Charlie Norton - 2005
10 March: Training hard for the 'world's toughest foot race'
In just over a month I will be one of 800 competitors taking part in the Marathon des Sables - "the world's toughest foot race".
The MDS, as it is known, is a 150-mile ultra-marathon in the Sahara desert and was set up by the pioneering Patrick Bauer 20 years ago when 23 madcap runners completed the first event.
It takes part in six stages over seven days across salt flats, desert plains, dried up lakes and giant sand dunes near Ouarzazate in Morocco. In extreme temperatures ranging from daytime highs of 125F to night-time lows of close to freezing, the runners carry all their food and supplies on their backs, hoping to avoid sandstorms in which they can barely move. A snake bite kit is a compulsory item and cut-off times rule out any stragglers.
Maybe it was an ill-wind from the Sahara itself that blew my senses. Why the desert? Well, I'm not agoraphobic, I don't have enough money to go into space and my fear of heights rules out a mountain ascent. So I settled on the MDS because of the special atmosphere generated by the event and the infectious draw of conquering your own part of the desert.
Bauer, now the race director, has said: "Those who finish the course can announce it with due pride and emotion. The MDS is a race in a league of its own and must remain the way history has shaped it. We often hear about the myth. It's founded as much on the sheer feats of the winners as the experiences of thousands of anonymous runners. Each participant comes to take up a personal challenge in which he/she will have invested considerable energy. This is most probably why pulling out is genuinely heart-rending. Everyone pushes their limits to the full to reach the finish line in the shortest time. There is a before and after the Marathon des Sables."
So, in January, I decided I had better withdraw from impolite society and embark on some serious training. A few eyebrows were raised by those who know me.
Although I have a basic level of fitness I can safely say I'm more basement bar than lycra on a treadmill. So although I ran regularly last year up to Christmas I was worried that the only lifestyle compromise to my desert enterprise was to switch from Marlborough to Camel Lights. A month ago I violently cranked up the tempo by taking on an endurance marathon after a monkish start to the new year.
It took a titanic tussle with the interminable hills of Devon to make me realise that I'm an ailing snail in the endurance world. Carrying my rucksack with me to replicate MDS conditions I staggered around the course in just under six hours, arriving at the finishing line utterly chastened and crippled with pain.
But the barbed hook had caught hold and the next step in my enforced schedule was a 54-mile ultra-marathon set up by MDS veterans to prepare for the 80km stage of the race on day five. So the weekend before last I gingerly took on what is called the Thames Meander, a name which conveys the utterly misleading impression that you're about to enjoy a pleasant jaunt in the country peering at period houses and, for the first 20 miles, you are. But further on you have to picture 100 gnarled endurance athletes tottering under rucksacks in the bitter cold, blindly navigating along the Thames tow path long into the night with miners' lamps and slavering over carbohydrate gels that taste like wallpaper paste, to get some idea of what this gruelling event entails.
I am loathed to summarise the 14 hours of emotional turmoil that was my miserable 'meander' from Reading to Surbiton. Suffice to say it was agony. The first half took about five hours but the second an almost unbearable nine as my 10 kilogram rucksack turned into an anvil, even shuffling became tortuous and my map reading impotence led me to screaming on the towpath.
I suppose the other competitors must have looked and felt similar at the end. I arrived at the finish just before midnight, racked with pain. The last three miles took nearly two hours and the railway sidings in Surbiton are now a dark patch on my soul. My body is still recovering and I have destroyed the ligaments on my left foot but after such a distance everyone has a niggle. Now I just want to get through the MDS. But what can a toiling minnow do to maximise his endurance potential and finish the race? Dr Mike Stroud, the right-hand man to the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, believes the most important quality is not physical conditioning, stamina or mental toughness. "The quality you really need with all these tests," Stroud believes, "is a bad memory, so you can remember the good parts and forget the bad."
Charlie Norton will be running for Facing Africa, a charity helping to reverse the ravaging effects of NOMA, a disease targeting children and prevalent in Africa. Donations can be made at www.facingafrica.org.
13 April: Extreme heat takes its toll on body and mind
I had always been dreading the dune day of the marathon and it was the hardest thing I have ever done. I have never been in 51C before, except when in an air-conditioned office, and certainly not moving through 50-metre dunes with a time limit.
This was on the back of what Marathon des Sables veterans said was the hardest ever stage the day before, in which 12 more people had dropped out including the No 3 runner, who received a compound fracture on a descent.
After three days I am sure I'm beginning to look like a shell of my former self. I am finding it hard to write today - my mind is a little addled from the heat.
