Sand,Sweat and Tears
My introduction to the infamous six-day desert marathon known as the Marathon de Sables (MdS) was a video recording of the 2004 event, in which adventurer and television presenter Ben Fogle took part. He suffered terribly from blisters and general fatigue. I found the footage of grown men crying in their tents each night and pictures of the same men hobbling through yet another 30-plus-kilometre stage the next day strangely appealing. After more than two decades of experiencing the desert from the relative comfort of all-wheel-drive vehicles, I decided to swap four wheels for two legs, posted an application form and started training.The MdS is about personal management, not just running ability. You carry all of your food and gear throughout the 243-kilometre race. Water is provided but limited to around nine litres per day, with more on the longer stages. Packs must weigh no more than 15 kilograms at the start of the race. Each competitor has to carry food rations capable of providing a minimum of 2,000 calories per day. Discarding food or essential items of kit results in either time penalties or outright disqualification. With this in mind, a rather fanatical approach is needed when selecting kit and provisions. Or at least that’s how most competitors see it. Nevertheless, on arrival in the desert it was evident that there were a few who preferred to ‘wing it’, some more successfully than others. It isn’t a strategy I would endorse.Only essentials went into my pack. Food was freeze-dried and stripped of extraneous packaging. Items such as toiletries, cooking equipment and sleeping systems were either indispensable and incredibly light or they were left at home. Every last gram counted and my final pack weight dipped under 12 kilograms at the start of the race.
Happy feet
As with most of the 750 runners who started last year’s event, my initial non-equipment concern was my feet, especially after watching the Fogle video. The combination of the terrain, the heat and the sand over so great a distance in so short a time meant that my feet were going to take a pounding. So I religiously followed the advice in John Vonhof’s bible, Fixing Your Feet: Prevention and Treatments for Athletes.Good shoes and socks, combined with a reliable pair of gaiters, means fewer blisters. And fewer blisters means happy feet. Happy feet means you’ll probably finish the event (as long as you don’t dehydrate, overheat or simply keel over from exhaustion). I planned to nurse my feet for the six months prior to the event, learn how to tape them and deal with blisters and obtain the best shoes. Well, that was the theory. In reality, I scarified the hard skin and applied E45 regularly – and that was it.Keeping sand out of your shoes is vital. Most runners opt for one of two types of gaiter: either home-made designs cut from parachute material or commercially available gaiters specifically designed for the event. Most of the French participants – who seem to own the race – used the Raidlight brand of gaiter. Many of the British contingent (including me) chose to make their own. Rigged up from a pattern found on the internet, my parachute nylon gaiters did the job but were just a bit too clumsy for my liking. For ease, I would suggest the Raidlight version.The majority of runners wear their normal road-racing shoes. These trainers provide plenty of ventilation and are usually robust enough to survive the beating they receive. However, I did suffer some last-minute wobblies when the glue used on my gaiters seeped through the fabric of my running shoes, creating nodules that needed filing down the day before we started. A complete dress rehearsal would have taken care of this 11th-hour panic. Misinformation and debate about shoe size is rife. Some say two sizes bigger is essential to allow for swelling. Others say one size up is sufficient. I settled on half a size. My feet didn’t swell and I didn’t meet anyone whose feet did. What you should be careful of is shoes so big that they cause friction, blisters and, eventually, copious layers of bulky dressings. Then you really do need a shoe that’s two sizes larger. If you know you’re prone to blistering and taping, allow for this when choosing a shoe size.Socks are also important, but to what degree, I’m not sure. As with most items of kit, the choice of sock is very personal. There are all sorts of designs on the market with new qualities that apparently assist with preventing blisters and discomfort. I would advise testing a variety before you depart on several long, hard runs. [You can directly compare different materials by wearing a different brand on each foot during trials – Ed.]
