Praise for Carved by God, Cursed by the Devil:
“Bloody excellent. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Funny, poignant, painful and inspiring.”
- Brendan Sainsbury, Lonely Planet Guide Books
“This book is a powerful story about conquering the 153-mile Marathon Des Sables, one of the toughest footraces on earth. In a reflective style, Ted discusses not just the obstacles that he faced in the Sahara—sand dunes, rock flats, endless valleys, and dehydration—but also the anguish and exaltation that he experienced while preparing for the most daunting physical challenge imaginable.
- Lisa Smith-Batchen, Coach, Professional Runner, and the only American ever to win the Marathon Des Sables
Carved by God, Cursed by the Devil
A True Story of Running the Sahara Desert
Ted Archer
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Ted Archer
For video clips, photos, or a hardcover edition of this book, visit www.tedarcher.com
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or otherwise distributed to other people; if you wish to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, please respect the author's hard work and purchase your own copy at Smashwords.
To Ms. Bell (if I may call you that):
I would run the entire Sahara if you were waiting on the other side.
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 – Pain
Chapter 2 – Amy
Chapter 3 – Arrival at the Bivouac
Chapter 4 – The Day Before
Chapter 5 – No Heart
Chapter 6 – The First Stage
Chapter 7 – Hometown Dunes
Chapter 8 – The Second Stage
Chapter 9 – Letters Home
Chapter 10 – The Third Stage
Chapter 11 – Packing
Chapter 12 – The Long Day
Chapter 13 – Wanting to Die
Chapter 14 – A Day of Rest
Chapter 15 – A Marathon
Chapter 16 – The Final Stage
Chapter 17 – Ooh, That Smell
Chapter 18 – Drifting Away
Postscript
Preface
This is one man’s true story of competing in the Marathon Des Sables, a 153-mile, six-stage self-sufficiency running race through Morocco’s Sahara Desert. The week-long event requires runners to be self-sufficient—which meant that we ran with backpacks filled with food, clothing, a sleeping bag, and any other luxuries that we were willing to carry. The temperatures ranged between forty and 120 degrees, and at times we were blinded by sandstorms. We slept on the Saharan hardpan, ate what we could, and did our best not to dehydrate.
Every attempt has been made to accurately recount the details of the event; however, this book is not a journal. It is a story about friendships that were formed under the most painful of circumstances. For this reason, simply logging each day’s events would be hollow. My hope was to recreate some of the feelings and emotions that were passed between haggard souls; to do so, I have recounted, as best as I can remember, our conversations, exasperations, moments of strength, and pleas for help. In doing so, I acknowledge that it is impossible to claim that every quotation is 100% accurate. Yet, while the quotes may not be exact in every respect, I feel confident in saying that they represent the spirit of the conversations, and in this sense, are a truthful account of my experience.
There is no need to grab your running shoes. You may wince, but you can enjoy the “Marathon of the Sands” from the comfort of your couch.
Ted Archer
1
Pain
Tacky to the touch, the soles of my shoes had begun to melt. Or so it seemed, but I couldn’t be sure—the heat was so suffocating that I struggled to think. Yet another runner passed me, and within moments the heat waves had distorted his frame so that all I could see was a blur.
I wanted more air, but it hurt to breathe. I needed more water, but even the action of drinking was difficult. I put a salt tablet in my mouth, but as I tried to swallow, my gag reflex shot it out onto the ground. As my feet shuffled along the black, rocky terrain, my goal was simple: just keep moving. At one point I thought to myself, I want to die. Paradoxically, this gave me strength. I knew that I would live—despite all of the pain and suffering—and I was determined to finish the day’s twenty-five-mile run through the Sahara Desert. My mind was resolute, but my body wanted to shut down.
How in the hell did I get here?
The temperature was approaching 120 degrees, my feet were beginning to blister, I had sores on my waist from the twenty-two-pound backpack I was carrying, and my insides were churning. It was misery at a level that I had never before experienced.
But there was one simple fact that I could not dispute: I had voluntarily paid thousands of dollars to do this.
It was the second day of the Marathon Des Sables, affectionately known as “the world’s toughest footrace.” A 153-mile, six-stage running race through Morocco’s Sahara Desert, this year’s edition had attracted more than 800 competitors from thirty-two countries. I was one of the people stupid enough to have become consumed by the mystery of the event.
That morning, race director Patrick Bauer had stood atop his Jeep and proclaimed that the second stage was the easiest of the event. Nearly four hours into the stage, my eyesight disrupted by the delirium, I wanted to argue the point with him. But he was nowhere to be found. It was my job alone to suffer and my responsibility to succeed or fail. With only a couple of miles remaining, I knew that I would complete the stage despite the consuming sensation of disgust.
