Day 7 Report
We were awake slightly early today, not surprisingly. It's the last day and we were all keen to get on with it, to finish off the 22km last stage, claim our medals and declare ourselves worthy finishers of "The Toughest Footrace on Earth". Success was tantalisingly close.
We rolled up our sleeping bags, kip mats and lit our stoves to cook our farewell freeze-dried breakfast in the desert. As we did so, Berbers who had been responsible for establishing and breaking down the camp each day, wandered among the tents, hoping for gifts from generous runners. A few carry sleeping bags, kettles, boil-in-the-bag meals, energy bars, gels, sweets and items of discarded clothing, no doubt gratefully handed to them by runners eager to avoid carrying unnecessary weight for the last stage.
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Breakfast over, a few of us wandered up to the official start line for the 8.00 a.m. departure of the most severely mutilated runners still in the race; they were given an extra early start so they wouldn?t finish too late in the day.
One of them was Aki Lalani, a runner mentioned in a previous article. You may remember his feet were giving him chronic pain, several blisters being infected already by Day 3. In addition, he had been suffering from a stress fracture of his left tibia and had been unable to train for six weeks before the beginning of the race. Near the end of the 51 mile Day 4 stage, Aki had been in such pain he had been close to retiring from the race; removing from his backpack his emergency distress flare, he had been on the point of firing it when he remembered that he had been pledged £13,000 for a Third World children?s education charity if he successfully completed the race. Still knowing he had to cover the remainder of the 51 miler, a full 26 mile marathon 2 days later, and a half-marathon the day after, all carrying extremely painful injuries, Aki stuffed the flare back in his rucksack and resumed trudging across the soft sand into the night. And now, here he was, 3 days later, about to complete the ?lap of honour? final 22 km. Patrick Bauer, the Race Director, shouted out his now famous "Cinq, Quatre, Trois, Deux, Un, .Allez!" and the brave twenty began their agonising shuffle off towards Tazzarine, the town which would host the finish.
We returned to our bivouacs to finish packing our kit, sunblocking our exposed body parts and strapping our feet. On reaching our bivouac we witnessed a commotion of potentially disastrous proportions. Man-With-Spade had been robbed in the night of his precious shovel and was now Man- Without-Spade. Quickly nicknamed Dug-less by some less compassionate fellow competitors, Man-Without-Spade launched an investigation into the shovel?s whereabouts. Shortly after, one of the official logistics crew from the race arrived by moped, securely gripping the hastily retrieved implement. Man-With-Spade-Again was clearly delighted.
Charlotte, who had insisted on keeping her shoes on all night to prevent the certain agony of both removing them and then putting them on again in the morning, looked the most confident I had seen her all week. She was in no doubt she would finish. I hoped so too. She and I have a dreadful habit of returning to uncompleted races the following year to resolve "unfinished business" and, feeling as tired as I did and as lucky as I had been to get this far in more or less one piece, I seriously didn't want to entertain thoughts of a 2004 re-match.
At the pre-race briefing, Patrick Bauer gave us the usual daily statistics updates. Marathon day, the day before, had been a hot one, 49.9 degrees hot in fact. And today would be about the same. Throughout the week the brilliant Doc Trotter medical team had treated over 3000 cases. 13,000 emails had been received by runners from supporters. The briefing over, we all wished each other luck, the Europeans kissing each other and the Brits handshaking heartily. And then we were off.
The course was a fair one, a well-earned reasonably easy trail run of 22 km across many gravel tracks, only a little soft sand and then finally, of all things, tarmac. We hadn't seen tarmac for seven days, let alone felt it beneath our trainers. Several of us were to comment later on how long it took us to adjust to the sensation of running on perfectly flat ground.
On the way through the outskirts of Tazzarine, our final destination, we were accompanied by many children, each taking it in turns to run alongside us briefly demanding "dollar", "stylos", "bon bons" or our "bouteilles". At one point the two British runners in front of me joined in kicking a football around with an obviously delighted lonely child who had been playing on his own. It was a characteristic time-out by relieved and cheerful runners who could sense victory wasn't far away. At one point I saw a marker board, sometimes seen on the route and erected by the "pisteurs" (routemarkers) on which a runner had been doodling in heavy black felt pen. Underneath a cartoon sketch of dunes, camels and exhausted runners, the artist had written simply "Merci Les Pisteurs". A sporting gesture which I'm sure would be gratefully received.
As I neared the centre of Tazzarine the roads became wider, the children became more scarce, and we began to see, for the first time in a week, people, trucks and cars not associated with the race. I knew the finish line couldn't be far, but was still surprised when I rounded a bend in the road to be greeted by the fantastic spectacle of the Finish only tens of metres away. It was a beautiful sight. Energised by the sense of occasion I decided to steel myself for one final heroic push and accelerated all the way up to a slow jog all the way over the Finish Line.
Job done!
In the next article I will describe the race finish, giving an update on some of the runners I have mentioned previously, and attempt a suitable postscript to the race.
