and even when I don’t wear a backpack loaded with six or seven kilos (thirteen to fifteen pounds) of sugar or rice, I still struggle as I get into the second and third hour.
I’d put in more of these sessions in my training for the Gobi Desert event than I had for any other race. And when I wanted to change things up and run in some scorching dry heat, I’d pay a hundred pounds for an hour-long session in the heat chamber at the local university. Lucja said she’d never seen me so determined and focused, and I knew I had no other option. I’d run the Marathon des Sables twice already, where the heat even topped 130 degrees from time to time, but I’d never felt much pressure to perform back then. At Gobi, I knew it would be different. The guys on the podium would be the ones who coped with the heat.
Day five started an hour earlier, at seven o’clock, and as I stood on the start line, I went through my race plan for the hundredth time. Go quick through the road section at the start, take the desert section steady but strong, and then—depending on the heat—drop the hammer and race it home. I was still third overall, but there were just twenty minutes separating number one from number four. I needed a good day. I simply could not afford to mess up anything.
From the beginning of the day, I ran the way I wanted. I was out front, leading the pack at times and then dropping back to let someone else carry the burden for a while. I was concentrating hard on my stride and missed the markers at one point. I led the pack the wrong way for a minute until someone called us back. We tracked back, still in formation, to where the runner was waiting for us to resume the lead. There was no need for anyone to try and get an unfair advantage. The course and the heat were enough of a challenge by themselves.
The terrain was less helpful. The first six miles were through thick tufts of camel grass occasionally interrupted by brief sections of uneven asphalt. After that, we moved onto the “Black Gobi” sand. It was still early, but already it felt like the temperature was more than a hundred. It was obvious that the heat was going to be cruel, and I let myself ease up a little on the pace. A couple of people overtook me, but I didn’t mind. I had a plan to stick to and guessed that in a few hours, as the sun really started to attack, I’d be overtaking anyone who had pushed himself too hard in this middle section.
I let my mind drift to Gobi, wondering what she was doing while I was running. I also made a point of noticing the scenery around us, knowing that I was unlikely to see it ever again, and hoping to keep my mind from slipping into boredom. As soon as we had hit the black sand, all signs of human life fell away. On previous days we had run through remote villages where curious locals stood and watched in the shade of their single-storey houses. At other times the route had taken us along dried-up riverbeds as wide as a football field where people stopped and stared, and across wide-open plains where the ground was the colour of fire. But as we pushed deeper into the Gobi Desert, there were no signs of human life. Nobody could make a life for himself in terrain so brutal.
As I entered the fourth checkpoint, I went through my usual routine of filling my bottles, taking a salt tablet, and asking about the temperature.
“It’s 115 degrees now,” the medic said. “But it’s going to hit 120 soon enough. You want one of these?” He handed me a hot Pepsi. It was the only time the organizers had given us anything other than water to drink. Even though I could almost feel it burn my throat, I gulped it straight down.
“Thanks,” I said. “You got any rehydrate solution?” I’d been popping salt tablets throughout the day, but with half the race still to come, I wanted to make sure I had enou
gh to last. He took one of my bottles and made up a salt and sugar drink.
“You sure you’re okay?” he said, taking a closer look at me as he handed it back.
“I’m fine. I’m just taking precautions.”
Before I left, I checked the timings of the runners ahead of me. Tommy, Zeng, and Julian were among them, and they were only a quarter of an hour up the road. I was surprised they weren’t further ahead and decided to step up the pace a bit. After all, I was hydrated, I’d just taken on an extra 150 calories from the Pepsi, and it was getting hot. I was ready to attack and knew that if I stayed strong, I’d probably catch them within the next one or two checkpoints.
I caught Julian at the next one, checkpoint five. He didn’t look great, but he didn’t look finished either. What interested me was the fact that Tommy and Zeng had left only minutes before I’d arrived. I quickly dug in my bag and pulled out the secret weapon I’d been holding in reserve this whole race. My tiny iPod.
