Running Hot

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When a crisis is looming, defer making any irreversible decisions

Flying down to Morocco, I began to realise the scope of the race — 700 of us running across the Sahara and about 50 of them were from Austria and Germany. There were two from Vienna and we travelled to Frankfurt to join the German team. It was great being involved in an individual sport that also had an amazing team spirit. The other guys on the team were really such great people and it wasn’t long before I started to make friends, which was something I was still getting used to doing. I was rediscovering life and people again and it was great fun.

On 30 March 2001, the team flew together to Casablanca before switching to a smaller plane to Ouarzazate. After a night in a hotel there, we all got on buses and were driven for several hours out into the desert. Eventually, we got transferred onto army trucks and taken even deeper into the desert to the huge camp set up at the start of the race. There were helicopters all over the place, hundreds of journalists and heaps of army guys all racing around before the start of the race.

It was great to be back in the desert and know that I was safe. I would have 9 litres of water a day throughout the race and, now, I had a bunch of mates to run with. I would have a backpack that wasn’t so heavy that it would cause me nerve damage. I was staggered to find out that there was a 30-strong medical team on hand as well as 250 other race personnel who had access to 90 vehicles, two helicopters, a Cessna plane and four camels. Fantastic!

It was extremely exciting just being in camp with the rest of the team. Each country was allocated a tent in camp. We all flew our own flags and there was a good-natured competitiveness between us. Everyone running the race was so interesting and there was a fantastic sense of comradeship within and between teams.

We spent two days at camp getting organised, sorting out our race numbers, packing our gear and getting medical checks, including being weighed and having our blood pressure checked. Before the race started we all got given a road book. It detailed the course the race would take and the length and terrain for each stage. None of us could wait to get our hands on them. The night before the race the organisers put on an amazing meal for all the competitors — it was simply fantastic.

The next morning we got up to start the race — it was 1 April. April Fool’s Day seemed an appropriate time to start a race across the desert . . .

The race itself is made up of six stages that take place over 7 days, including one night stage. All up, it covers 243 kilometres with the stages being of varying lengths and levels of difficulty. The day that everyone feared, though, was the fourth day when we had to cover about 80 kilometres — more than double the distance covered on every other day.

All 700 of us lined up and started the race together. As soon as the gun went, everyone was off. There were helicopters flying over us filming the start adding to the excitement of getting underway at last. It sure beat the hell out of walking through the Libyan Desert on our own!

The first day was an easy 26 kilometres through to the first rest point. Even though it wasn’t too tough, I spent quite a while at the first checkpoint dumping every bit of gear that wasn’t absolutely essential. I even cut my toothbrush in half to minimise the weight of my pack.

Marcel, another member of the Austrian team, and I decided to run together. He wasn’t quite as experienced as me, or as fit, but I was quite used to doing this kind of desert crossing with other people so I decided to stay with him.

On the third day, which was a 36-kilometre stage, Marcel collapsed and I thought his race might be over. However, he managed to get back up and get going. He was so scared that he wouldn’t be able to complete the whole race I decided to stick by my word to him and we walked together. It took us absolutely ages to get to the checkpoint for the night. When we got there, Marcel was taken straight to the medic’s tent where he was put on a drip to rehydrate him. Every runner was allowed one of these infusions during the race, for which they’d receive an hour’s time penalty. The difference in him after he’d been rehydrated was incredible and he managed to carry on the next day.

Day four dawned very early. We knew that we’d have to cover about 80 kilometres and it would take us most of the day and night. It was the only day of the race where we were expected to run through the night. Even as we set off that morning, Marcel was struggling. He was already exhausted but I did what I could to keep him going.

Even though I was running with Marcel the whole day, I spent a lot of time in my own head. My body was on the verge of exhaustion and I was mentally and physically right at the edge of my abilities. With all of my defences down, this was the place and time that I finally started to grieve for the life I’d planned with Paul. I spent hours walking through the Moroccan Sahara crying my eyes out over him. It was both traumatic and incredibly cathartic. This was the first time I’d been in the desert since he left me and I was finally doing something on my own, proving not only my ability but also my self-worth. I was finally able to let go of all the hurt, pain and sorrow that our relationship had caused me and, on that day out there in the Sahara, I knew that I was going to be all right.

When I finally got to the end of the stage, 19 hours after I’d set out, I collapsed in a heap. I was absolutely dehydrated — all that crying hadn’t helped me store the 9 litres of water I had with me. The race marshals took me to the medic’s tent and they had no choice — they put me on a drip to rehydrate me. At least I’d managed two days more than Marcel before I needed it!

Even though I desperately needed the drip, my kidneys weren’t quite up to dealing with it the way they might have been before they’d been so badly damaged in Libya. The way it works is that the medics keep pumping water into you until you need to pee — that way they know that your whole body is getting the moisture it needs. The water kept going in, litre after litre, and . . . well . . . nothing was coming out again.

The tent was so busy with athletes who needed help that the medics just kept changing the bag when it got empty and in the end, I’d had 7 litres of water pumped into me before I needed to go to the toilet. I was like the Michelin man — completely bloated. It must have looked hilarious.

Suddenly, the need to have a wee hit me. I was hooked up to an intravenous drip and, because my feet were so blistered, they’d put these blue plastic bags on my feet. It must have been quite a sight. This filthy, bloated chick wearing Smurf shoes and grubby cut-off shorts wandering out of the tent attached to a drip to try and find the toilets. Then I realised — there wasn’t time to find a toilet. I had to go, and I had to go right then. So I dropped my pants right outside the tent without realising that right behind where I was going about my business, there was a whole bunch of Moroccan army guys having a game of football! What was worse, by the time I realised they were there, there was no way I was going to be able to go anywhere in a hurry. Seven litres takes quite a while! I don’t know who was more embarrassed, them or me . . .

