25th March

25th March

My first alarm (of five!) went off at 0445. I had a good sleep considering what I was about to do, which was a relief as this was the last night I’d have a proper bed until we got to the Berber Palace, assuming the week went to plan. I also had my last shower for the week and made sure I enjoyed it. Rehydrated wet wipes and soap shavings would be all I would have from today.

I met up with James and Karen from Tent 51, and we made our way over to the terminal, which was straight across the road. The Premier Inn was perfectly placed for a stress-free start to the day, and I would do this again.

The terminal was buzzing. We met up with Sarah, who helps organise the event, and 280 British MDS athletes; what an atmosphere. It was an incredible insight into the week we were going to have. Everyone was saying hello; I assume they were being friendly as I had no idea who most of them were. One thing was for sure, though, the majority of them looked super fit and ready to take on this huge challenge.

Our PCR paperwork was checked to ensure we were negative, and we made our way through the long winding queue towards the check-in desk. It was slow, though nobody cared. They were excited to be there and in a cheerful mood, even when the check-in desk luggage belt failed. It was quickly fixed, and we all headed off to security with our carefully weighed bags of white powder we would rely on for our nutrition during the race, and the excited chatter continued. Most people travelled light, just taking what they needed for the admin tent, race, and to relax in the Berber Palace; others took luxuries. Karen took cheese, and Ollie somehow had 28 kg of luggage!

* * *

Thoughts from Sean Clark, Tent 111 and MDS Podcast founder:

“If you are going to try this, think seriously”, they were the last words from my video diary from the Marathon des Sables in October 2021. 

Like many races, my MDS adventure had been delayed by COVID. I’d been training for three years by the time October came around, and after four false starts, we were finally off. We didn’t know that extreme heat and a vicious stomach bug would take 48% of us out of the race before we reached the finish line. 

The 35th edition of the Marathon des Sables ended for me on day three… 

When I returned to the UK in October 2021, I could not get the race out of my mind. A week after we landed, despite the memories of the struggle I had faced as my stomach emptied itself involuntary on the desert floor multiple times, I vowed to go back. 

To cement that commitment, I had the MDS logo tattooed on the back of my calf! There was no way I was coming back without a medal in 2022. 

So here I am again at the Premier Inn Gatwick, ready for the 36th edition! 

I documented my journey to the 35th MDS on YouTube and used the MDS Podcast to capture other people’s experiences in a bid to help future competitors. There is also a period of decompression which you must go through after a race like this; documenting my journey helped. 

I recorded very little of the 36th as my total focus was on completion. Although if you wish to find out more, we’ve recorded plenty since on the podcast at https://mdspodcast.com/. 

The angst of starting the MDS again was somewhat relieved for me as I was familiar with the process. I knew what lay ahead for everyone in the room! 

COVID was still a thing, and all had gone through the final trauma of the required COVID test. 

The bar at Gatwick was buzzing, and it was great to meet many people who I’d only ever engaged with online. Most of us supported Walking With The Wounded, so we had a common goal. 

Some were still abstaining from alcohol, while others were damping their anxiety with plenty. 

One thing that always amazes me about the MDS is the varied ages, fitness backgrounds and physical builds of those taking part. From opera singers to ex-special forces, the key is having a plan that suits you – and sticking to the plan. 

To say I was stress-free would not be correct; the fear of a second failure lurked in the back of my mind. Would the heat hit the searing heights of 60 degrees centigrade again, and would the stomach bug return and rip through camp? 

My plan? One checkpoint at a time. That was my sole focus. So as the discussion turned to things like the ominous “Long Day”, I was just thinking “day one, checkpoint one”. 

When asked about my experience by those around me, I never held back, and they heard all the gory details. The point? Not to scare people, but to get them to take it seriously. 

The desert is a dangerous place. Your health can degrade in minutes. The weather can turn quickly, as we were to find out, making the going more demanding than anything you can train for in the UK. 

But at the end of the day, I was back in my element. Like-minded people surrounded me. Every person there had invested thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours to complete “The Toughest Footrace on Earth”. 

Tonight would be the last night we would spend sleeping in a bed for over a week. So early to bed, early to rise. 

Sean, you’ve got this… find out if I made it on the MDS Podcast.

* * *

The third COVID lockdown had only lifted a couple of months before. I’d travelled to Iceland just a month earlier and thought I knew what to expect at the airport. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The terminal was heaving and chaotic, whereas it had been quiet and relaxed previously; this was the polar opposite. The cafés had huge queues and nowhere to sit – it was clear that Tent 51 wanted different things for breakfast, and we split into a couple of groups.

There was one group of people who stood out. Most people in the terminal were dressed for a holiday, not the MDS athletes. Every one of us had our race bag, water bottles, and trainers with Velcro – everything that we knew we would need for the race, and we were confident we could take as hand luggage (lighters had to be in pockets, mandatory kit, running clothes, and enough food to take us up to the maximum permitted weight).