I clipped it on, poked the earbuds in, and hit play as I headed back out into the heat. I knew the thing only had a few hours of battery life, which is why I’d never turned it on during any of the long afternoons I’d spent in the tent or at any other point in the race. I’d wanted to keep it for a moment when I needed a boost, and this was the perfect opportunity.
I listened to the playlist I had carefully put together over the previous months. The list included some big songs, a few surging anthems that I knew would get my feet going. But the real rocket fuel was Johnny Cash. When that baritone filled my ears with lyrics about outsiders and the kind of men everyone always writes off, I felt my spirit lift. He was singing just to me, calling me to push harder, run faster, and prove the doubters wrong.
When I finally saw Tommy at checkpoint seven, he looked awful. He was slumped on a chair, and two or three volunteers were desperately trying to cool him down, spraying him with water and fanning him with their clipboards. He looked at me, and I could tell right then that I had him.
I turned away to give him some privacy, filled my bottles, and popped another salt tablet. Zeng had just left the checkpoint, and in front of him was a guy we all called Brett, a Kiwi runner who was having an excellent day, and an American female runner named Jax. I knew I could still win the stage, but I also knew I didn’t need to. I wasn’t concerned about Brett and Jax finishing ahead of me because both their overall times were hours behind mine.
All that mattered was that I passed Zeng, who was probably now five minutes ahead of me for the stage; as long as I did that, the twenty-minute overall lead I held on him before the day started would remain. With only six miles to race in the last day stage, there was no way I could lose the overall time, and the winner’s medal would be mine. There were two checkpoints left to run, and a total of ten or twelve miles. If I kept going like I had been, I’d do it.
As I was putting some water on my head, I listened to what the doctor was saying to Tommy.
“You’re very hot, Tommy, and we’d rather you go out with Dion than on your own. Will you do that?”
I fiddled with my earbuds and pretended not to hear. I didn’t want to leave the guy stranded, but I was racing to win. If he couldn’t keep up, I wasn’t going to carry him.
As I checked my bag straps and prepared to move off, Tommy pushed himself off the seat and stood next to me.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Tommy?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse and faint. “I’m just struggling. It’s too hot.”
We moved out. In the few minutes that I’d been in the shade of the checkpoint, someone had turned up the heat a few more degrees. It was like running in a forced-air oven, and the sun cut like needles into the flesh on my arms. I was loving it. Even though I wondered whether I should have reapplied the sunscreen I’d put on in the morning, nothing could wipe the smile from my face.
There was no breeze and no shade. Everything was hot—the air, the rocks, even the plastic trim and metal zippers on my backpack. All that existed out there was heat.
But I knew I wanted to catch Zeng. I didn’t know how strong he was or whether he was struggling, but I knew I felt about as good as I possibly could, given the conditions. This was my chance. I had to take it.
We were only a few hundred feet out from the checkpoint, and already Tommy was struggling to keep up. But he was a tough runner, and he wasn’t going to give up on the race anytime soon.
We were in a straight gravel section, one where the pink markers were placed every fifty feet. “Come on, Tommy,” I said, trying to get him to pick up his pace. “Let’s run the flags.”
We ran to the first marker, then walked to the next one before running again. We carried on like that for a half mile, and soon the track became sandy and opened out into an even wider area. All around us were sand canyons, twenty-foot-high walls of compressed dust and dirt as far as the eye could see. It looked like the surface of Mars, and if it was possible, I could have sworn that there was even less air and more heat in there.
Tommy was no longer at my side. I knew he’d drop back eventually. This is it, I thought. Time to move.
I ran through four or five flags, feeling my breathing hold steady and my pace remain solid. It felt good to be running free again, good to know that with every step I was reeling in the guy ahead.
And yet there was something nagging me. I couldn’t stop thinking about Tommy. Was he okay? Was he still with me? Was he going to make it out here on his own?
I slowed down.
