When they picked me up from the ground where I (partially involuntarily) sat down the moment I ran under the blue arch, I was half in a dream. Another runner, a kind soul, helped me take a shower. A few volunteers and medics then did their best to force some food into me. All I wanted to do was sleep. I couldn’t imagine pushing down anything, so after I finally managed to get down half of my food, they let me go to sleep.
Laying down on a carpet under a canopy and looking at the stars, I brushed my teeth and swallowed the toothpaste. I was out even before it made it to my stomach.
Day 2 AM: Just Get the Legs Moving.
Morning came quickly. I woke up before my alarm and before most other runners. I couldn’t keep sleeping. Slowly, I crawled to the bathroom, gave good morning to the volunteers, and started the impossible task of eating again. Eventually, a therapist taped my legs and I made my way to the start line with only one goal: to get the useless stumps I had for legs moving.
“Three! Two! One! Go!” called out Alex, the race director, and we headed out. I quickly found Matt and we fell into our familiar pace. When I saw what we went over the night before, I couldn’t believe at least half of the runners, myself included, didn’t end up in the ditches. Again, it was so much fun. I loved every step of it.
I lost Matt soon, although I kept calling encouragements out to him every time I saw he was within earshot. Eventually, in the first village that we ran through that day, I caught up to other runners—my legs got, unbelievably, moving. I struck up a conversation with a runner I wouldn’t see again; he eventually dropped out at the first checkpoint.
Jack the Jumpsuit Runner
A hot spot on my foot from the day before started to feel funny and I considered getting it looked at at Checkpoint 1. However, I didn’t want to stop moving. Movement felt good and I wanted to keep it that way. Nick’s infectious smile greeted me at the checkpoint. I got my water refilled. I added some food to the front pouch on my vest for easier accessibility. The first 50K runner (they started an hour after us 110K-ers) caught up to me at the checkpoint—it was time to leave. A guy whom they called Jack, wearing long black jumpsuit pants, called out encouragements to me as he got his feet taken care of.
Wouldn’t you believe it; there was another loose-sand section. A gorgeous set of buildings on a distant hillside kept my attention away from my once-again tired legs. It looked like what I imagine the Hanging Gardens of Babylon must have looked like.
Another town. I chatted with a 50K runner I caught up to. He couldn’t believe somebody could be crazy enough to go for the 110. He will soon. I wager he’ll be there by the end of this year. A hill, a steep descent into yet another village with tiny crooked streets. The villagers helped me find my way, calling out to me when I took a wrong turn. I waved to a runner who took a few moments to play football with the local kids.
I crossed a dry streambed and a lone road. The heat started to crawl in—it was around midday.
Day 2 PM: That Road Must be a Hallucination!
The guy in long black pants from earlier, Jack, caught up to me and passed me on a short uphill leading from the road. We chatted for a bit;
“Aren’t you a little warm?” I asked.
“A little, yeah,” he laughed. “I wanted to change into shorts but I forgot them.”
Far away on the horizon, a flash of white and blue appeared and disappeared in the vibrating, hot air. Checkpoint 2 was about 5 kilometers away, looking like a Fata Morgana, separated from me by a few dry riverbeds and a dirt road that snaked in and out of them.
Aren’t Massages Supposed to be Relaxing?
Eventually, I made it to the checkpoint, crawling more than running, and laughing more for it. My calves were completely seized up; I couldn’t sit down, I couldn’t extend my legs. They were perpetually stuck in a state of slight bend, refusing to move into any other position.
Jack laughed when he saw me; a good-natured laugh that made an inexplicably awesome day even better. In the shade of the canopies, the medics helped me lay down and the osteo volunteers started to work on me. It was… well, an excruciating massage but, finally, my calves stopped being rock-hard (which they had been for quite a few hours at that point).
Jack was a ray of sunshine, joking the whole time as I clenched my teeth through the brutal massage. If my body had any water to spare, there would have been tears.
“Just wait till it’s your turn,” I joked.
“Oh I’d rather stop completely than go through that again,” Jack replied, having already had his massage before I came to the checkpoint.
The Technical Beauty of a Random Downhill
There was a short, slight uphill. Jack disappeared behind the horizon just when I started the climb. The best part of the whole day was ahead, although I didn’t know that at the time. When I finally reached it, I thought I was hallucinating—it was too good to be real.
The absolute beaut of a route began at the top of a hill. A sharp, rocky, technical descent awaited us runners there. With not much of a trail to speak of, I hopped from rock to rock, the pain in my calves lost beneath layers of sheer happiness.
The technical section ended way too early and I was running into another town when I caught up with Jack and another runner.
“God, you scared me! You really picked up the pace!” I left Jack and the other runner behind as I ran through the streets of آيت بن حدّو; Aït Benhaddou.
