Trail Running

2009-05-04T20:05:00.000-07:00

Marathon Des Sables - The False Start

After a couple months of "relatively" consistent training I found myself boarding a plane in SFO headed to JFK in New York where I hooked up with several other runners bound for Morocco. Travel time from the moment I walked out the door at home until I walked in the door of the hotel where we were to stay for a few days prior to the race was a little over 24 hours. I was quite tired, but we had arrived at around 1pm so we all decided it was best to stay up and try to go to sleep at a normal time so as to adjust to the time zone which is 7 hours ahead of CA.

Once we got our rooms, a number of us decided to head out for lunch at one of the local restaurants. We visited the ATM across the street from the hotel to withdraw some cash (Moroccan Dirham - 8 to 1 exchange rate with the dollar) and were off to restaurant. Sitting outside we enjoyed a simple meal of meat and sauce over couscous. Not sure what it was exactly, but sufficiently satisfied my hunger. We were also entertained by a local street performer. He played what can only be described as some sort of string instrument and sang some song about which I have no idea. Although, Jay did a very nice imitation, not to mention a far more entertaining rendition, sung in a strained albeit it slightly whiny voice by repeating the name of the town over and over, "Ouarzazaaaaaate! Ouarzazaaaaate! [Waur Za Zaaaat]" I think Jay has a future in music if he ever tires of coaching and ultrarunning. ;-)

The next few days were spent simply getting acclimated to the time change, though not the heat because there was none. The temperature was quite mild. Jay held a couple pack reviews providing us with ample reason to pack, unpack, take inventory, reassess, repack and repeat the same process over and over. While I did not count the number of times I packed and unpacked my bag, I would not be exaggerating if I were to guess it was at least 20-30 times.

Jay Batchen giving us a pack review. He covered what to carry, what to leave out, and how to reduce weight in our packs.

After the pack review I did my best to reduce the load. But I still came out with a 25 lbs. pack. I don't know how others do it. As mentioned, I went through my pack many many times, but just couldn't part with anything. Most of the weight consisted of food, so hopefully the pack would get lighter quickly as I ate each day.

* Pack and water bottles
* 7 ziplock bags of food (~3000 calories a day - meals and running fuel)
* Running Clothes (shorts, top, gaiters, socks, underclothes, buffs, gloves, light jacket and pants, tyvek suit, cap with drape, Suunto watch, Moeben, sunlgasses)
* Spork (Spoon/fork combo)
* TP
* Medical (blister kit, pain killers, body glide, etc.)
* Compulsory gear (Survival sheet, headlamp, batteries, mirror, compass, knife, lighter, snake bite kit, safety pins, alcohol wipes)
* Sleeping bag and mat
* Satellite phone - key to maintaining a happy wife back at home! :)

After a couple days at the hotel hanging out near the pool, eating at the local establishments, and generally fidgeting the days away wishing to get going, Saturday came: time for us to leave the comforts of a hotel and camp out under the desert sky. This turned out to be more metaphorical than actual as it was overcast and rainy. In fact, we had a fair amount of rain. However, we were not deterred. We wanted to get going. Running around Ouarzazate was not only a distance second to running the actual race running in town was smoking and a bit dangerous. The traffic was fine, but one of the women in our group went out for a run one day, tripped over a piece of concrete sticking up, fell and shattered her wrist. In an instance her race was over before it began. All of us felt a great sense of disappointment because Teresa was not only running the event for herself she was running it to raise money for a charity. Due to the fact that she required a cast up past her elbow, thus immobilizing her wrist to allow the bone to set, the race committee deemed it too difficult for her to compete, especially considering the difficulty of the course and the need for two fully functional arms/hands.

We loaded on to several buses for what seemed to be a journey more difficult than running the event itself. The ride took forever. Although, we did take a couple opportunities to stop and...uh...stretch our legs....and to familiarize ourselves with what would soon become a common practice: the immodest bio-break. :)

Men on the right side of the road, women on the left.

After (finally) reaching, or almost reaching our destination we had to load into trucks to make the final 30 minute distance to the bivouac via military trucks. We loaded into the back to sit on hard benches while the driver did his best NOT to miss any hole or rock in the road.

A few of us enjoying the ride!

View from our new rides. Oh how I miss those buses in the background already!

