Day Four - or more accurately Stage Four - was the big one
and the stage I had, in a weird way, been most looking forward to. For me this
is the stage that really defines the MDS. There are two ways of tackling it,
either as two stages with a nap in between or one big run. My plan had always
been to run it as one continuous stage. There were two reasons for this, one,
nap-time counts as part of your stage time, so if I wanted a good time I couldn't afford a nap. The second was that, as I said previously, for me the
Long Day defines the MDS and so I wanted to really embrace the challenge of
running 50 miles non-stop (ish) across the desert into the night. I had also
set myself the challenge of finishing the same day as I started. The road book
said we were due to start at 9 ‘o’ clock in the morning so I would have 15
hours to meet my self-imposed deadline. The race organisers were far more
lenient and allowed 34 hours to allow people to sleep on the course. However
there were closing times for various check points. CP4 closed 16 hours after
race start so it would still be necessary to get to CP5 - 58km from the start -
to have a proper night’s sleep. As I said if things went according to plan none
of this would bother me, however it’s always good to know what the options were
if my wheels started to come off.
One of the things not everyone realises about distance
running is that your brain is competing for the same energy supply as your
body. This means that as your body becomes fatigued so does your brain. In order
to minimise errors caused by this I had a fairly clear plan for the nutrition
and ‘equipment’ side of the race. By equipment I essentially mean making sure
my torch and GPS didn't run out of battery at inopportune moments. As many of
you may know, the light from an LED torch remains the same colour as the
battery runs down, unlike filament bulbs that used to go from white to yellow
to brown as the batteries died. However the brightness of an LED torch does
reduce, it’s just not always as easy to tell. I had put new batteries in my
head torch before leaving the UK and hadn't used it much since then, however
MDS rules state you must carry a spare set so I put those in the head torch in
the morning and relegated the used batteries to ‘spares’. This should mean that
if I had to change the batteries before I finished I was probably in
significant trouble and a slightly dim head torch would be the least of my
worries. I also wasn't certain I could do the whole stage on only one set of
GPS batteries so I put spares of those in the waist pocket of my pack. To make
life easier I was intending to change them at CP4 when it should still be light
and a new set should last the rest of the stage - unless I was in the
previously mentioned trouble.
My nutrition strategy also revolved around CP4. For eating
‘on the run’ I simply put a few more Clif Bloks, Peperami and nuts in my pack pockets and continued with
the approach that had worked well for the previous three stages - eat when I
felt like it. I know one should have a disciplined approach to nutrition and
hydration but despite all my training I never quite got that sorted. At
Checkpoint Four I was going mix up my sachet of Peronin, discussed in previous
blogs, and consume that on the way to CP5. If I was running out of energy
earlier I would do this at CP3 to CP4 instead but I felt that by leaving it
slightly longer to CP4 I would hopefully ensure I didn't run out of energy at
the end of the stage in the dark.
With all plans in place that just left the relatively
trivial exercise of running 80kms…
Despite now knowing the start routine I was as nervous at
the start as I had been on Day One. We were due to start at 9 today rather than
8:30 so at 9:08 we set off.
My race strategy was to be similar to that I had evolved
over days one to three. The accepted wisdom is generally that races should be
run at constant pace or with a ‘negative split’, that is the second half is run faster
than the first. My strategy was to do as much running early on and slow down
and move to a run/walk as the temperature increased. For the long day I was
planning on doing this with the intention of being in a good state to resume
running as the sun went down. The first section up to CP1 was quite suited to
running, not too many dunes and reasonably flat. I took full advantage and made
reasonably good time to the first checkpoint.
