Tent 98

The Berber tent flapped and flayed in the wind as sand sliced into it through numerous rents in the worn fabric. Any pretence that it served to buffer the occupants from the force 5 gale raging around the camp would have been quickly dispelled with a single swift glance into the tent’s grainy interior. Eight dishevelled figures, covered by a thin film of Saharan grit, grimly huddled together in muted companionship as the storm ravaged the bivouac. The wind had been unrelenting for five hours and the initial thrill of being in a desert sandstorm had rapidly dispelled as we had battled to keep the tent upright. Not all our fellow competitors had been so lucky, much to our ashamed amusement; groups of competitors lay smothered under flattened tents, their bags half submerged by the hot sand.

“So what is the hardest thing you have ever done before?” was the theme of the distracted banter as we endeavoured to get to know each other.

In truth, the hardest thing that immediately sprung to my mind was the epic struggle I had had with the assembly of a flat-packed lawnmower that my wife and I purchased from B&Q a week before I had travelled out to Morocco. The box had stated a self-assembly time of 30 minutes. It took me 40 minutes just to get all the bits unpacked and spread them on the lawn. In fact, the whole procedure had taken me an entire afternoon, not least due to one of my more special moments where I decided to put oil into the fuel tank. I didn’t tell the lads about that. The story wouldn’t have made a great first impression. What they wanted to know was whether I had done anything comparable to the Marathon des Sables before, a 150 mile self supported race over six days.

“Nope” I replied.

My tent companions were all in a similar situation to me. I had half expected to be immersed amongst a group of SAS wannabes, with a smattering of seasoned ultra endurance athletes who had been there and done it all before. Not a chance, my new best mates for the next week consisted of a policeman, a fireman, two lawyers, two IT guys and a stockbroker. Collectively we looked more like a bunch of geography teachers rather than elite runners poised to embark on an event billed as ‘the toughest footrace on earth’, but appearances can be deceptive. It soon became apparent that I was in the company of seven extraordinary individuals, each with a remarkable inner strength and steely resolve that would both inspire and humble me throughout. Their biggest handicap from day one, was nominating me, a predominantly large animal vet, as the team doctor.

The MdS is definitely a testing experience. As you might expect, its billing is geared to attract testosterone fuelled twenty something’s or hardened thirty something’s curious to know whether they would have been hard enough for a career in special forces. For the majority of competitors though, this dressing cuts no ice whatsoever, they are there for deeper personal reasons; adventurers who want to experience the remote Sahara, individuals who want to challenge themselves with something out of the ordinary or athletes racing for the prize money.

The beauty of the race is that no matter what your level or standard, it is ultimately a challenge or competition with yourself. If you are an elite ultra endurance athlete it throws up different difficulties to those just striving to complete the distance. Arguably you could say that it is even harder for the people who can’t run at the speed of light and end up spending double the amount of time ‘running’ in the baking sun with the same amount of water as the elites who scamper along at an unbelievably rapid pace. Whatever your standard, the MdS is a fantastic experience and one that remains in the minds and hearts of everyone who participates. By the end, everyone I spoke to felt they had gained something special from the race – except the guy who had to have his toes amputated.

After landing in Ouarrazarate, we had been taken to The Berber Palace hotel – supposedly five star, although that needs to be kept in perspective when remembering it is situated in an outback desert town in western Morocco. You had to find someone to share a room with for the first night and I was lucky enough to share with Nick.

Nick is an RAF navigator and a serious marathon runner (2hr 30min sort of serious). Really nice guy and in his early forties, Nick was super-psyched for the race. After about five minutes in his company I was quickly feeling a sense of quiet panic, not least because on arrival I discovered that I left my debit card at home and didn’t have any cash with me, but because my new room mate was in a different league of ‘ultra-endurance readiness’ to me. It was instantly clear that we had different styles of preparedness. Everything about Nick’s gear was perfect. He had planned for every contingency right down to a stage five race strategy, a pristine backpack and weighed sachets of sun cream for each day.

On the other hand, two days before departure I had discovered a large rip in the bottom of my rucksack. A single glance at the 3 inch line of thick nylon stitches said it all to Nick who didn’t waste a second and set about putting me straight on a few things. I gleaned a lot of tips in that first night right down to nabbing a shower cap from the hotel room (it could be used as a mobile sink for washing feet in) and he was to remain a source of friendly and helpful advice throughout the course of the competition. Needless to say, he wasn’t that surprised when I suggested we went for a pre-race beer only to discover upon reaching the bar, I didn’t have any money. Being a gentleman, Nick kindly lent me enough euros to last the week and I got the order in; one beer and one orange juice.