After arriving at the bivouac we soon realized we were in for a challenge we were dreading: rain! As noted in the picture above, the ground was soaked. It had been pouring rain the whole day. In fact, it had rained so much that as we rode in buses to our destination we crossed roads that were almost washed out. Those traveling behind us weren't so lucky. The roads became so flooded the buses could not pass and were turned around to find lodging in near-by towns. We made it to the bivouac and proceeded to find our tents, hoping against all hope that it wasn't too wet and that somehow our tent was dry. This hope slowly faded as we walked by tents with water slowly running through them.

The tents were open-air and consisted of a canvas-like material held up by poles and tied down with stakes. For the floor, there were two large carpets on the ground. Our carpets showed their absorbing capabilities by soaking up the water in our tent. My first thought was, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me! We're not only in tents with no real sides, but water is soaking up into the only thing keeping us from the bare ground!" I wasn't so concerned with getting wet, we were already completely soaked, and I've run many many times in the rain. No, my concern was our sleeping bags getting wet and us coming down with hypothermia. There was very little dry in our tent and things weren't getting any better, so my tent-mates and I decided we needed to do some home improvement if we were going to make it through the night. So, Mike, being the veteran of the bunch decided we needed to first do something about the water in our tent. So we took sticks and began digging trenches to drain the water out of and away from our tents. It was a productive, albeit futile, undertaking. But it made us feel like we were at least doing something. Mike then came up with the idea of "borrowing" things from other tents. These included poles and carpets from other tents. We did our best but what started out as an dry area big enough to sleep about 5 people in a tent for 8, ended up having enough dry space for only 3 people. There were only three of us at the time, so we decided to forbid any others from joining us.

Looks like we've got a little home improvement work ahead of us.

Ah! It's not so bad!

Despite the initial shock of so much water everywhere...in the desert no less, we began to accept our situation and just did the best we could. We figured it was going to be a long cold, but hopefully not wet, night. We cleared out as much water as we could, put up "walls" using the carpet "borrowed" from other tents, created a drainage system to keep water from flowing into our tents...well, maybe a little would still get in, and figured it was good enough. So we started to unpack and get settled in.

Home Sweet Home!

After settling in for a bit, it we were called to dinner. So we slogged our way through the mud to the dining tent for one of the few meals prepared by the race organization. Little did I know or expect this was to be the best meal of the whole trip to Morocco, bar none! I have to say, those French do know a thing about cooking...in the middle of the Sahara Desert yet! We were served a meat stew over couscous with the ubiquitous Moroccan flat (and round) bread and a fruit tart type dessert. It was a fabulous meal, one that I still enjoy remembering today.

Waiting to eat. Notice the stylish rain gear: garbage bag over a tyvek suit! Oh yeah, we're cool!

Enjoying a wonderful meal!

After finishing our meal we were informed by the race officials that they were giving into the weather and that we were leaving the bivouac. They were taking us to hotels in a nearby town. At first I protested, mildly of course. We had spent a good deal of time working on our new home and we weren't all that ready to give it up. While the race director did think about it for a minute, the idea of leaving some folks on their own in questionable accommodations did not sit well with him, so he said all must evacuate. A VERY wise call!

We then loaded into the military trucks again for a ride to a nearby town, about a 20-30 minute drive. After checking in, taking a shower and warming up I headed down to the bar to hook up with the other runners. A nice cold beer was waiting for me as I joined some friends who had not made it out to the bivouac and were on the previously mentioned buses that were driven directly to the hotel. We were the focus of attention as we regaled the others with our tale of taking on the desert and coming away to tell the story. And it's at this point, that this story comes to a pause.

Next Up: Marathon Des Sables - The Race (for real this time)

2009-05-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

Marathon Des Sables - In the Beginning

How do I summarize an experience that surpasses description? I suspect I will be less than successful in this endeavor but will do my best to at least convey an interesting, if not intriguing, recount of the past couple weeks; one that should provoke a few questions but satisfy the majority of those interested in my undertaking.

Tuscon Training Camp
I first considered Marathon Des Sables (MDS) last year as I watched my coach, Lisa Smith-Batchen, interviewed on ESPN while they covered the 2008 event. Lisa won the woman's division in 1999 and has since competed in a number of these races. She and her husband, Jay (an accomplished ultrarunner in his own right), represent MDS for the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. Anyone entering MDS from these countries does so through Jay and Lisa's company, Dreamchasers With encouragement from Lisa I made the commitment to enter 2009's running of MDS...little did I know what a huge undertaking (most of it awesome!) this would turn out to be.