Getting the balance right
Your backpack has to carry all of your kit and it’s going to get a good old bashing. Strong and light fabrics, a low profile and compression straps are all essential. The rucksack also needs to have side or hip pockets that are accessible on the move to allow you to get at food and liquid. Repeatedly taking your pack on and off in order to eat and drink may seem an acceptable idea now, but the desert is too hot for that. Most runners attach bottle holders to the pack’s front straps. Some packs have attachments for this, but they’re often crude and unreliable, so you’ll need to do a bit of DIY. Buy a bottle with a holder and tape the holder to your pack. I carried two 400-millilitre bottles and a bladder in my pack.Some runners use front waist packs to counterbalance the weight of the backpack. This is a good idea if the total weight carried remains the same. However, the danger of having more room is that you fill it, thus adding to your weight and eventually increasing the amount of energy expended in hauling the extra gear. The elite MdS runners employed the waist system effectively, but their backpacks were so small and light that the dual-bag system made sense. Other, less-experienced runners I saw using waist packs just looked overloaded.
The heart of the matter
These days, many runners use heart monitors. This being a personal-management exercise as well as a race – and with my training being based on heart rate – I felt I would need to monitor what my heart was doing under such extreme conditions. As it turned out, I couldn’t keep my heart rate below 160 beats per minute on the first day, and as my maximum is around 185, this was way too high. I suffered that night, so I slowed down for the remainder of the race, keeping my heart rate between 120 and 140 beats per minute. My only other ‘gadget’ was a GPS. This proved to be another indispensable item as it helped me to manage my water intake perfectly. Many runners had no idea how far the next checkpoint and water supply was, so they couldn’t gauge or manage their fluid intake. More than 140 runners dropped out – the most ever. The organisers subsequently hinted that water mismanagement was a crucial factor in the large number of non-finishers.A small medical kit is obviously essential, but you can get away with very little as ‘Doc Trotters’ (the on-site medical unit) is professional, well organised and more than adequately stocked. Doc Trotters doesn’t receive a very good press on the UK web forums and because of this poor and, I believe, undeserved reputation, a lot of runners treat themselves incorrectly and end up with infections. We had one such runner in our tent and his feet were a real mess by the race’s end. I’m sure this could have been avoided with a read of Vonhof’s book and a visit to Doc Trotters.The few remaining essential items include a stove, matches and a compass, as well as energy foods and drinks. These are simple to obtain and the choice is fairly straightforward. Note that stoves and fuel are bought from the organisers in Morocco as you can’t carry them on international flights. As always, weight is key.The MdS is now just one of many ultra-races in the desert. Equipment is evolving all the time. There is a lot of information on the internet, including a couple of sites that deal with kit, provisions and advice. One of the best is the official MdS site (www.darbaroud.com). Perhaps the most useful piece of advice I can give to anyone considering this type of event is to not only plan your kit thoughtfully and carefully, but to also to test each piece thoroughly before you set off. Good luck!
Cotton is king
When you’re going to be running in temperatures of up to 50°C, it pays to put some thought into your clothing. I’m going to go out on a limb with my opinion on space-age fabrics. I agonised over fast-wicking shirts. Most synthetic materials are designed for temperate climates. You run, sweat, finish your race and then get cold quickly. If you wear fast-wicking materials, they seem to stop you getting that cold and clammy feeling on your skin that occurs when you wear cotton clothing. However, the MdS takes place in temperatures of 45°C-plus. It is also an extremely dry climate. This means that you expel a great deal of sweat. By the end of each day, your shirt will have crisped up nicely and will probably have lost most of its wicking qualities unless you take a pack of washing-up liquid and revive it each evening. My gamble was that the heat would evaporate all sweat so quickly that it wouldn’t matter what sort of shirt I wore. If this was true, then comfort would be the key. And even if it didn’t dry completely, the cold feeling on the skin would be a welcome bonus.I kept going back to the MdS website, which recommends 100 per cent cotton shirts. Bearing in mind that I seem to have well-behaved skin and don’t suffer from sore nipples, a chafing crutch, blisters, flaky armpits, or any of the other complaints that you seem to hear about, I have never had a problem with this natural material. Little did I know when I started investigating kit that I would end up in an inexpensive Peter Storm cotton T-shirt. It still crisped up, but at least I didn’t have to shell out £50. That said, specific skin types mean that your final choice should be a personal one.