The next day saw us up at 6am and boarding the coaches that would drive us out to the bivouac and awaiting sandstorm. Grabbing a croissant from the breakfast buffet I bumped into the token celebrity along for the jaunt – Jack Osborne. Jack is the son of the legendary rocker Ozzy Osborne and I said hello. He clearly didn’t recognise me but said "Hi" nevertheless. I wished him luck and we parted, I headed to the coach while he went to his ‘team’ land rover. It was a 5 hour journey in the cramped confines of the bus and I wanted to be a celebrity with my own land rover from about 10 minutes in. I sat next to Nick who regaled me with exit strategies from crashing aircraft and buses for 2 hours solid before he returned to reading his book ‘Great escapes in military history’, and although I may have been willing the journey to end – at least I had the knowledge of how to get out if we crashed.

We disembarked from the coach and were promptly herded into the back of army trucks, as the rest of the journey was impassable for normal road vehicles. This was a touch chaotic, but good fun and we were driven ‘off road’ for about 9km to our tented bivouac – a sight we would soon welcome at the end of everyday for the next week.

Covered in dust and dirt from the bumpy ride, we lugged our bags to the camp and were told that we had to find a tent which would then be our designated base for the duration of the event. Eight people were to be allocated to each tent. Nick and I had parted company during the chaos of the army truck journey so I padded along pondering upon whom I should inflict my company. It was a big camp with the competitors’ tents arranged in two rows of a giant circle. Each nationality had a specific area where all their tents were situated and not being one for unnecessary effort I paused by the first tent of the British section.

“Luke, do you want to come in here?” came an amused voice. “You look like you’re struggling a bit.”

I turned to see Chris, a chap I had met the previous evening at dinner. He was a small fella with a ready smile and a razor wit. He had a chubby face with a mop of spiky brown hair. If he had possessed two large middle incisors he would have resembled a large beaver. I liked him immediately.

Glancing in the reflection of his sunglasses, I realised the source of his amusement. I had been standing at the back of the army truck and was coated in the filth and dirt from the 9km ‘off road’ journey. Sweat had left streaks down my face and my longish blond hair was sticking out at all angles. I did indeed look a state.

“No problem if you have already arranged a tent, but we have space for a couple of others and you’re welcome to join us.” He grinned.

I lumbered over to meet my new found buddies as another cluster of competitors were bussed over to the campsite. Ducking inside the entrance a sign pinned to the outside caught my eye – the number 98 read large and proud.

We spent the next two days undergoing our kit checks by the race officials (ensuring we were carrying the ‘essential requirements’ in terms of food and survival equipment), struggling to keep our tent upright and becoming ‘acclimatised’ to the fine Saharan grit which still plagues me two months later. It was also the perfect opportunity to get to know my new friends.

Migs and Omar were two pals from London, both ironmen triathletes, fit, toned and resembling exactly what you would imagine the sort of scarily fit people running in this event should look like. A female journalist competing in the race, described the experience in the Times Style magazine as being transported to the female equivalent of the Playboy mansion. In fact she even mentions following number 470’s rear end as motivational in getting her up the sand dunes one day. Migs was number 470 and now has the enviable accolade that his rear end has had a great write up in national press.

Omar also had a distinguishing feature - a glass eye. The result of a drunken bar fight in Spain over a beautiful senorita, the unnerving stare it could radiate definitely gave him a rugged edge – although seeing him remove and clean the sand out of the raw socket was not for the squeamish. Their respective reasons for doing the event were quite contrasting. Migs seemed to be quite a complicated guy and on some sort of personal quest which I couldn’t fully define, whereas Omar seemed to be along for the crack. His ‘logical’ plan was to have a good story with which to snare women when he got back home. Both were simply great companions and solid blokes who would be an asset in any adventure.

Dylan was the youngest – in his early 20’s, proved to be the strongest of our little group and in possession of a constitution of steel, Lee - a policeman with icy blue eyes and terminator determination was someone I was to spend a epic night with on day 4, John – a colossal fireman with awesome tent building skills had a snoring habit that could wake the dead, Rupert a partner in a top London law firm with photographic talent for taking pictures of the unsuspecting and Chris, also a lawyer – an extremely funny guy who also happened to be a desert lothario. I had been thrown into a superb mix of characters and although we were all doing it for some sort of charity, probably the only bore of the group to keep harping on about ‘the flipping animal charity (with a difference)’ was me. Some things will never change. Worldwide Veterinary Service www.wvs.org.uk .

All our packs having been checked, pre-race banter in full flow, our flares, route book and medical cards having been issued, we dutifully attended the pre race speech from the organiser, Patrick Bauer, complete with camel charge display for a finale – all we had to do after that was wait for the dawn. Then the fun would truly begin.