I stopped.
And then I looked back.
Tommy was swaying like a drunkard. His arms were flailing, his balance destroyed. He looked as though he was in an earthquake, and each step forward was a battle against invisible forces. I watched him, willing him to shake it off and start running toward me.
Come on, Tommy. Don’t bail on me now.
It was a futile wish, and within a few seconds I was running the three hundred feet back to where he was swaying and staggering on the spot.
“Tommy, tell me what’s going on.”
“Too hot.” His words were slurred, and I had to grab him to stop him from falling over. It was a little after one in the afternoon, and the sun was directly above us. I knew it was only going to get hotter, and I looked about for some shade, but there was none at all, just a series of windblown rocks off to the side.
I checked my watch. We were just over a mile into the section with another three to go until the next checkpoint. I thought about telling him to turn back, but he was in no state to go anywhere by himself. It was all up to me.
Do I go back, or do I go on? I wondered.
Tommy fumbled for his water bottles. One was completely empty, and he drained the other in a couple of gulps. I guessed that we’d left the checkpoint twenty or thirty minutes before, and that when we did, Tommy must have left with full bottles. That meant he’d drunk seventy ounces in no time at all.
“I need to pee,” he said, pulling down his pants. His urine was like molasses.
He slumped down in the sand, right in the full glare of the sun. “Need to sit,” he said. “I need to sit. Can you wait?”
“There’s no sitting here, Tommy. You’ve got to get into some shade.” I looked back to see if I’d missed anything, but there was nothing that could shield him from the sun. I hoped I’d see some other runners too, but there was nobody.
I scanned ahead. I thought I could see a path of shade to the side of a rock formation about a mile in the distance. It looked as though it might be big enough to offer Tommy some protection from the sun, and it struck me as our best hope.
It took another twenty minutes to reach it. I had to drag Tommy with one arm through the sand while carrying his backpack and giving him as much of my water as he wanted. I tried to keep him talking, but I couldn’t think of much more to say than “Keep coming, mate. We’re nearly there.” He barely said a single word in return.
I knew how serious Tommy’s condition was. He was dizz
y, disoriented, and soaked in sweat. It was a clear case of heat exhaustion, and I knew that if I didn’t cool him down soon, it could slip into heatstroke. From that point he’d be at risk of falling into a coma in as few as thirty minutes. After that he would need special medical equipment to keep him alive.
I finally managed to drag him to the sand rock and put him in the small rectangle of shade that fell beside it. I unzipped his shirt, hoping to let out any heat that I could. I was shocked by how pale his skin was. He looked half-dead already.
Tommy half fell onto his side and peed some more. His urine was even darker this time.
What am I going to do? I could feel the urge to panic but fought as hard as I could to keep my emotions in check. I guessed that we were probably halfway through the stage. I ran up a slight hill to see if there were any signs of life, but there was nothing and no one around.
“Listen, Tommy,” I said as I crouched back at his side. “You need help. I’m going to keep going to the next checkpoint and get them to drive back to you, okay?”
“I don’t want to run anymore,” he said.
“I know, mate. You don’t have to. Just stay here and wait for them to come. Don’t move.”
I gave him the last of my water, made sure his feet were tucked up in the shade, and ran.
My head was full of numbers. I calculated I had just lost forty-five minutes. I had given away the last forty ounces of my water, and I had just under three miles left to run before I could get any more. It was 120 degrees and likely to get even hotter over the next hour. If I hadn’t looked back when I did, Tommy might already have spent thirty minutes in heatstroke. If I hadn’t looked back, he might have already slipped into a coma.
As I ran, I scanned ahead for the markers but also looked far into the distance in the hope of seeing a vehicle or someone else who could help. Still nothing.
After the numbers came the questions. Why had I looked back in the first place? Had I sensed something? Was something or someone guiding me to help Tommy? And had I made the right decision to run ahead? Would Tommy have got help quicker if I’d gone back?