The tough get going
The idea for the Marathon de Sables (MdS) came to Patrick Baur following a 1984 expedition to the Sahara. Baur is still the ‘man in charge’ and is highly visible throughout the event.It’s now known as the toughest foot race in the world. There are others that compete for the title, but it’s still no stroll in the park. If you are interested in entering, go for it! I found that it was a great six months of training, culminating in a week in the southern Moroccan Sahara that was just fantastic. I would certainly go again.From its humble beginnings, the MdS has grown to around 800 competitors and is currently over-subscribed for this year and the next, although you can go on the waiting list: an indication of the MdS’s popularity and the growing madness of the human race.Entry information can be found at www.darbaroud.com. For English entries, you can go straight to www.saharamarathon.co.uk.
Happy feet
As with most of the 750 runners who started last year’s event, my initial non-equipment concern was my feet, especially after watching the Fogle video. The combination of the terrain, the heat and the sand over so great a distance in so short a time meant that my feet were going to take a pounding. So I religiously followed the advice in John Vonhof’s bible, Fixing Your Feet: Prevention and Treatments for Athletes.Good shoes and socks, combined with a reliable pair of gaiters, means fewer blisters. And fewer blisters means happy feet. Happy feet means you’ll probably finish the event (as long as you don’t dehydrate, overheat or simply keel over from exhaustion). I planned to nurse my feet for the six months prior to the event, learn how to tape them and deal with blisters and obtain the best shoes. Well, that was the theory. In reality, I scarified the hard skin and applied E45 regularly – and that was it.Keeping sand out of your shoes is vital. Most runners opt for one of two types of gaiter: either home-made designs cut from parachute material or commercially available gaiters specifically designed for the event. Most of the French participants – who seem to own the race – used the Raidlight brand of gaiter. Many of the British contingent (including me) chose to make their own. Rigged up from a pattern found on the internet, my parachute nylon gaiters did the job but were just a bit too clumsy for my liking. For ease, I would suggest the Raidlight version.The majority of runners wear their normal road-racing shoes. These trainers provide plenty of ventilation and are usually robust enough to survive the beating they receive. However, I did suffer some last-minute wobblies when the glue used on my gaiters seeped through the fabric of my running shoes, creating nodules that needed filing down the day before we started. A complete dress rehearsal would have taken care of this 11th-hour panic. Misinformation and debate about shoe size is rife. Some say two sizes bigger is essential to allow for swelling. Others say one size up is sufficient. I settled on half a size. My feet didn’t swell and I didn’t meet anyone whose feet did. What you should be careful of is shoes so big that they cause friction, blisters and, eventually, copious layers of bulky dressings. Then you really do need a shoe that’s two sizes larger. If you know you’re prone to blistering and taping, allow for this when choosing a shoe size.Socks are also important, but to what degree, I’m not sure. As with most items of kit, the choice of sock is very personal. There are all sorts of designs on the market with new qualities that apparently assist with preventing blisters and discomfort. I would advise testing a variety before you depart on several long, hard runs. [You can directly compare different materials by wearing a different brand on each foot during trials – Ed.]
Getting the balance right
Your backpack has to carry all of your kit and it’s going to get a good old bashing. Strong and light fabrics, a low profile and compression straps are all essential. The rucksack also needs to have side or hip pockets that are accessible on the move to allow you to get at food and liquid. Repeatedly taking your pack on and off in order to eat and drink may seem an acceptable idea now, but the desert is too hot for that. Most runners attach bottle holders to the pack’s front straps. Some packs have attachments for this, but they’re often crude and unreliable, so you’ll need to do a bit of DIY. Buy a bottle with a holder and tape the holder to your pack. I carried two 400-millilitre bottles and a bladder in my pack.Some runners use front waist packs to counterbalance the weight of the backpack. This is a good idea if the total weight carried remains the same. However, the danger of having more room is that you fill it, thus adding to your weight and eventually increasing the amount of energy expended in hauling the extra gear. The elite MdS runners employed the waist system effectively, but their backpacks were so small and light that the dual-bag system made sense. Other, less-experienced runners I saw using waist packs just looked overloaded.