As I was going with the flow, one of my teammates came over from our tent to see how I was getting on. Well, he saw all right. And he was so highly entertained by my predicament that he pulled out his camera to record the moment for posterity. I had enough energy to swear up a blue storm at him but it didn’t put him off. Still, as soon as I went back into the medic’s tent, I realised it could have been a lot worse. The guy in the bed next to me was hooked up to a drip as well. But he had a rather more urgent toileting problem — he needed to have a poo and he was trying to tell the doctors but he didn’t speak any French. By the time they worked out what he was trying to say, it was too late. And you’re only meant to have the one set of clothes for the whole race — what a terrible reason to have to drop out of the race of a lifetime. Thankfully, the medics had a scout around and managed to find the poor bugger a clean pair of pants so that he could complete the race unencumbered. The life of an ultra-athlete is so glamorous.

Having had the infusion, I felt great for the remaining couple of days of the race. The next day, rehydrated, I was back on form. I had a great day and I knew I was only a day away from finishing my first desert race. The final day was short — only 25 kilometres. Actually crossing the finish line was special. It was a milestone for me knowing that I’d done a race on my own.

The one regret I have about that race was that I’d stayed back and walked with Marcel for so long. In hindsight, I should have just run it on my own — staying with Marcel meant being out in the sun much longer than I needed to be. Even so, I still managed to finish in thirty-third place and I was stoked.

Once I made it over the finish line, I went to the medics to get a post-race check-up. They stuck me on the scales and I’d managed to put on 5 kilograms! I’d just spent a week running across the desert and I’d managed to put on weight. It was a bit of a different scenario from the Libyan expedition. The doctors realised there was a problem with my kidneys and gave me some diuretics to try and flush my system out. Instead of spending the day celebrating having completed the Marathon des Sables, I spent the day making a well-worn path to the toilet. I reckon I was peeing about every 20 minutes but by the end of the day, I’d dropped that extra 5 kilograms.

After our post-race checks, the race organisers piled us all into buses and drove us back to Ouarzazate. It took a few hours but it was great to be finished the race and back at the hotel. Pretty much all of the athletes were staying in the same place. I got out of my racing gear and peeled the bandages off my blistered feet, excited at the prospect of a hot shower. I hadn’t been prepared for the fact that everyone else was planning on the same thing and all the hot water had been used up. My shower was freezing cold!

The hotel had a fabulous pool complex and having all spent the last week in the heat of the desert, the idea of a swim was blissful. Unfortunately, because nearly all of the athletes had come back from the race with blisters and other skin problems we were all banned from using the pool in case of cross infection. That blue water taunted us all.

After a couple of days of celebrating with my teammates, I flew back to Vienna. I made it home and in the first week back I lost another 5 kilograms as my body healed itself from the rigours of the desert. Most of this was from swelling going down and from my muscles recovering from being pushed to the edge.

Back in Vienna, I really felt like a changed person. The run through the desert had been so much more than a physical challenge. Mentally it had completely changed me and I didn’t feel like I fitted into my old life anymore. It took me a month to settle and get back into the routine of everyday life. My life just seemed so decadent and full of unnecessary stuff, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

Luckily, I had my team members from Morocco to talk to and I soon found out that they were going through much the same thing. Once you’ve experienced something that extreme and that challenging, day-to-day life seems so lacking in meaning. Being out in the desert really makes you reassess the value of your life. While you’re taking yourself to the limits you start to think quite deeply about things. I knew that my relationship with Werner was in deep trouble and that it wasn’t really what I wanted anymore.

I did the only thing I could think of — I started training for another desert run. This time, I was going to run the Desert Cup in Jordan. And I was going to do it in November. I had just seven months to prepare. People were amazed when I said I was going to do another desert run so soon. Seven months felt like quite a long time to me and I was excited at the prospect of running in the desert again. I was really focused on training and I did a heap of long-distance races in Austria including a 12-hour, a 24-hour and an ironman race. I needed to get as much experience as I could in endurance running to really make the most of the next race.

The thing that makes it easy for me to do races like this pretty much back to back is the massive sense of achievement I get from crossing the finish line. Crossing that finish line, the first thing I feel is relief for having completed what I’ve set out to do. Then I feel an incredible sense of joy for having achieved my goal. My body is depleted but slowly over the next few days a quiet satisfaction grows as I begin to focus on the good things that happened while I was out on the course. The struggles and the stresses are the price I have to pay for the victory of getting over that line and achieving the goal I’ve set for myself. The pain is temporary but the achievements last forever. Like any great achievement in life, it is necessary for me to put great effort in.

Dealing with heat

About 90 per cent of body heat is lost through your head, so if you’re running in extreme heat it’s really important to keep your head cool. This can be done with ice packs and cold water. It’s important to keep your eyes, face and nose wet but this can be tricky to do without getting your shoes and socks wet!

Extreme heat can actually cook your internal organs. This can happen if you dehydrate or overheat and it can be fatal. The key is to not let your inner core temperature go over 40°C.

There are a number of reasons why runners collapse during a race ranging from hypoglycaemia, to exhaustion and overheating. If you collapse, it’s vital that your crew take your temperature to establish whether you’ve overheated. If your temperature is over 40°C, then they need to cool you down fast. The best way to do this is to get you into icy water as soon as possible.