I walked with Karen and found a Burrito restaurant that did giant Breakfast Burritos and, most importantly, large coffees. We were joined by Ems, who I’d met online a couple of times in Walking With The Wounded meetings, and a couple of other athletes – it was pretty obvious who we all were because we all had bags with water bottle straws protruding, and we had a common bond, making conversation wasn’t at all difficult. It was important to me to understand why people were there, Ems never served with the military, but had quite a powerful link to WWTW, having worked closely with one of their beneficiaries previously. She had worked with Captain Guy Disney at The Pony Club and had close family links too; Guy was the first amputee to win a horse race at a professional race course, and continues to work with WWTW.

Time flew (pardon the pun), and gate 49 was quickly opened. The MDS organised a couple of charter planes from an airline called Sundair (I heard this was a last-minute change due to fuel costs and demands from the previous supplier), and I was on the second flight. Boarding was super slick, and we were soon sat at our seats – it was the first flight I’d been on where everyone had skipped the obligatory airport beers, which probably made a huge difference to the flight crew too.

The flight took off on time, and I soon talked to Ben and Aisling, a Police Officer and dentist. One thing I really wanted from the race was to meet a wide range of people, talk about their perspectives on the race, the charities they were racing for, and what has motivated them to take on The Toughest Foot Race on Earth.

Aisling had used one of the celebrity coaches that have built businesses around the MDS, and it was fascinating hearing about the training she had gone through and how different the approach he took was. My coach only focussed on running. Aisling’s coach took a much more holistic view and focused on nutrition and body weight, though she paid a lot more for his time!

I was running out of opportunities to drink a warm coffee, and the flight was probably the last opportunity to get one; the challenge was that they didn’t take plastic! It cost either two euros or two pounds, depending on which one you had; I used a 5 Euro note and took the 3 Euro change.

The pilot and co-pilot thought they were on a tour bus and pointed out all of the highlights as we flew over them. I recall seeing the Pyrenees, flying over the Mediterranean and the excitement as we started to fly over Morocco; the thing that really stood out were mountains, lots of them, and surprisingly lots of snow on the top of them. We were on the edge of the Sahara, and there was snow, though we shouldn’t have been that surprised as the organisers had posted photos of snow on the Merzouga Dunes, an integral part of every race, just a month or so before.

We landed at Errachidia Airport bang on time at 1300, quickly disembarked, and I put my jumper on…. Yes, I put my jumper on. There were many conversations in the lead-up to the event about temperatures, which wasn’t surprising after last year’s event. Last year’s event was held in October, and in the dunes, temperatures hit 50C (some reports said 60C), which was a significant factor in the 47% dropout rate.

We were racing at the end of March and expected it to be quite a lot cooler, and forecasts suggested that it would be in the mid to high 20s throughout the week. It’s worth remembering that forecasters measure temperature in the shade. We would be spending the week racing in sand dunes and on salt planes that reflect the heat right back at you; the temperature will always be a factor you have to plan for in the MDS. The airport was 17C and breezy, though I’d like to think it felt cool due to the success of my heat acclimation strategy.

Security was slow, and it didn’t help that we were standing in the shade. We’d been told that there would be both temperature checks and random COVID tests; the potential for temperature checks was making me anxious; the last thing I needed was flashbacks of my time in the military and Iraq to be triggered.

Errachidia is a small airport shared with the Moroccan military, it’s pretty basic, and our luggage bags were simply thrown on the floor. We collected the bags, walked through security, scanned them, and went into the terminal. Thankfully there weren’t any temperature checks, and I wasn’t chosen for the COVID test. We were offered sweet tea, dates and biscuits; El Bellar was an event sponsor and gave us sweet tea at the finish line each day; it was a real treat after a hard day running in the desert.

There was a queue of buses waiting outside the terminal. We had to go through a procession of the organisation staff who were all clapping and cheering us; they were led by the ever-present Patrick Bauer, the inspiration behind the MDS and Steve, the UK organiser. We would see Patrick every day at the start line and most days at one of the checkpoints; I even heard a story of him being at a checkpoint in the middle of the night on the long day, helping to keep the fire going.

In 1984 Patrick decided he would walk across the Sahara on his own. He had a 35kg pack containing water and food and walked 350km. It took him 12 days, and he figured it would be a great place to have a race. The race has a maximum weight of 15kg for the bag, is “only” 250km, and completed in seven days – thankfully, we no longer have to carry our water either; this is supplied at regular checkpoints.

We queued for the bus and were given our lunch boxes. They explained that it would take around two and half hours, and there would be a stop to eat and use the toilets. I sat with Jason, who I hadn’t met before, he was a scouser, and when we compared running CVs, he was by far the more experienced ultra runner.