I had a very bad start to the day when I had a painful occurrence of heartburn probably from eating Bombay mix and Lucozade tablets for breakfast. Then my well-made gaiters got caught on rocks and came apart and my shoes started letting in sand.
When I hit the dunes I had to take my shoes off to cope because the sand was coming through and crushing my feet. But it was burning my feet in my socks - so I had to wear my shoes and take them off every five minutes through 5.6 miles of towering sand. I must have taken my shoes on and off about 400 times.
I was no graceful Norton of Arabia - T E Lawrence would have turned in his grave at an Englishman brought so low by the desert -but at least I kept on the right route, unlike an Italian policeman and former gold medallist who went missing in the dunes in 1994 and was found nine days later, 44lb lighter, in western Algeria. He lived off bats and boiled urine.
So I should be thankful, but I almost went stir crazy after the last checkpoint. A Brit called Vicki had saved me at the end of the dunes but the final valley to the finish was eight miles of searing heat when you could see the camp the whole way. It never seemed to get closer as my water started to run out. At least the finish is a little closer now.
Details
Stage 3: Mount El Otfal to Talmaidert
Distance: 25.6 miles Terrain: Sandy valleys, big dunes
Time: 7hr 50 min
Temperature: 51C
Physical state: Dehydrated, sunburnt, swollen hands
Mental state: Disorientated, relieved
Feet: Five more blisters, crushed toes
Painkillers: 2 Nurofen, 1 codeine.
Today's stage: Talmaidert to Oued Ahssra, 47½ miles.
15 April: Battling gremlins during an excruciating ordeal
This feels like writing a monstrous epic but I can only scrape the surface of the Marathon des Sables, the world's toughest endurance race. I write this in a sandstorm with people still reaching the finish line 160ft away. Like me they have been through an ordeal in which every competitor has fought gremlins in their head for up to 34 hours to get through the longest stage - an excruciating 47½ miles after travelling 68 miles in the preceding three days.
Veterans of the event say that 15 per cent of it is physical and the rest is mental. I found this out when I hit an energy void from six miles to 13 miles. No amount of jelly babies, electrolyte drink or painkillers seemed to lift me - when you're down in this race you're down and every step you want to give up. But you just keep going waiting for the change.
My upturn happened just after the elite runners passed - Morocco's Ahansal brothers, Lahcen and Mohammed, and 53 others at the head of the race started three hours after the main field but watching their effortless running spurred me on. I ran with clenched teeth as my shin-splint agony returned and I had to continually empty my shoes of sand.
The time was maddening. Your mind and body play tricks because you have never pushed yourself this far. I passed a Frenchman clinging to the ground crying "non" and an Irishman running the wrong way up the mountain.
The heat gets inside you and by the time I saw the finish from more than six miles away, I was on my last legs. The finish was like a portal to another universe. The lights flashing in the dark. I have never felt so exalted and so terrible at the same time. I was drained to the core by getting this far and I leapt up to 270 in the field of about 700. The Ahansal brothers, I later found out, had finished almost eight hours ahead of me. Amazing.
Then the pain hit me - I was violently sick for half an hour and suffered stomach cramps and a nosebleed, but I've broken the back of this race as have all in my tent. We're all flat on our backs, ridden with injuries and swatting away flies as marathon day approaches ? a mere 26 and a bit miles.
Today' stage: Oued Ahssia to Iraoun, 26.2 miles.
Details
Stage 4: Talmaidert to Oued Ahssia. Distance: 47½ miles.
Time: 14 hours.
Terrain: Rocky valleys, dunes.
Weather: Sunny, 45C, small sandstorm.
Physical state: Tendinitis, chaffing, nosebleeds.
Mental state: Inside out, exhausted, euphoric.
Feet: bruised, three more blisters, toes cut.
Calories: 6,000.
Painkillers: Two Ibuprofen, three codeine, three anti-inflammatories.
Humour: Maniacal.
16 April: Gutting it out as body gives way'
I was more nervous ahead of this stage than others as I had overlooked it with the long stage just before. My legs had finally seized up and my swollen shin gave me no respite. The biggest worry was having to take my shoes on and off my swollen feet in any wretched sand.
I combated the shin by rubbing on some ointment called 'Fiery Jack' but this was my first error. Up to checkpoint one my left leg made the Sahara seem parky.
After that had died down and I had crabbed my way in a 'Sahara shuffle' past checkpoint two, my stomach gave way and I had to make for the shrubbery. This was right at the moment when a bunch of kids were running up and trying to steal my water bottles. My stomach was cured by a torpedo suppository I had been hoping not to use, but the pain in my feet worsened.