A few turns later, I was running through a cobblestone-like street lined on one side with tiny shops and on the other with the most gorgeous view. No surprise that this historic ksar, or fortified village, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It took my breath away.
Jack caught up to me in the next village, several miles later.
“I was starting to worry you got lost!” I said as a welcome.
“No, I just stopped for some ice cream and lemonade.”
Now that is how you run a race.
Foot Gore Galore (What the Hell Did I Just Write?!)
We shared some of our sweets with the kids who ran after us, a mistake of sorts as their friends noticed and wanted some, too. After another long stretch from which I don’t remember much (except for a LOT of desert and a LOT of discomfort from the hot spot on my foot), Checkpoint 3 was there.
“Will, I think I need you to take a look at my foot,” I told one of the medics.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I had a hot spot there yesterday. I think it might be a blister now. I have it taped but…”
Will told me to keep the tape on and keep going with it; taking it off would only make things worse if there was, indeed, a blister.
I took off my shoes and socks to pour out the sand that had collected there and also to let my feet breathe a little—things started to feel a little tight. A huge blister made its home between my big toe and the next. It was so big it poked both above and below my toes. The fluid within spilled into the lower half when I lifted my foot and got pushed back up when I put it on the ground, obscuring the tops of my two toes.
“Um… Will?”
“Yeah?
“You will take care of my blister… Will? Please,” I said, frankly slightly freaked out by the size of that thing. I’ve never had a blister that big except for that one time when I, as a child, walked on hot melted asphalt in the middle of summer.
While other volunteers put a wet towel behind my neck to cool me off, Will constructed a little roof from cardboard next to the car so that I could stay in the shade while he worked on my foot—not before taking a picture for his fellow medics.
Feet and injury pics are something of a currency among the race medics. Mine made its way into the group chat as soon as Will was done with my feet. In exchange, I got information about Matt—apparently, his feet were skinned completely. He was still out there but suffering. My blister suddenly didn’t feel so bad.
Eventually, the volunteers (bless their hearts) helped me back into my socks and shoes. The socks had become quite small and the volunteers had some trouble getting them back on my swollen feet. I’ve been on the other side of things more times than I can count and have loved every second of it, including (or especially?) helping people with (for normal people disgusting) problems like these. Still, I felt slightly bad for the lovely, smiling volunteers who were struggling with my socks and shoes.
The Road I Wished I Had Hallucinated
I left Checkpoint 3 in good spirits, the blister (and pain caused by it) almost gone. A slightly taller but very gentle uphill led me through another set of hills, past and around small rocky ridges and peaks. A curiously sharp conical hill appeared past one of the turns, looking almost like a stratovolcano, a strange sight concerning the rest of the terrain.
I ran down from the ridge I was up on, passing two other runners I’d been getting closer to since leaving the checkpoint. I tucked the freshly wet cooling towel under my hat (the heat was truly unrelenting, the sun beating down on us mercilessly—no wonder the race organizers had extended the cutoff by an hour) and felt surprisingly good, given I was nearing combined 90th kilometer. That’s when the worst freaking view of the whole two days appeared before me.
Up another tiny hill, I took a turn and there it lay, stretched into infinity: the rocky road trail stretched on in an endless, perfectly straight line that disappeared in the distance as the horizon swallowed its length.
A tiny hill marked the only disturbance in the terrain for miles to come. In fact, it was to be almost the tallest climb of the whole journey—and I hated having that knowledge, seeing as even that tallest climb was reduced to the size of an orange seed by the distance.
I thought—no, wished—for it to be just a hallucination. But it was real, as real as the collective 90 kilometers in my legs and as real as the distance that separated me and the next checkpoint, nestled somewhere next to that orange-seed mountain.
Even though I really didn’t want to, the only way to get there was to keep going. So I did.
The Bathroom Incident
Somewhere in the middle between the worst viewpoint of the whole journey and Checkpoint 4, I had to go to the bathroom. The two runners I’d passed earlier were about a kilometer behind me and there was nowhere to hide. I didn’t exactly mind being seen at that point in the race but I also didn’t want to flash the whole desert. That’s why, when I came upon a small ditch roughly 50 centimeters deep, I chose to use it as the bathroom. The runners would still see me squatting in the distance but at least they wouldn’t get the full view.
Why am I recounting this experience, you ask? Well… after having finished my business, I used the edge of the steep ditch to lean on and stand up from the squat. The problem was, I immediately realized I couldn’t get back out of the ditch. Making the step up was impossible, my legs refused to work. After a bit of struggle, I made peace with the fact that I’d have to wait for the two runners to catch up and pull me out of the ditch. (Jack had already passed me so he was out of the picture.)
That’s when I thought of another strategy; I laid on my belly on the road as if I was (very gently) faceplanting into my bed after a long day, then rolled over a few times, and, getting on all fours, finally got up on the road. Honestly, I wish I was a fly, watching myself do this, because the action must have been absolutely hilarious in its desperation. But it worked.
