Day 4 Report

Today, Day 4 was the one most of us had been dreading more than all the others, the 82 km (51 miles) stage.

For most this would be an ordeal which would last well into the early hours of Day 5 or even later in the day. We were in temperatures of well over 30 degrees with such strong winds that most of the daylight hours were spent preventing sand from clogging up my eyes ad teeth.

Tom Lawley, one of my tent mates had pointed out before the stage even started that as he was already struggling to stumble across the bivouac site to get his morning water ration, this did not bode well for the next 51 miles. (In fact, Tom was to put in a very good time and arrive before midnight). While doing some morning surgery before he set off, Tom proudly announced that, thinking he was cutting away plaster from his feet, he was actually snipping away at one of his toes which only became obvious when he found his hands covered in blood.

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Despite camp nerves, before we mustered for the start there was a spirited attempt by one of the Brit tents to get a Mexican wave going all the way around the huge circle of Berber tents.

The course was very tough, much soft sand, a field of thorn bushes atop dunettes (the French word for small dunes, not, as the word sounds, a 60's girl bad from Kidderminster), several steep rocky ad sandy passes, and a gruelling last 14k section on a deep sandy track which twisted and curved its way through the plains.

We were guided along two of the later sections by two powerful giant green laser beams. In addition, cyalume light sticks had been given to us before the night sections to attach to the rear of our packs, so we could follow runners in front.

I spent almost the entire day and night sections with my friend, Neil Price, the personal trainer with the run/walk timing routine. Sensibly he agreed to march the entire stage with me and abandoned the foolish running thing. He was also suffering from severe heat rash, which caused great brown lumpy patches to appear on his legs As Neil and I arrived at Checkpoint 5, 56.5 kms into the stage, we were joined by Tim Murphy, a Doctor from Bristol.

We marched on to the 6th Checkpoint, 11.5 km further on before Tim marched on ahead. Just as we were about to leave the checkpoint we met Mark Hanson, Strategic Intelligence expert, and one of my tent mates. His feet were in tatters ad he was clearly experiencing acute discomfort. In the event, he was to do what many runners did at this stage, which was to sensibly bed down for the night ad continue at crack of dawn on Day 5. Neil's and my last 14 kms was probably the toughest I experienced on the race, a slow slog through the night. We finally arrived at the finish at 2.45 in the morning.

I found my tent, dragged off my shoes and socks, crawled into my sleeping bag and then... cooked chicken curry. We do the strangest things. I had been starving all day, food bars not filling me up at all, and I had been fantasising about preparing this meal for myself for the last 3 hours of the stage. It was after this I fell into a deep sleep.