I had to gut it out on my own in the last eight miles and the sand was so painful I was yelping. My pain paled compared to others. I passed one guy receiving a heart massage. In the medical tent I saw the whole of a bottom of a foot come off. Only 12.5 miles to limp now.
Today (Final Stage): Iraoun to Tazzarine - 12.5 miles.
Details
Stage 5: Marathon des Sables, Oued Ahssia to Iraoun. Distance: 18 miles. Time: 7½ hours. Terrain: Sand, plains.
Weather: Sunny, 50C.
Physical state: Shin and Achilles agony.
Mental state: Relieved.
Feet: Skin ripped off toes, all nails blackened.
Painkillers: Two codeine, three anti-inflammatories, one torpedo suppository.
19 April: Exhausted, but I've climbed my mountain
There was no spring in my step when I returned to London yesterday but I felt singularly relieved that I had now returned from the trials already feel proud that I have conquered my psychological mountain, which had loomed so menacingly over me in the hard months of training in the winter.
It is certainly not an event one can enter unprepared for, physically or mentally. I was very grateful for the 54-mile Thames Meander that I ran in February and for the three sessions in a climate control tank at Kingston University when I ran on a treadmill in temperatures of 45C.
Mentally you don't want to go out into the desert with any emotional turmoil in your head. You have so much time to think when you are in pain that any problems you have are magnified and a few people who have lasted the course have previously needed psychiatric treatment to recover from the ordeal. The desert will bring out your dark places on the many plains where you can see for miles and miles ahead, and the horizon in your vision for all those hours cuts straight through your mind with the searing heat.
More than 20 years ago Patrick Bauer wandered into the Sahara desert and travelled over 300km carrying his supplies on his back. His profound experience led to the foundation of the Marathon des Sables. He now holds the strings of the race-going puppets every year and this year the course was longer and harder than ever before. He said after the race: "You did very well this year. A six per cent drop-out rate was very good considering how tough the course was. It was the toughest we have had."
The race seems to be based on a French colonial tradition of hardship based on the ethos of the French Foreign Legion. Extreme sports are very popular in France, a trait upon which Bauer has capitalised.
Many professional cyclists take up endurance running when they retire. Some runners in the race even use the peloton technique by forming a small group who take it in turns to go at the front and create a slipstream for those behind.
There were also some hardy agricultural types with great Gallic moustaches and small pot bellies who I suspect were drinking vin rouge from their water bottles during the race. What can sometimes come across as arrogance is a pride which helps them get through.
But obviously it is the Moroccans who dominate the top places, namely brothers Lahcen and Mohamad Ahansal. Lahcen, who won for the eighth time this year, said: "I am always so proud to win this event but it is all the other runners who are the heroes. Although I am now 34 I hope to go on winning for a while yet." And nothing looks likely to change that, particularly as the average age in the race is 41.
Age breeds stamina and mental toughness but for pure stoicism it was hard to match the British contingent of over 200. Most would pride themselves on not complaining about the hardship of the race and having a laugh over everything.
I saw one Brit crawling up a dune looking as though he was at death's door, but when he was asked how he was he said: "Just a moment of bother."
The Spanish and the Italians were a little more vociferous but none was as fascinating as a Chinese group. A Chinese chat show host was doing the race with members of her audience and a tyrannical coach who was forcing them around the course. Once I witnessed him ordering his team to urinate in unison at a checkpoint before pushing them on painstakingly.
The most important bonds for everyone, though, are in tents and out on the course. I could not have finished the race without the support of the boys in tent 68 and many conversations out on the course during the race made me forget my pain when I thought I could not carry on.
Dealing with the pain was the hardest thing. I realised I had a limit which I could not go through and it made me feel small and human in the great folds of the desert. My body may take months to recover but the knowledge gave me strength.
Details
Irhs to Tazzarine in six stages.
Distance: 243km.
Time: 44hr 18min 35sec.
Position: 365.
Runners started: 777.
Runners finished: 731.
Averaged temperature: 47C.
Physical state: Shin splints, aching bones, heavily fatigued.
Mental state: Adjusting to life with a 1,000-yard stare.
Feet: Battered, bruised, blistered, infected big toe.
Total painkillers: 7 Codeine pills, 7 anti-inflammatory pills, 4 ibuprofen pills, 1 paracetamol, 1 torpedo suppository.
Charlie Norton has been running for Facing Africa.