The heart of the matter
These days, many runners use heart monitors. This being a personal-management exercise as well as a race – and with my training being based on heart rate – I felt I would need to monitor what my heart was doing under such extreme conditions. As it turned out, I couldn’t keep my heart rate below 160 beats per minute on the first day, and as my maximum is around 185, this was way too high. I suffered that night, so I slowed down for the remainder of the race, keeping my heart rate between 120 and 140 beats per minute. My only other ‘gadget’ was a GPS. This proved to be another indispensable item as it helped me to manage my water intake perfectly. Many runners had no idea how far the next checkpoint and water supply was, so they couldn’t gauge or manage their fluid intake. More than 140 runners dropped out – the most ever. The organisers subsequently hinted that water mismanagement was a crucial factor in the large number of non-finishers.A small medical kit is obviously essential, but you can get away with very little as ‘Doc Trotters’ (the on-site medical unit) is professional, well organised and more than adequately stocked. Doc Trotters doesn’t receive a very good press on the UK web forums and because of this poor and, I believe, undeserved reputation, a lot of runners treat themselves incorrectly and end up with infections. We had one such runner in our tent and his feet were a real mess by the race’s end. I’m sure this could have been avoided with a read of Vonhof’s book and a visit to Doc Trotters.The few remaining essential items include a stove, matches and a compass, as well as energy foods and drinks. These are simple to obtain and the choice is fairly straightforward. Note that stoves and fuel are bought from the organisers in Morocco as you can’t carry them on international flights. As always, weight is key.The MdS is now just one of many ultra-races in the desert. Equipment is evolving all the time. There is a lot of information on the internet, including a couple of sites that deal with kit, provisions and advice. One of the best is the official MdS site (www.darbaroud.com). Perhaps the most useful piece of advice I can give to anyone considering this type of event is to not only plan your kit thoughtfully and carefully, but to also to test each piece thoroughly before you set off. Good luck!
Cotton is king
When you’re going to be running in temperatures of up to 50°C, it pays to put some thought into your clothing. I’m going to go out on a limb with my opinion on space-age fabrics. I agonised over fast-wicking shirts. Most synthetic materials are designed for temperate climates. You run, sweat, finish your race and then get cold quickly. If you wear fast-wicking materials, they seem to stop you getting that cold and clammy feeling on your skin that occurs when you wear cotton clothing. However, the MdS takes place in temperatures of 45°C-plus. It is also an extremely dry climate. This means that you expel a great deal of sweat. By the end of each day, your shirt will have crisped up nicely and will probably have lost most of its wicking qualities unless you take a pack of washing-up liquid and revive it each evening. My gamble was that the heat would evaporate all sweat so quickly that it wouldn’t matter what sort of shirt I wore. If this was true, then comfort would be the key. And even if it didn’t dry completely, the cold feeling on the skin would be a welcome bonus.I kept going back to the MdS website, which recommends 100 per cent cotton shirts. Bearing in mind that I seem to have well-behaved skin and don’t suffer from sore nipples, a chafing crutch, blisters, flaky armpits, or any of the other complaints that you seem to hear about, I have never had a problem with this natural material. Little did I know when I started investigating kit that I would end up in an inexpensive Peter Storm cotton T-shirt. It still crisped up, but at least I didn’t have to shell out £50. That said, specific skin types mean that your final choice should be a personal one.
The tough get going
The idea for the Marathon de Sables (MdS) came to Patrick Baur following a 1984 expedition to the Sahara. Baur is still the ‘man in charge’ and is highly visible throughout the event.It’s now known as the toughest foot race in the world. There are others that compete for the title, but it’s still no stroll in the park. If you are interested in entering, go for it! I found that it was a great six months of training, culminating in a week in the southern Moroccan Sahara that was just fantastic. I would certainly go again.From its humble beginnings, the MdS has grown to around 800 competitors and is currently over-subscribed for this year and the next, although you can go on the waiting list: an indication of the MdS’s popularity and the growing madness of the human race.Entry information can be found at www.darbaroud.com. For English entries, you can go straight to www.saharamarathon.co.uk.
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