Wednesday 13 December 2017

The "Night Marathon"

My foil blanket idea seemed to have both positives and negatives. I think the extra layer reflected my body warmth back at me and so kept me warmer, but I could no longer rub my legs etc to warm myself up, as the foil made so much noise and I didn't want to disturb my tentmates. It did seem, however, that they were all quite taken with my idea, as by the next night, out tent was a sea of different coloured foil blankets spread over bodies.


I hope to be running and looking
 at a beautiful sunset
The morning of day 5 was very odd.....there was no need to get up in the dark.....or even get up at all, except for the fact that everyone had been in "bed" for about 12 hours and hunger started to strike. The morning was spent wandering around between tents, chatting and discussing when to eat our meals for the day.....decisions, decisions. I even got out my cross-stitch and did some of that.

We all agreed that we would rather just get up and run, than hang around for most of the day waiting to run. The route was meant to be about a "marathon distance" but by now, we knew to rely on neither the advertised distance nor the placement of water stations. Start times and start groups kept changing, but by the afternoon it had been decided that all but the top 15 could start at 2, and they would like the top 10 to start at 4. As I was lying 15th, that meant a 3pm start for me.
 
I was very envious as I watched most of the field start an hour before me, including Aziza. There was a bit of a breeze so it wasn't too hot and they had the advantage of more than three hours of daylight in which to run. This helped them with foot placement and route choice as, although we were meant to be travelling along a sandy desert "road", I discovered soon after starting, that it was much easier to run away from (but following the line of) the road as the sand was much firmer.

The sun started to set when I was only halfway
 between CPs 1 and 2
Greg led my group off and soon disappeared out of sight but Flash was not far behind me until about halfway between the first two checkpoints. I'd passed some of the back markers before the first checkpoints and realised just how long a day (or rather night) they were going to have. It was nice to see all of my early-starting tentmates along the route between the first and second checkpoints as there was still plenty of light for us to recognise and encourage each other.

I had hoped to have been able to get to about halfway well before the sun set, but it was already almost dark by the time I got to the second checkpoint which was officially at 20km. Morag was manning this water station and had been instructed that we were not allowed to continue further without having our headtorches on. I was rather disappointed at this as I'd hoped to be able to continue without mine for a period, letting my eyes adjust to the fading light and actually appreciating running at night in the desert with the stars above me. I'm rather afraid of running in the dark, so I didn't like the way my head torch narrowed my world to a tiny circle of light in front of me, and made everything else seem much darker. I was slightly alarmed every time I heard a noise off to the side of me, though I'm sure that it was just wind in any small vegetation that there was.

I wasn't quite sure of distances but when I caught up with my Balearic tentmates (who had now decided to run together and support each other), they assured me that it was only about 3k to the next checkpoint. There were flags and lights marking the route every so often (I will not say every 500m) so it was impossible to get lost, but as with the others, that water station wasn't actually at the advertised place and so it really did take ages until its lights came into view.

Whenever a support vehicle came along the road, I would try to enjoy the extra light of having the headlights behind me as much as possible and then try to also use the taillights to help me with my footing before my world shrank back into that little pool of headtorch light again. I couldn't help but notice that when the race leaders caught and sped past me (looking like it was no bother for them to run on that surface in the dark), they did seem to have vehicles following quite closely behind them, which must have helped with their lighting somewhat.

Finally making that finish gantry,
ready to have my number scanned
I found that section slightly tougher as the sand had softened again and sometimes it was hard to work out if you were going up or down as the darkness was so disorientating, so occasionally your foot would hit the ground before you expected it to, or else you'd shoot forwards much further than you expected. When I finally got to the flag and light marking the point where we turned off the "road", I nearly missed the man sitting there who let me know that it was just 1km further to the finish.

Cheering others in...
I think it shows that it was the terrain and the darkness that had slowed me down rather than tiredness or the temperature, as I managed to pick up my pace and passed a good 6 people in the last km. I decided to ignore other people's tracks and cut across through some bushes and small dunes when I spotted the final flags and gantry nicely lit up. If it was a marathon distance, I'd definitely recorded a PW of just over 5 hours, but I was only a couple of minutes slower than Aziza who'd had the advantage of more light, and Natalia had also had a good run to finish in a similar time to me (though an hour later due to her later start.....in fact, only the 3 leaders had made up the full hour's deficit and overtaken me).

Interviewed like a "rabbit in the headlights"
As soon as I'd crossed the line, I was asked to do a random tv interview, and then I had the big the challenge of finding the right tent in the pitch dark. Luckily I spotted Greg heating water up on a small fire (the promised hot water at the finish wasn't there.....quelle surprise) and he pointed me in the right direction. I had my "beer", a lukewarm rehydrated meal, and then welcomed my other tentmates back as they appeared. It was interesting to see how people had fared on that long stage.....some were chatty, some were starving, while others just threw themselves down on their sleeping mats and went to sleep. I confess to not staying up until the last "runners" arrived (at 2am) but luckily all my tent were home and asleep long before then.

No comments:

Post a Comment