Night 2: FINISH!!!
There must have been a space-time loop somewhere along the perfectly straight road because I swear I went triple its length. Eventually, Checkpoint 4 welcomed me just as the sun kissed the horizon. I ate and drank more than at any other checkpoint before, the hottest part of the day finally behind me. I sent a voice message to Matt through volunteers; apparently, he had decided to drop and two people went to pick him up.
“The worst is behind you. Channel your inner Courtney. Imagine I’m Kyle at Tahoe!” It might have been a bit cringy but Matt adores Courtney Dauwalter and we chatted about her and Kyle Curtin’s close race at Tahoe for quite a while.
Media Crew’s in Trouble!
I left the checkpoint knowing that it was me against the clock; I had only a limited time to make it before the cutoff.
As the sky and desert turned pink and lavender, a car passed me. From its open window, Matt was waving his arms erratically.
“You GO AND GET IT! You’ve GOT IT!” he yelled as the volunteers in the car cheered.
And then, silence.
I was left in the utter silence of the desert, sweet, deafening, absolute.
Only the sound of my steps accompanied me on my way toward the finish line, hidden behind a huge hill. Eventually, the rhythm of my own steps was enriched by two other sets of feet; two volunteers from Checkpoint 4, both of whom I’d met before when volunteering myself, decided to accompany me on the last stretch of the race.
Josie and Shiraz brought a new spring to my step. They were supportive, cheery, and set on getting me to the finish line. They laughed with me as we passed the media crew car; they’d gotten a flat and couldn’t, for the life of them, change it. They offered us more water and waved us goodbye and good luck.
“You go, Pav!” called out Harry.
A Lightbringer in Birkenstocks
Alex the race director stopped by just as we were looking for a turn that was supposed to take us off the dirt road and up a (completely unnecessary) hill. He greeted us on his way to help the media crew, laughing that the car situation was just ridiculous; it wasn’t the first time they had car trouble.
Eventually, Josie, Shiraz, and I got up the hill with the help of my watch. (Thank God I had uploaded the race route in it!) On the right, the hill sloped gently. On the left, it dropped off into the darkness below. Illuminated only by our headlamps, it almost looked like we were underwater.
On the top of the hill, the most surreal view welcomed me; Harry and Sam who were both struggling with the car only a few miles before sat there, surrounded by glowsticks. Harry, in all his mini-shorts, unbuttoned-shirt, wide-brimmed-hat glory, wore Birkenstocks. On the top of a hill made of loose rock and not much else, he was there in shoes that were ideal for laying by the pool back at the hotel and not much else.
From these two saints on, the route was marked by glowsticks. We descended (slid down) an incredibly steep incline made of more loose rock. How Harry survived that (and with all of his toes intact!) remains a mystery to this day. (Ultrarunners, man. Amirite?) Harry and Sam then found their car parked in complete darkness more or less by memory and all I had to do was follow small dots of light all the way to the Atlas Studios.
Dreams Come True in Deserts
The final stretch was, again, nigh endless. Through sand, I walked on, Shiraz playing music on a speaker to help me forget my legs that had simply had enough by then and refused to move a single inch without hurting.
There were steps leading up to a walkway lined on both sides with Sphinx statues and I barely crawled up before imitating something that distantly resembled running for the last 20 or so meters of the race. Then there was the blue arch above my head, smiling faces in front of me, and comforting arms around me.
I had made it.
I’d run 110 kilometers through the Sahara desert.
My body and mind remained strong.
The bad streak was over.
The Aftermath
I’d never been wheeled through airports in a wheelchair before that day. My legs swollen, I couldn’t fit into my long pants the morning of the departure, so I spent the journey in swim shorts. If my heavy limp didn’t speak for itself, my taped-up leg certainly did.
The flight crew at the check-in took one look at me and assigned me assistance for the whole journey. I didn’t have to stand in long lines in Marrakech, and I caught the plane in Paris—which would have been downright impossible even with both legs intact. The 30-minute window between de-planing and the gate for the next flight closing was not enough. Even though the airport staff did everything they could to get me there on time, they still had to keep the gate open for extra five minutes and delay the flight by as much.
I felt a bit sorry for the flight crew who doesn’t get paid until the airplane doors are closed. They were professional and beyond helpful, finding me an empty row close to the door so I could stretch my leg and giving me a blanket and a pillow to make the journey more comfortable. I received better treatment than those who paid for business.
Two weeks after the race, my leg felt completely fine but my stomach still just wasn’t having it. There was some kind of infection and my doctor had to figure out if that was the only thing causing the stabbing pain that came on some three days post-race or if it was something else. In the end, it basically resolved itself—the problem might also have been just the sheer amount of food I’d stuffed over the two days.
Still, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Considering the awesome experience, this is a small payment to be made.
Hit the Road with Me 