Immediately after CP1 I was confronted by El Otfal Jebel,
the most difficult Jebel ascent of the 2014 MDS. It’s debatable whether the
rope at the top section was really necessary but that didn't stop me hanging on
to it anyway. The slope started at a 12% average and was mostly sand. As I
ascended I followed the majority and moved to the edge of the sandy ascent and
clambered up through the rocks. The final 500m was a 30% gradient and rock gave
way to sand. This was the main reason I grabbed the aforementioned rope, my
legs were wrecked so the opportunity to take some of the strain on my arms wasn't to be missed. The top of the Jebel presented me with another stunning view,
both of the landscape and also the dried up water course that would be the
rather rocky - although easier than the route up - descent.
After the descent a couple of stony plains separated by
1.3km of the inevitable dunes allowed me to regain some of the time lost on the
Jebel crossing on the run to CP2. CP2 to CP3 was still reasonably good running
territory but did present an extreme mental challenge. Four days into the MDS
and I have mostly drunk lukewarm water and eaten granola and lukewarm freeze
dried foods, I haven’t washed for 6 days. I have slept on the ground in a tent
for nearly a week. This is not a good time to see a sign for a hotel or a
restaurant. However I summoned up all of
my willpower and simply photographed both to prove I wasn't hallucinating and
pushed on to Checkpoint Three. At CP3
all competitors were given a glow stick to be attached to their pack after dark
so that others could follow them. If they knew my track record of getting lost
they wouldn't have given one to me…
This seems like a good time to mention my feet. ‘Sore’ seems
like a good word. ‘Very’ seems like a good word to put in front of it. However
doses of paracetamol were keeping the pain down to manageable levels and they didn't seem to be getting any worse so, although they hurt, I was hopeful that
they wouldn't prove a major obstacle to a good time on Stage Four. Certainly at
CP3 I was well ahead of the 5.5km/h pace I needed to be sure of finishing the
same day as I started.
Many checkpoints on the MDS seemed to be located immediately
before climbs and CP3 was no exception. It was also getting very hot as it
approached 2 ‘o’ clock in the afternoon so it was time to move to phase two of
the plan and try keep the energy
expenditure down and minimise the chance of overheating. This was easier
said than done as the terrain was quite sandy and had several ascents,
including a 13% climb to the crest of the Mhadid Al Elahau Jebel. It was around
this time that the elite runners began to pass me. For those that aren't aware,
the top 50 men and top 5 women are gently roasted in tents for 3 hours after
the rest of the field depart and finally released at around midday. Danny
Kendall caught me up while I was walking up the Jebel. He too was walking, just
twice as fast as me and, in all probability, faster than I moved all day, even
when running. He grinned at me and enquired whether I was having fun. I replied
‘Yes, for a given value of fun’, by which time he had passed me and soon
disappeared over the horizon. I was fairly happy it had taken the elites this
long to pass me, I was about half way through the stage, I had been running for
just over six hours, the elites for just over three. This seemed to bode well for finishing in less
than 15 hours and hopefully taking less than twice as long as the stage winner.
After the Jebel it was a sandy descent, sandy ascent and finally another sandy
descent until I reached CP4.
At CP4 I saw my first medical intervention by Doc Trotters.
A British competitor was suffering from dehydration and was being put on a drip
whilst I was changing the batteries in my GPS and mixing up my Peronin. My
original plan had been to mix up my Peronin and drink it on the run however,
possibly due to having witnessed first-hand the effects of dehydration, I drank
it at the checkpoint and refilled my bottle with more water. I had also drunk all of my water before I
arrived at CP4 so it seemed prudent to drink as much as I could of the two
bottles of water we were given rather than tip the ‘spare’ over myself as I had
been doing before.
The terrain from CP4 to CP5 was reasonably conducive to
running and as my ‘resupply’ at CP4 had included more paracetamol and it was
starting to cool down a little (I thought anyway) I decided to try and run slightly
more of the section. It was shortly
after CP4 I saw my second medical emergency, someone being treated out on the
course, presumably for heat exhaustion or dehydration. Fortunately my plan
seemed to be working out well and by CP5 I had only 23km to go and sunset was
definitely approaching. Alternatively I had over a quarter of the stage left to
go and it was about to get dark. However, I tried to approach all of the MDS
with a positive mental attitude so I stuck to version one of events.
