As some of you will know I largely blame my decision to enter the 2016 Marathon Des Sables on Elisabet Barnes. It was while following her progress to First Place Woman in 2015 that I got excited enough to see if there were any places for 2016. I did this safe in the knowledge there wouldn't be, and according to the website there weren't. Apparently there might be some places in December but by then I would have calmed down and all would be well and it was bit late to enter by then anyway. However an email to see how I registered for a place wouldn't do any harm would it? Well it would if this was the answer:
"Further to your recent enquiry about places on the 2016 Marathon des Sables, I'm pleased to tell you that a small number of places have become available. I'm sorry for the slow response, but we have been very busy with this year's race!"
Sarah, dear girl, had even sent me a link to sign up with so £500 later there I was, a confirmed entrant for the 2016 MDS!
Anyway Fast Forward a bit to the 2015 Druid's Challenge and I start assembling the nucleus of what would become Tent 137, the best and one of the fastest tents in the 2016 MDS. A few weeks after Druid's we were four, another member was identified at the MDS Expo and we stayed at five with me wondering how to find three more tent mates until less than two weeks before the start. I didn't want to put out a general call on the MDS Facebook group since, whilst there are undoubtedly some people who would make great tent mates that are still free, there are also a few instances where it is unfortunately all too obvious why they have yet to find a tent. However a more immediate concern was my ECG and medical. I'd had the ECG and then had a 'senior moment' leading to me missing my Doctor's appointment by twenty minutes - twenty past eight became twenty to nine in my head... As a result I had to make an 'emergency' (well it was to me) appointment to get the all important certificate signed. Now I will admit I do occasionally exaggerate slightly on this blog but I'm being totally honest when I say that the absolute last words I expected to hear from my Doctor as I handed him the form were 'That's the second one of these I've been given'! This helped a lot as he understood the whole 'signed and stamped' rigmarole the French are so keen on, but who was this hitherto unknown MDS 2016 entrant - or was it just someone being terribly, terribly early for 2017? A call on Facebook lead to Eric revealing himself (figuratively, not literally). We met for coffee and as he seemed a decent chap I enquired if he had any tent mates. He had, two others in fact. Even I didn't need a calculator to work out that me plus four plus Eric plus two equalled eight - job done, the tent was complete!
Fast Forward some more to Gatwick on the eve of our flight. I was sharing a room with Perry in the same hotel as Darren, both part of the original group from Druids. we met up, had a beer and arranged to walk to the airport together the next day. The next day hadn't quite dawned but we had to be up anyway so we went across to the airport. We were trying to get our group together, however only Eric knew two of the people concerned and he was busy eating (this would happen a lot over the next week or so). Hence we were a bit surprised when two guys approached the half concealed table we had seated ourselves at and asked if we were Tent X-treme (the slightly dodgy working title I'd given our group on Facebook). We were, they were and eventually all eight of us were too.
The group was split over two flights and so we boarded different coaches. This was the first change from 2014, we had to fill in a form on the coach to form temporary tent groups for the first night before sorting ourselves out the next day - not a great way to start but that seemed to be how it was going to be. We also got the road book and I discovered the first couple of days would be very similar to 2014, starting with 12 kilometres of the biggest dunes in Morocco... The also seemed to be a lot of sand, even for an event called 'The Marathon of the Sands' there was a lot of sand. There was also an incident involving some sort of protest by the locals that held us up for an hour but as it didn't seem to be aimed at us in particular and I've no idea what it was about I'll skip over that - and the toilet stops, no-one needs to hear about them.
Predictably the careful organisation into groups fell into chaos when our guide couldn't actually find us a tent. However the tenacity and resourcefulness of my tent mates was revealed when, during our circuit of mostly full tents, Tim and Tony (I think it was Tim and Tony, most of my tent mates were taller than me and half of them had beards) stopped us to show us Tent 137 which they had somehow managed to become the sole occupants of until the rest of us arrived. This was much better than the official plan so we all bedded down quite happily ready for Admin Day tomorrow.
Admin Day in 2014 consisted of a two hour queue in the blazing sun followed by a chaotic stumble around a stiflingly hot tent to try and do the kit and medical checks. 2016 was much smoother and outdoors. After around 45 minutes I was done and wondering how to spend the rest of the day. I probably should have spent it eating more of my freshly acquired salt tablets...
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