It is hard to give a blow by blow account of the actual race as there was just so much of it. Each day we were issued with a rationed water supply and the terrain varied dramatically ranging from endless stretches of undulating sand to massive flat plains littered with rocks the size of a mans head. Whereas twisting an ankle at the start would have caused massive problems over a 151 mile course, and there were obvious issues with trashing your feet as they continuously pounded over the rock hard terrain, with fine sand particles invariably working their way into people’s sweat filled socks, lacerating and chewing up feet as they did so; but the real assassin was poor water management.

585 of the 731 contestants managed to complete the course, most of those that didn’t had collapsed due to dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. One competitor ended up in a coma for a few days, another had a heart attack and there were reports that a female competitor aged 28 – had a stroke. It was a year in which the record number of IV drips was administered and over 100 people were out by day three. The rules stated you were allowed 1 drip but if you had 2 then you were out. For most of us it was a question of how you coped in a state of permanent dehydration – there was simply no way to keep hydrated when you are covering massive distances in temperatures up to 46 degrees carrying a pack and only given limited water.

Day one was adrenaline fuelled and a lot of people damaged themselves by running too hard and not taking on sufficient salt. The first night Migs was throwing up and had horrendous headaches. Thankfully with a tent 98 effort, we sorted him out by restoring his electrolyte balance and it was an invaluable lesson for all of us – keep taking salt tablets. Migs hadn’t properly read label on his electrolyte supplement and taken under half the stated dose. A lesser man would have had his morale completely crushed to be vomiting and nauseous at the end of the first day and although he was definitely a Muppet for misreading the label, at least he was a tough one.

Day two and day three were both quite gruelling in that people were dropping out like flies. In particular one section between check points on day three was horrendous. Nearly everyone ran out of water and the stage was directly after a hard 8k sand section (all uphill) one step forward for every four taken sort of thing, so we were all exhausted. Things got very bad at that point and I had to really mentally knuckle down.

Figuring I had about 6km left to go before the next checkpoint, I started to count my steps, knowing I had to get to six thousand. Thoughts were blurring through my mind, just got to get it done was the predominant one. On deeper level, I couldn’t let the side down, my mates would take the unrelenting piss out of me if I didn’t do it, what about all the sponsorship I had raised and the money I had spent in trying to do the race, time away from my wife in training would have been for nothing, the load I had placed on my partner in the practice while I was on a jaunt in the desert would have been totally pointless. People say these things harden you, I didn’t feel hardened so much as totally and utterly buggered. I made the checkpoint and virtually passed out for an hour as I tried to ‘sip’ the water.

Mark, an army physical training instructor and in one of the army teams, gamely strode up beside me after I finally left the checkpoint. I’d first met Mark at the hotel before we left, we had both jumped in the pool for a quick swim and I remembered comparing the health of our feet. I’d had a slightly ingrown toenail a couple of days before we left and Marks sobering advice had been to rip it of before the race – he said it would save me pain in the long run. It had taken me less than half a second to think of about a thousand reasons why this wasn’t such a great idea, and label him as a complete masochistic nut, albeit a nice one.

Mark seemed to have coped better with the water situation than anyone else I could see on the course, and being of quite a small frame with not an ounce of fat on him, I guess he was ideally built to cope with the environmental conditions. He told me that his other two team members (one a paratrooper and the other a tank driver) were quite a way behind us and that his whole attitude had recently changed, he no longer wanted to win, he just wanted to complete the race! I told him I still wanted to get in the top ten but for some reason he didn’t believe me. The tank driver had brought shoes that were too small and hadn’t planned for the heat effect on feet, swelling them to over a size bigger, the paratrooper who looked like he was built to run trough walls, was struggling with the water situation. Sadly, neither of them managed to finish the day.

It was an absolute killer though; day 3 is notorious every year for being predominantly sand dunes and very hard. Upon finishing the stage in the company of Dylan and Omar, I hobbled into camp only to see John by the medical tent. He had collapsed on the course and had been removed from the race. It was a real blow and the effect on moral was crushing. Being such a big guy, his water requirement would have been that much more than the rest of us and he had a distinct disadvantage. As he told us later, the fact he had kids to get back to meant he couldn’t risk pushing himself into serious trouble and we all admired him for his strength of character. In that sort of environment it was almost the easy option to push yourself beyond what you know is the right thing to do. He made a very selfless choice, not forgetting the fact he was found collapsed and vomiting uncontrollably by race officials, none of had any doubts that he would have tried to drag himself onwards if he hadn’t had a family to get back to.