***
My journey had actually begun two years earlier. In my discomfort during that second stage, I remembered it quite well. Sitting in my air-conditioned office, I looked out my window at the squirrels jumping from branch to branch. It was early spring. With new foliage and improving temperatures, it had become perfect running weather. Looking at the slits of sunlight shimmer between the oak leaves, I was counting the minutes until I would head out for a half-hour jog.
My computer chirped and an instant message window popped up. A colleague from down the hall, Mike Newton, had sent me a Website link.
“Look at these crazy people,” he wrote, with no other explanation.
I clicked the link, opening a Webpage of photos. They were of people I had never seen, all carrying backpacks and wearing strange clothing. They were running, walking, and sometimes even crawling over the most unforgiving terrain imaginable: sand dunes, scorched salt flats, jagged boulders, and small thorn bushes. Were it not for the obvious suffering, the photos were beautiful; the landscapes came from paintings and Hollywood movies.
It was a juxtaposition of beauty and suffering that I had never seen. It was disturbing and painful, but fascinating. It was pleasurably voyeuristic to be sitting in the comfort of my high-backed chair while looking at people who were struggling to survive.
Then came the pictures of the feet. Some were taped, others blistered. Yet others had ceased to be feet except in the strictest definition. They had swollen, turned black and purple, been sliced, and were further disfigured from obvious infection. And yet, despite their condition, the next photos showed these warriors continuing, walking on nubs that any sane doctor would have sent to the emergency room.
“Those are crazy,” I wrote back. “What in the heck are those from?”
“I don’t really know . . . some friend sent me the link. It’s some race in Africa somewhere.”
“Is this recent?”
“Oh yeah, it just happened,” he wrote back. “It’s happened for years. Every year, I think. People have died doing it.”
“Did you see these?” I asked. I sent him a link to pictures of more mangled feet.
“Yeah, I think that I looked at all of them.”
I clicked through to other pages and read a few of the press releases announcing a particular stage’s results. I then came across what looked like a child’s hand-drawn maps, complete with a legend. The maps had little lumps and symbols, complete with labels for “sand dune,” “salt flat,” “tree,” and other. They were absurdly simple renderings for such a dangerous event. Was this all that the race organizers gave these runners as they struggled to survive in the Sahara?
“Holy cow! Did you read those press releases?” I asked. There was no response, but I continued: “Check out this link to the hand-drawn maps. Those things are hilarious. Can you believe that’s all they get?”
I remained in my own little world for a few moments, staring at photos and marveling at the insanity of the event. I was so consumed that I failed to notice Mike’s response: “You’re thinking of doing it, aren’t you?”
I sat and simply stared at his response. I had only ever run three marathons and certainly had never considered something of this scale. I was the Director of Marketing for a Silicon Valley technology company—not some adventure racer or outdoors freak. It made no sense, but there was no denying that I had decided that I wanted to be one of those “crazy people.”
***
Jolted back to the realities of the Sahara, I looked around. I wiped the sweat from my eyes and shook my head as I could see the end of the second stage off in the distance. I thought back to that initial conversation with Mike and felt sick at how spontaneous the decision had been.
The entire training and preparation process came into focus and seemed like a blur.
As I remembered packing and repacking my backpack in the months before the race, I felt a blister pop on my back.
As I recounted my excited conversations with my roommate about how cool it would be, I felt the not-so-cool straps on the front of my pack rub my chest.
I thought back to the number of times I had excitedly explained my upcoming trip; I had become even more animated in response to my friends’ looks of disbelief and horror. As I shuffled along, I scolded myself for my naiveté.
I apologized to God for my hubris.
Sweat dripped from every pore but would evaporate moments later, forming crusty salt streaks down my body. My calves began to cramp. My left quadriceps muscle felt as though it had been pierced by a knife. My eyesight blurred, and my back buckled. My feet ached each time I stepped on a rock. Never before in my life had I been so uncomfortable, so much in pain.
I was loving every minute of it.
2
Amy
As I boarded the plane to Morocco, I thought that there was a fifty percent chance that my sister would commit suicide while I was away. Her alcoholism had progressed so rapidly during the previous six months that none of her family members could believe the extent to which she had ruined her life.
She had gone from being a tall, well-built, gorgeous gal with modeling experience, a college degree, and awards as a company’s top corporate salesperson, to a disheveled, strung out, acne-faced alcoholic lying in a pool of her own urine.
She was twenty-five.
