Congrats to Stephen Hobbs - The Marathon Des Sables

My memories of the race already seem like a long time ago but parts of it I will never forget. I must admit when I started the race I thought I had made one gigantic error! If someone had said they could take me home there and then, I may have taken them up on it! The first day, almost immediately we were running through seven miles of the tallest sand dunes in Morocco. These were endless and progress was tortuously slow. It was at the end of the first day that I, along with many others, were really doubting our decision making abilities. Day two took us over the second tallest Jebel, the mountain range in the Moroccan Sahara, and that was tough and I needed a break on my way up it. At the top I rested and I thought I could see the second check point, so I drank my remaining water. What I saw was actually a Berber village and the check point was much later on. I plodded on for a long time without any water. This actually had me quite worried and when I did get to the ‘missing’ check point, I very gratefully drunk some of my new water supply and took a long rest. It was also on this day that I saw some of the course officials desperately try to chase away an unwelcome snake which was very close to a ‘poorly’ resting competitor.

Half way through the week, I was beginning to get my act together. On the long day, day four, we had a mere fifty miles to cover. Although, like the other days, it was unbearably hot, I managed to make good progress at the start. We had another Jebel to climb with people weaving all over the place and rocks slipping downwards. To help us towards the end, a rope was fixed to help us pull ourselves up. The views, like all through the week, were breath taking and my little camera will certainly not do them justice. This was obviously the first day I was out as the sun started to sink below the horizon. The drop in temperature was most welcome. With the sun disappearing, the darkness was soon all around. Around now, I met one of my tent mates, Danny, from the bivouac. We carried on together as we were now travelling in the dark of the Sahara. We went through the remaining check points, stopping to ‘refuel’ and resting but not for too long. Firstly, when not moving you soon started to get very cold and shake and secondly, we thought we might not get going again through tiredness. We progressed slowly in a roughly straight line following very faint glow lights ‘planted’ on the course every so often. After hours, we eventually saw the distant glow of lights that signalled the bivouac and the end. However, without any other points of reference to link it with, these distant lights took forever to get to. Finally, we crossed the day or night’s finishing line and crept into a sleeping bivouac not forgetting to stop for our refreshing Moroccan mint tea. It was just before five o’clock in the morning, nineteen hours on the road or maybe the sand, and home just before the sun rose!

Our reward was a day off and lazing around doing absolutely nothing! This I did extremely well. In fact I was very impressed with my performance. The next day was marathon day, a full 26.2 miles but one I really felt good with. I made my best progress and only in the second half of the race did the surface start to get really tough on the feet. My feet were very impressive. I attained very few blisters throughout the week, although they ached a lot and on very small rocky surfaces pain would shoot through them. Though as I inched closer to the finish line somehow the pain evaporated into the Saharan air. A few more annoying sand dunes then the finish line. A medal was placed around my neck and a huge hug and photo with the famous race director, Patrick Bauer.

This was the end of the race but not quite everything. We still were cooking from our own rations but that evening Monsieur Bauer had brought in the Paris Opera to entertain us as the award ceremony. This seemed quite surreal lying on the desert floor at night listening to the Paris Opera! Saturday morning, saw one final stage, a 7.7 km charity fun run to a village and our ticket out of the desert. As it didn’t count towards the race, nobody even broke into a trot, we just ambled our way to the awaiting coaches and a transfer to Ouarzazate and five star luxury in a posh hotel, which was most welcome. A nice comfy bed replaced a very rocky desert floor. I shared a room with one of my tent mates, Krystian, and before even having a wash, something I had not had for eight days, I rushed out and bought a vast supply of coca cola and cheese and onion crisps! We sat for a very long time just drinking and munching.

The welcome that awaited all British competitors at Gatwick on our return was quite phenomenal and I’m sure made us feel all very special.