At CP5 a very helpful official activated my glow stick and
attached it to my pack for me, he even got my head torch out of the lid pocket
of my pack which saved me from having to take it off again. With many thanks to
said official I set off towards the sunset.
The course was marked with glow sticks attached to the tops
of the marker boards used in daylight. Any section likely to be run after
seemed to be kept fairly simple from a navigational point of view, simply run
point to point past the glow sticks. I found this a slight challenge at dusk as
the glow sticks didn't stand out until it was fully dark but the boards became
harder to see as soon as the sun set. However I found my way to CP6 and picked up my final ration of water before I got to the finish.
As they gave us two bottles again I filled my bottles, drank half the second
bottle and squashed it down so I could carry it under my pack waist belt in
case I needed it later. I would, but not for reasons I could ever have imagined…
There was now less than 12km to go and I could take over
three hours and still arrive before midnight. By now I felt really good, I’m
not sure why that was but I ran through the dark, past the locals offering
water from their well, past many of my fellow runners who appeared to have
decided it was better to walk through the dark, and from glow stick to glow
stick.
I was about a kilometre from the finish and in sight of the
camp feeling on top of the world when I noticed that there were two glow sticks
about 3 metres apart. Being of an engineering nature when theorising about such
things I assumed it was to line us up with the actual finish, it being quite
small compared to the size of the camp. As I approached the glow sticks I also
saw that some irresponsible person had left a plank of wood right where a
runner could trip over it. I'm still a little hazy on what happened next but it
appeared to involve some degree of moisture and me staggering past the plank
and the second glow stick with my left trainer half off and covered in mud. As
I had previously mentioned I was feeling great up to this point and so once the
initial disbelief had worn off I was able to see the funny side of managing to
fall in a river (or at least a very muddy puddle) on a run across a desert - it was a bridge not a plank. However
I can imagine that if things weren't going well that was the kind of event that
could be the last straw. If any of my fellow runners had a similar experience
(no one I spoke to admitted it) and weren't in a good place then hopefully the
lights of the camp gave them the strength to regroup and get to the finish.
I finished just before 10:30, 13 hours 21 minutes and 29
seconds after I set off, comfortably inside my target and feeling incredibly happy. I
used the water I had carried from CP6 to wash the mud off my hands aquired when refitting my trainer and went to
collect my water ration. The conversation at the water stop went like this:
NICE LADY: ‘How are you?’
ME: ‘I feel great, am I weird?’
NICE LADY: ‘Yes’
I went back to the tent where Adrian was waiting for me and
lay down very satisfied with my days work. I vaguely remember other people arriving
as I drifted in and out of sleep until I woke up next morning.
The next day was the rest day, during which I thought I’d
clean the mud off my trainers, sort out my kit and generally get ready for the
final competitive day. What actually happened was that we spent a bit of time worrying about about Sarah
(one of my tent mates) for a while until we heard she had spent the night at
CP4, obviously I had misunderstood the rules on checkpoint closing time (she returned to the tent at around 3 ‘o’ clock that afternoon). I spent the rest of my time, sending an email,
chatting, clapping in the last finishers and being mistaken for a different
Colin.
As you may have realised I was very pleased with my Stage
Four performance, my strategy seemed to work almost perfectly. I finished 161st,
my best finishing position of any day of the MDS. This was really important to
me because, as I said at the beginning, for me the Long Day is the defining
feature of the MDS and to do well made me feel much more satisfied with my MDS
performance overall. It also showed that my approach to Day Three had been
correct and that it hadn't been the beginning of a decline in performance. I
had done so well I’d moved up to 192nd overall. This was going to be
interesting as the Marathon Day also had two start times, only this time the
later start was for the top 200 competitors…
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