We were given ration cards, which detailed what water we would be provided each day and the long-awaited Roadbook. The route is kept a secret from the athletes until this point, and there are lots of rumours spread in advance about how far we would be running; they were actually pretty accurate. I had time for one last Facebook post before I lost signal and would put my phone into my hotel bag. It said:

It’s nice and cool today, so cool I put my jumper on when we landed – I’m a little conflicted as to how that makes me feel. I don’t want the 60 degrees of last year, but I do want a challenge. 

We’re all on the bus, waiting to set off, whilst reading the roadbook. 

Day 1 – 30.3k 

Day 2 – 38.5k Jebel El Oftal

Day 3 – 32.1k Jebel el Oftal, dunes

Day 4 – 85.8k Dunes

Day 5 – 42.2k Dunes

Day 6 – 7.7k (charity day) More bloody dunes

Thanks a lot for all your support – keep it coming please.

We were fortunate; the athletes normally land in Ouarzazate, the town where the Berber Palace is. The advantage for us was that we would only be travelling for three hours or so, roughly half of what it usually takes. The buses were pretty basic and not very clean – there was chewing gum everywhere! The scenery was fantastic, there were mountains (would we really have to climb that high on the Jebels?), quaint villages, and surprisingly there were green fields used for farming.

All of the coaches pulled over in a vast layby. The café owner must have said the Arabic version of “kerching” when he saw us getting off the bus, though he would be disappointed seeing us eat the delights that Patrick’s team had provided us… In the bag was a piece of bread, a couple of cans of tuna in tomato, a small cheese and a couple of other bits of food – It wasn’t ideal, and I was a little concerned that this was how they were planning on feeding us for the next couple of days.

The cafe owner did have one trick up his leave, and fortunately for him, we hadn’t perfected the art of peeing in the desert yet. He had the only toilet we would get to use, and being entrepreneurial, he knew exactly how to exploit us; thankfully, I had the 3 Euro change from my coffee on the plane and was able to pay for myself and two others.

We set off again, and within an hour or so, we could see the enormous tent city which was to be our home for the next couple of days and would then be moved to wherever we were running each day. The scale of the MDS organisation is huge, as well as around 150 tents for the athletes, there were tents for the organisation team, medics, media, catering, military (who were apparently guarding us, as we were close to the Armenia border) and the many Berbers who we would see each day. We were told there are around 400 support staff; it’s not difficult to see how the MDS can justify the 4500 Euro charge for entry.

We collected our kit and walked to the tent; finally, Tent 51 were together for the first time. Well, seven of us were – we all missed Sara very much and talked about her regularly. Our tent had been in the planning since the early days. Everyone knew someone in the tent, and there was a handful of us who had met at the MDS Expo and trained a couple of times together.

I was the last person invited into the tent, UK fast Olly (a different Olly) had turned them down, and I was the first reject to be picked. The entrance test was a simple “Do you snore?”, I checked with my wife, told them “not since I stopped drinking” and I was in. I felt pretty conflicted as I always expected to be in a WWTW tent, as I knew I would have a lot in common with them as the majority would be ex-forces. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of banter in the WWTW WhatsApp group in the early days, so I didn’t get to know anyone other than Chris. I felt that it was more important to be confident I get along with the others in my tent. I had a chat with my coach, and he agreed. I can’t imagine anything worse than being in a tent with someone you don’t get on with for a week, and at least this way, I was guaranteed not to be in a tent with anyone who snored.

I was desperate for a number two and went straight to the toilet with my poo bag; I would have to experience this in the desert at some point, so why not in my first two minutes! There were blocks of three toilets scattered around the bivouac, they were made out of scaffolding, and privacy was guaranteed with tarpaulins – at least it was guaranteed when it wasn’t windy, though it was always windy.

We were given brown bags which looped over the toilet seat, and then we sat down and preyed the plastic seat would hold after several years in the sun. To prevent the bag from blowing around, it was a good idea to throw a handful of stones in it, though the most challenging part of the experience was getting the stones out once you finished (I’ll credit that joke to Ian, who was also in Tent 51).

We spent the rest of the afternoon getting to know each other, cracking jokes at other people’s expense (sorry Olly) and sorting out where we were going to sleep. The tents were tiny, though thankfully, there were only seven of us. This was the only positive of Sara not being with us; we would have much rathered she was there. I’m giving the tents way too much credit by calling them that, in reality, they are a black blanket (black is a great colour in a hot desert for reflecting heat…) held up by a few sticks and open to the wind on two sides. On the ground, there is a blanket which gives a little protection from the stony desert, though if you are sensible, you will invest a little time removing as many as possible. It’s a tradition that the first runner home will clear stones each day.

