A heat shock acclimatisation.....

The route book I hadn't received by email!

In the "Big Brother Tent"...well Tent 4!

When my Croatian friend Nikolina suggested we run the Oman Desert Marathon together, I jumped at the opportunity to rekindle my love for multiday stage races. I like the fact that you get away from all the trappings of modern life, carry your food/clothes/sleeping equipment etc with you, and spend each day just running, chatting, eating and chilling out.

The race organisation promised to sort out the flights so I duly entered but then things became rather quiet. Nikolina appeared to decide not to do it, and nothing materialised re the flights. I resigned myself that it wasn't going to happen so turned my thoughts more towards whether to run the cross country in Northern Ireland or not instead. With a week to go, flight tickets materialised and it suddenly became a massive scramble to get organised. With the help of a couple of good friends, I managed to amass all the compulsory kit, sort out the lightest versions I had of what I needed and source lots of dehydrated calories. Unfortunately there was no time to find some sand to run on, or a sauna to acclimatise in (in fact, I actually saw snow before I left Scotland).

It certainly felt warm as we set off!

An overnight flight, a long wait at the airport (for an even longer transfer) with other runners, a last minute change of accommodation and plans, registration with last year's route detailed in the race booklet (!) random kit checks, meant that I was definitely ready for a nice meal and a good sleep on the Friday night.

Relatively good running terrain

We had a very early start for breakfast and then an hour's transfer to where the opening ceremony and first stage were being held. As one directly followed the other we were already in our running kit and only had access to the bags we were going to carry for the week. The location of the first stage was determined by politics as, instead of the described "downhill linear route to help runners acclimatise" we ended up doing a circular route so we could start and finish by the camel racing track by the palace of the future Sultan (and deputy prime minister). 

Going solo

This stage lasted about 20k but gave us a taster of the week to come (well a baby version anyway) as we ran across sand, up some small dunes, along dried up sandy creek beds and desert tracks/roads, and peered ahead for marker flags. It also gave us a slight clue (had we thought about it) as to typical Omani organisation (checkpoints not being exactly at the distances they were meant to be at, variable timings, route changes from the "route book" and in fact, and actual changes of distance for the stage. 

Into the unknown....

We finished with a long run back along a sandy track past the camel racing stadium and then a kilometre or so along a road into town. I had started the stage happily chatting at the back but seemed to work my way up the field as the run progressed. You were not always sure where you were in the field exactly as there was some slight variation between flags (officially about 500m apart, but not always so, eg 2 flags in the last 4K) for example, when I discussed having to duck under wires just at neck height to one of my tentmates at night, he'd seen none of them, but I did find myself overtaking a Moroccan lady about 12k into the day. I knew that she'd won the event in the previous year and had also finished second at the Marathon des Sables so I didn't think I could be doing that badly......although clearly we were a long way behind the head of the field (which included Natalya, the Russian lady who'd previously finished won and been second at the MdS).

Along the camel tracks

As it turned out, I finished second lady on the day and so was over the moon with my performance.......though I did gather that it was "the most runnable day" so I figured it would all be "downhill" in terms of results for me.....but then again, it didn't matter as I'd gone there to enjoy myself and run without the pressure of a result or any times/pace (I'd even left my watch at home).

Happy to finish and earn my (nonalcoholic) beer :-) 

Luckily I was able to swop tents from
 Tent 9 to Tent 4 with some fellow Brits

We were given a (very welcome) non alcoholic fruit beer as well as water at the finish and started cracking into the food supplies we were carrying (I was also allowed to change my shorts as I'd worn longer ones that day out of respect to the nearby houses at the start/finish) while awaiting the bus that was going to take us into the desert proper (in fact it was a couple of hours on the bus and then 30mins by 4 wheel drive.....until we became bogged in the sand and walked the last little bit to the Bedouin tents we'd come to call home).