Late night "stop outs"....

It was dark by 6pm and so most people got into their sleeping bags and settled down for the night. I had tried to put off eating my dinner for as long as possible as I knew that if I ate early hungry, I'd wake up starving in the middle of the night. Still, as my tentmate Flash and I sat there tending a little fire to heat some water to rehydrate the food, we felt like dirty stop-outs even though it was only 7pm.

When it came to turning in after that, I realised my schoolboy error. The last stage was due to end on the beach, but we'd still be staying there that night and wouldn't return to the hotel until the evening afterwards, so we were allowed to hand in a small bag to have at the beach after the event. Unfortunately I'd managed to put my sleeping bag into that bag, and had just taken my bivvy bag with me (I'd planned it the other way round in case there was a sea breeze on the beach).......so even though I wore all the clothes that I had in my pack, it wasn't exactly the comfiest night when the temperatures dropped. Let's just say it was actually a relief to hear the "call to prayer" at 4:45am and know that the day wasn't far away!

Paying attention at the briefing

And they're off...

Day 2 was scheduled to be longer than Day 1, but by the time we had the briefing at 6:30am we'd already discovered that the "routebook" was rather a work of fiction. Distances and start times were rather variable (sometimes by as much as 2 hours which rather caught people unawares as they tried to get ready before dawn broke), and the water support points weren't always exactly as advertised. More to the point, they weren't always at the distances specified in the briefing that we'd get 10 mins before we started, so I (as well as others) ran out of water on occasion over the week (even though I wasn't wearing a watch, I did try to judge the distance I was travelling and so how long my water was supposed to last before I could fill up again).

Into the sand...

The field spread out quickly

Anyway, we were soon off and the day heated up. I started relatively slowly again, but the field quickly spread out. There were footprints going in several different directions in the sand, but as the race photographers also sometimes tried to convince you to change your route so they could get better pictures, I mainly ignored the tracks and aimed for the large way marking flags (officially every 500m but in actuality, whenever they felt like placing one). 

The "pretty" dunes (pretty hard to run up)

It was my first experience of the proper soft sand dunes.....which could be quite dispiriting to traipse up and down. However, each climb was rewarded by a great view (and helped you relocate the next flag) but there didn't seem to be many runners about. As it turned out, several people bypassed the dune section and ran around them on firmer ground to the first checkpoint (they were later penalised for this with small time penalties), so it was hard to know where you are in the field. I came out of the dunes and headed across flatter ground, only to find myself re-overtaking some runners who'd run round the side of that tough section.

Spot the flag.....clue:topleft

I passed Aziza slightly earlier on than the day before (but still between the first and second checkpoints) which gave me a bit of a buzz as I thought that I'd be left way behind once we'd started the desert running "proper". The last section was firmer terrain, especially if you ran just to the side of the 4WD tracks, and you could see the finish gantry from a long way off. It was still a relief to cross the line and be handed another nonalcoholic beer (I think I got pomegranate that day to compare to the pineapple flavour of day 1). 

The day had been shortened slightly as the sand was too soft for the 4WD and vehicles to take the tents/portaloos further along that route.......which might've seemed great at the time.....right up until you realised that the extra distance would still have to be covered later on. The tents hadn't yet been erected but as it was still morning, it meant that we could stood around and chatted rather than cracking into our food supplies too early.

The lovely Rosemary and Greg

We developed 2 new tentmates......Rosemary and Greg (actually in Oman on their honeymoon), as they were the only non-Italians in their initial tent. We thought "the more the merrier" (our tent was truly international.....we already had me, 2 Brits living/working in Oman, 3 Dutch, 2 from the Balearics, 2 Finns and a Swede living in England) and also that more bodies would help us all keep warm as the Bedouin tents are just 3-sided structures.

I had taken some cross stitch with me in case there was a lot of downtime to fill, but chatting and getting to know people (as well as discussing when and what we were all going to eat) seemed to fill the afternoon and suddenly the sun was starting to set.....time for dinner and then bed (with an extra cardboard box over the top of me, once it had been emptied of the water bottles it contained).