My brothers and I sat with her in late February, more than six hours following her most recent binge. She could barely put together a coherent phrase and needed assistance just to lift her own head. With the few sensible thoughts that she did offer, she expressed jealousy at my success, anger at my father’s infidelity, sadness at her lack of connection to her siblings, and regret over her fallen condition. Mostly, however, she simply offered the rants of a madwoman: words ran together in a near-endless exercise of free association.
I have no idea when her alcoholism began to take over. Sure, her entire family was aware of certain youthful indiscretions dating back to middle school. But, despite pain and anguish stemming from our parents’ divorce, she seemed to persevere relatively well, completing her college degree and involving herself in a series of go-get-‘em companies. It was September 2007 when she admitted for the first time that she was an alcoholic. Less than twenty-four hours later, she recanted, claiming that certain members of our family were trying to control her life.
During the first few months of her crisis—coincidentally, the first few months of my full-time Marathon Des Sables training regiment—things appeared to stabilize. Dissention within our family had enabled my sister to justify not entering an inpatient facility. As loved ones are wont to do, we all denied the gravity of her addiction. She entered an outpatient program and succeeded in convincing our family for some time that she was undergoing a healthy transformation.
Despite my (some would say unhealthy) cynicism and skepticism, not even I considered the depths to which she had fallen. In every sense, her life had become a lie and a manipulative game. While actively working to destroy their lives, addicts nonetheless pour incredible amounts of energy and devotion into creating the impression that their lives are in order. The sneaking, the cover-ups, the alternate explanations, the health problems, the missed appointments—all are a result of the addiction, and yet all get explained away in a complex web of deceit.
***
As I checked my luggage with Royal Air Maroc, I recounted the events of my sister’s life over the previous six months: hospitalization with a near-death .4% blood alcohol level, participation in three inpatient treatment facilities, family members’ flights around the country to try to help her, alienation of her boyfriend, and countless drunken stupors even while under supervision. All the while, she had fought treatment; she wanted nothing more than to try to return to a normal life. In her protests to family, she recounted her life’s successes and criticized us for questioning whether she was capable of succeeding. It never occurred to her that she had lost herself completely to her disease—that we were not questioning her abilities, but rather pointing out that the person with those characteristics no longer existed. “Get clean, or you’ll die,” we would say. But the last elements of her capable, confident, prideful self refused to acknowledge that alcohol was steering her ship.
In a perverted way, I look at my sister’s disease as being inextricably linked to the Marathon Des Sables. That statement is absurd on its face, of course. There is no causal link or any connection at all, except that my mind has fused the two. The reason is a shallow one: My awareness of her disease began as my formal training began. In the six months leading up to the race, training and my sister were the most powerful, painful, and dominant forces in my life. I could escape neither, for I was powerless over my sister’s disease, and I was too obstinate to succumb to the ever-present desire to back out of the most grueling physical process I had ever contemplated.
Because these two forces served as my yin and yang for the better part of a year, I increasingly ruminated on the similarities, differences, and connections. So many days began with phone calls to crying family members, included runs longer than a marathon, and ended just as they had begun—with crying and pleas and confusion aimed at righting my sister. My energies and thoughts while dealing with either of these elements always caused me to cycle back to the other.
It goes without saying that it takes considerable commitment, dedication, and perseverance to train for the Marathon Des Sables. I think that it takes similar traits to be an alcoholic. I do not in any way want to conflate the two, but as they have been so intertwined in my mind, I cannot help but do so—despite the fact that the former is a positive pursuit and the latter a life-shattering process.
Think of the sacrifice required to prepare oneself for a 153-mile run through the most godforsaken terrain on the planet. To a large extent, I had to put relationships on hold. Every Saturday and Sunday, I would awake, often in darkness, and proceed to ignore those that I love. As I planned to run the entirety of Sacramento’s American River Bike Trail or to the top of Black Mountain in San Jose, I had to brush aside the invitations that I had received. I know the excuses that my girlfriend and family members made for me.
“No, he can’t join us; he’s got a long run.”
“I’ll leave in the middle and pick him up, and we’ll return after he showers.”
“We’d love to, but Ted’s got to run hills this weekend, so we won’t be in town.”
“Sure, we’d love to meet for dinner, but could we do it a bit later? Oh, and are you okay if Ted won’t be able to walk much?”
Good friends are resilient, patient, kind, and understanding. I was fortunate enough to have people in my life who did not understand my pursuit, but were nonetheless willing to accommodate my twisted quest. Nonetheless, my avoidances did at times strain our relationships. Friends tried to support me but at times grew weary of my excuses: “Oh, okay. Well, it’s sort of a once-a-year thing, but I guess we can just meet up another time.”