While Lisa provided me with an incredible amount of informative coaching last year, it was quite evident this was no simple undertaking and so additional preparation was necessary. Jay and Lisa offer a training camp intended to help prepare the prospective desert trekker for the challenges of running the Sahara. So the beginning of January I attended their camp week long in Tuscon, AZ. What an eye opener!

There were 9 other runners (Aaron, Bill, Connie, Francis, Hans, Jane, Kerri, Lynne, and Tess). Having run the event the previous year Aaron was the veteran participant of MDS in the group and provided a great deal of practical thoughts, insights and personal experience to the overwhelming amount of information provided by Jay Batchen and Matt Hart (co-trainers for the training camp). Both Jay and Matt provided the valuable voice of experienced runners/coaches and Aaron provided voice of a participant and how he applied the information presented by Jay and Matt. Additionally, both Aaron and Bill are doctors and add to this the fact that both Lynne and Kerri are nurses thus we found ourselves at a virtual medical convention. We were therefore, well informed on a variety of aspects for the undertaking. It was a great balance. However, it was from discussions with Aaron that I came away quite sobered and a bit more intrigued about the challenge before me. Below are a couple pictures from the camp.

Jay Batchen - our fearless leader and desert running guru.

Aaron (background) and Matt (foreground). "Now where are we again?"

The "gang" - Francis, Bill, Aaron, Jane, Connie, Lynne, Jay, Tess, Kerri, Hans, and yours truly. Now wonderful friends, one and all!

Little did we know what we were in for!

Our daily routine consisted early morning yoga led by Matt (which this author conveniently missed on a regular basis!) followed by a nice breakfast prepared by our hosts (Owen, Andy, Sam, Brendan, Elisabeth, and David) at "The Cycling House." The Cycling House is a training camp in a house. The guys rent a large house in Tuscon and host camps for cyclists, triathletes, and endurance runners. I cannot say enough positive things about their operation. The meals were superb, the accommodations were comfortable, spacious and surprisingly quite "homey." The guys were incredibly welcoming, efficient, engaging, knowledgeable and just a lot of fun to hang around! Anyone considering a get-away to focus on developing their skills in the aforementioned sports for a day, two days or longer should definitely give these guys a ring. I cannot recommend them enough!

Anyway, after breakfast Jay and Matt would take us out for a run in the desert to practice skills and techniques they taught us. Distances varied and were measured by time rather than miles, though I ran anywhere from 5-6 miles on one day up to 16 miles on another. I was a little heavier than normal having added about 10lbs. over the holidays and hadn't run in over a month, so it was a tad challenging. [Note to self, you don't have to eat anything and everything put before you over the holidays...it is NOT required, no matter how much you are encouraged to do so! ;-) ]

The afternoons were spent reviewing various topics such as sports nutrition (calculating your fueling requirements, hydration, electrolytes, etc.), fundamentals of running form and technique, the mental aspect of running ultras, foot care (blister prevention and treatment), and most importantly race preparation. I cannot emphasize enough the value of the information provided during that week. It both sobered me by enlightening me about what I was taking on, but emboldened me by providing the foundation of knowledge and insight to do so successfully.

I left the training camp both excited to get on with my training, but tempered a due to a tad bit of fear. My training was no different than for any other ultra, despite my best intentions to do otherwise. I wanted to train in some sand, but that proved to be a bit difficult logistically. I took the advice of Catra Corbett to heart when I asked the Ultraholics (an ultrarunner's group to which I belong on Yahoo!) if they knew of any good places to run in the sand. There were several good suggestions, unfortunately most were a bit of a drive and I just didn't have the time. Catra, a very prolific and "colorful" ultrarunner and a total sweetheart, who is also know by many as "Dirt Diva," told me that she had run MDS and all she did to prepare for it was train as she would for any other 100-miler. That was music to my ears. I followed her advice.

Unfortunately, the one thing I should have incorporated into my training was running with my pack, which I did only once and that without it fully loaded.

Next Up: Marathon Des Sables - The False Start!