Everyday had sand dunes - I would think 40% of the course was just on sand; the rest of it was on the rock hard desiccated sea beds. Time between stages was spent, eating, sleeping and exchanging humorous banter. Although weight was a bit of an issue, my wife had given me a parting gift of a magnetic draughts set to take along. The idea was that it would help me make friends – she clearly has a good assessment of my conversational skills. Ironically I am also hopeless at draughts but dutifully lugged it around which bemused my tent mates. Chris never played a match; instead he would invariably be distracted by the endless stream of female competitors that seemed to constantly approach him. The number women participating were small and after four days of not washing, no one was exactly looking their best, but if they were female, Chris somehow knew them.

I struggled to work out how Chris and Rupert, both really nice guys, had got themselves into this situation. All the rest of us in the tent relished physical challenges and had a history of doing some sort of adventurous activity but Chris and Rupert calmly informed us they were lawyers and Rupert had had a bad knee for the last six months and hadn’t been able to train. They bantered in fluent French with the Berber tent men who did such a hopeless job on erecting our tent, and were a constant and unfailing source of humour and calm stoicism. They were also completely selfless, dishing out excess electrolyte tablets they just happened to have, and worked as a close knit team, conquering the race with what appeared to be nothing less than relative ease. If they hadn’t struck me as such honest unassuming blokes my suspicious nature might have insinuated they weren’t telling us the whole story about themselves. Their whole desert survival seemed to be unparalleled and unlike John, Lee or myself who were beginning to slough off large pieces of our feet, they didn’t seem particularly troubled by blisters in the slightest. John’s feet were totally raw – the balls of both feet had come off and he was walking on raw epithelium for most of the day up until his collapse.

They weren’t the quickest of competitors but slow and steady won through as although I might have been miles ahead of them over the first three days, all that was about to change. Up until the night at the end of stage 3, I was close behind Dylan in leading our tent effort but cooking up a boil in the bag chicken was a very bad idea. I didn’t manage to boil it properly and about four hours after ingestion, I found myself crouched outside the tent vomiting my guts up. This spelt bad news, and predictably the diarrhoea was close behind; by morning I was in a right state. Wracked by nausea and fatigue I was in for about the worst 18 hours of my life. I’d had a maximum of an hours kip, was physically exhausted and had to face the longest stage of the race. I couldn’t eat anything, the heat was unrelenting and I really struggled to keep what tepid water I could drink, actually down. The big danger was losing all my electrolytes as it was very hard to take salt tablets on an empty stomach. I was covered in vomit and the rest. Not pleasant when you don’t have a change of clothes with you or any water to wash with.

Being the epic stage of the course, I was really lagging by nightfall. Luckily for me though, Lee was also in a battered state. His feet were raw and he could hardly shuffle through the sand. We pledged to nail it together. What a pair we made, and joined by the welcome company of Pete (feet also destroyed) for the final 20km, we kept going through the night playing variations of the alphabet game on films, football teams and music trudging unrelentingly into the early hours of the morning. The game was hampered somewhat by intermittent stops for me to void liquid through one orifice or another and by the fact that Lee had absolutely no knowledge of films, football or music. We made it to camp at 4am. Needless to say, we were pretty near the back!

The fifth day was a day of rest. Most of us slept like the dead. Dylan had a touch of stomach cramps and vomiting but being half steel, he managed to shrug it off during the day and it didn’t slow him for the sixth day – a full marathon stage in which he continued to purr ahead of the rest of us.

I spent most of the marathon day ‘power walking’. I was definitely feeling much better, not least thanks to Chris cooking me up a soup that Migs had given him for the cause of getting me back on track. I managed to keep it down and it signified the start of a steady recovery. I wasn’t doing any great shakes on the time front but enjoyed the day and had a lucky break navigating through a section of dunes. Navigating is not my strongest discipline but I found myself in the company of a big chap in the territorial SAS who took charge and led me through it in a flash.

The penultimate night was soon upon us all and the euphoric atmosphere in the camp was great. There was no way any of us were not going to make the last stage, even if we had needed to drag ourselves by our teeth; we were going to get through. The Paris Philharmonic orchestra had flown out to play to the whole campsite and the atmosphere was magic.

The final day was a pure adrenaline rush. A hardcore 12km over the biggest sand dunes in the Sahara desert. It was a short reminder that the desert should never be underestimated, no matter what the distance. I rocked in to the finish line with a sense of pure relief. Relief to finish, relief to have got through it and pure joy that my mates at home wouldn’t be taking the mick out of me for years to come.

It remains for me to thank my family, friends and sponsors of which Bayer deserve particular mention. We raised about £4k for the charity and I lost about 10kg so all in all, the experience had its plus points. I also need to thank John, a vet in Derbyshire who gave me some invaluable tips and described how the race should have been done! Finally I need to drink to Tent 98; Dylan, Lee, John, Omar, Migs, Rupert and Chris – great friends and a great adventure, thanks guys.

ROCK ON.