I offered to sleep at one of the ends of the tent, and Ian slept at the other, with everyone else in a long line. The tent was at its lowest at the ends, and there were sticks in the way which you had to try and position you and your kit around. It was agreed that we would mix it up each time the tent moved to ensure that we all got to talk properly, and everyone would get disadvantaged by sleeping at the end. One advantage of the ends was that you had a little more space at the side of you that could be used for stowing your kit, though camel spiders and scorpions also like to hide under the sides of the tent. Great.

You could tell the tents that had athletes experienced with bivouac life. The desert was windy every day, and it was possible to close off one of the open sides or even lower the tent by moving a few poles and using rocks. We hadn’t mastered it at this point, but Ian made sure that he would very quickly.  

Once I’d got my bed setup I went for my daily walk to the WWTW tents. It was important to me that I got to know them better, and this was the main way of getting to speak to them all at once. The backgrounds of everyone were very varied, most were British Army veterans, there was also one who was the same trade as me in the Royal Air Force – though no matter how hard we tried, we didn’t find anywhere that our paths had crossed. The rest were all civilians, who mostly had links to the military and hence they were raising money to help veterans.

One of the civvies who stood out was Sean, I’d spoken to him a couple of times over social media, and he joined us for dinner at Gatwick Airport. Sean was the host of an informative podcast, which was originally named “Marathon Des Sables Podcast”. His interviews with previous competitors were integral in helping me to understand what was coming, and his honest and candid approach to talking about his failed attempt the previous year helped me to come up with mental strategies to get through most things. I felt like I already knew Sean, even though I’d never met him; one thing I didn’t understand though, was why Sean had a huge MDS tattoo on his calf when he didn’t finish.

There’s very little to do in the desert, but time went quickly with all the banter. That afternoon we had one of many briefs from Patrick; Patrick liked to talk, and his briefs weren’t very brief. Patrick speaks a little English, but his briefs are in French. He is supported by someone we will call “The Belgian”, he does have a name though it wasn’t anywhere near as interesting. The Belgian was a regular discussion point in Tent 51, mostly with the ladies, and because of his dad dancing.

The brief probably lasted around thirty minutes; the key things I got from it were:

1. This year there were more Brits than French, by about eight.
2. Fifty athletes didn’t make it to the bivouac due to positive PCR tests.
3. Bivouac time would be based on GMT. Every year, the race has a local time, not the Moroccan time, though the change to GMT made very little difference as it was only one hour different.

After the brief was dinner, and Tent 51 was pretty much as close as it could be to the restaurant (or canteen). We headed over as soon as we saw the queues starting to build, hoping that it wouldn’t be tuna in tomato again.

Several people took their own food. The reasoning for a lot of these was that there had been a D&V outbreak in the previous year, which contributed to the 47% dropout rate. They felt that it could have been down to the local catering – cooking for themselves would take away this risk. The D&V however went on for days and was spread around the entire camp. I don’t believe this was related to the local catering; if it had been, it would have been over in 24 hours.

The food was fantastic. The organisation says they don’t cater to particular diets, though it was primarily rice and vegetables, with meat – vegetarians would have been OK, and potentially vegans. There was bread to go with it, a dessert (in the desert… I’ll get my coat) and a can of beer or coke. The ration cards were stamped so you couldn’t go back for seconds, but it was a buffet, and there was nothing to stop you from piling your plate high. I heard of a group of squaddies who got enough food to make sandwiches for later that evening.

In March, it gets dark very early in the desert at around 1900 hours. There was a little chatter, time to make my notes for my diary, and plenty of time to struggle to sleep. It was windy and cold, and I was sleeping on a sleeping mat that was long enough to get to my hips – anything to save weight.

Tomorrow is admin day, when our ECGs will be checked and the final chance for the organisation to turn us away before the race even starts. 

* * *

What was your least favourite snack & why?

When I first read it, this sounded like an easy question to answer, but I struggled.

I can genuinely say that I would only change one thing that I took, and that item isn’t food related.

In the nutrition chapter (which is still to be released) I talked about how stressed I got about my nutrition. My stress was never about the taste of my food; I’d tested it in training, including when training in the heat, which is when I’m told your taste buds change.

There were two principal stresses, which had been caused by an injury around three months before the race when I’d planned on making the final big decisions. I couldn’t make the first decision because I was an inexperienced ultra runner and wasn’t sure how much food I needed to survive the week. The second was because the injury prevented me from testing changes that I had been convinced to make by MDS royalty.

I can’t dodge your question any further…. I decided to feed on food bars and Peanut M&Ms whilst running – and I was pleased with that choice. However, there was one flavour of Nakd bar that I found a little dry, and I probably wouldn’t take it if I were to enter the race again; I didn’t find Peanut Delight very delightful.

* * *

I would love to be able to make this book widely available, with all profits going to a military charity (I’m supporting Walking With The Wounded). Please do give feedback on what you like, what you don’t like or anything else that’s constructive. I’d happily make positive changes if it makes the book successful.