My sister’s alcoholism has been a similar string of excuses that have decimated her relationships. As I rose to run, Amy no doubt lay in bed, passed out from a night of drinking. Family and friends no doubt called, but she was too sick to pick up. Her mornings, and then late mornings, and then afternoons—all succumbed to her drinking. And, just as my friends remained loyal despite their disappointments, Amy received unconditional love from so many.
But after a while, friends just stopped calling. I was fortunate enough to maintain my friendships despite my training schedule, but I know that some invitations just stopped arriving. People can only hear “no” so many times. My sister’s alcoholism pushed everyone around her away. What began as a social activity on nights and weekends became a life-consuming parasite. Her decision to drink came with an enormous price tag: she shattered relationships in order to appease the bottle.
In addition to sacrifice, both my pursuit and my sister’s disease share another common element: we both had to exhibit unwavering commitment and dedication to achieve our ends. It would have been so much easier to stop training. I could have slept in, participated in other social functions, and shared time with those that I love. To sacrifice these relationships—albeit temporarily—took an incredible amount of resolve. Through pain and suffering, I had to conclude that an event months in the future was worth the price that I had to pay on any particular morning. My legs would ache, my back would hurt, and my body would have blisters throughout—and still I would have to run, even though every physical and emotional part of me would have preferred to give up. My goal mattered so much to me that I sacrificed, even against my own wishes. It required an unsurpassed level of commitment and dedication.
My sister made the same choice.
I am not a mental health professional, and I recognize that I will never fully comprehend the severity of alcoholism as a disease. I fully admit that my choice to train for the world’s toughest footrace was more of a choice than my sister’s unrestrained binge drinking. Nonetheless, each of our experiences required commitments with severe consequences. In her case, death may be the ultimate price.
It is from this perspective that I marvel at my sister’s problem. I realize the mental strength that was required to persevere in my training toward a sixteenth-place Marathon Des Sables finish. I know the allure and strength of so many forces that tried to derail that process. And I know that it was only inner mental strength that enabled me to persevere in the face of so many contrary emotions and desires.
However involuntary my sister’s drinking has been, it nonetheless has required a considerable sacrifice. And, to continue the way she has, she has had to, at some level at least, choose to reject and leave behind so many of the people that she loves. As someone who found the internal strength to counteract so many intense internal drives, it is painful and disheartening to see someone I love give up so much and get only destruction in return.
My commitment was born out of pride; Amy’s was born out of loathing.
My perseverance was fueled by strength; Amy’s was fueled by weakness.
My pursuit was an attempt to savor life; Amy has embraced death.
I am not judging my sister, though I have little doubt that she would disagree if she were to read these words. It is just that this has been an indescribably painful experience for everyone around her, and nothing I have ever experienced comes close to helping me understand the pain and turmoil that she has been living. If only in concept, then, I think that training for this event gave me a small window of insight into what one loses as alcoholism begins to win.
My sister and I share the inability to explain to friends why. Neither of us had an explanation or reason that makes sense, but both of us were driven, forced, by something that pushed reason to the background. The difference here is that my obsession was a mostly healthy one that has served to inspire my loved ones, while her spiral is killing her. I wonder to myself: Where is the inner strength and confidence that I know she has? How is it that she cannot find a way to tap the support and strength within herself, and of those around her, in order to beat this illness? Why is it that she continues to suffer so much and receive so little in return?
***
After returning from Morocco, I learned that my sister was still alive. She had entered her third inpatient treatment facility, an alternative adventure-oriented outdoors program. Immediately upon her arrival, she began trying to convince family members that “this program is not for me.” But the more she protested, the more we prayed that something about the experience would awaken her to her desperate reality.
We both left for the desert on March 22, 2008—I for Morocco and Amy for Utah’s backcountry. I was not searching for anything in particular but knew that I wanted to find it nonetheless. Like Billy Crystal’s character in the movie City Slickers, I returned from my adventure in the great outdoors able to hold one finger in the air: I had found that something, that miracle, that indefinable peace that places the rest of life in perspective and promises hope and satisfaction for the future.
I can only hope that Amy too will be able to emerge changed—in whatever way, shape, or form is necessary.
3
Arrival at the Bivouac
Nature does not care.
It does not coddle, nor does it seek to punish.
It simply acts how it will and feels nothing about the consequences.
Nature is not irreverent; no, this would imbue it with too much soul. It is simply uncaring, immovable, unswayable, and entirely unconcerned with any and all human whims.
***
Seven of us lay huddled in Tent 77 at the base of Erg Chebbi, North Africa’s tallest sand dunes. The whipping winds stirred up sand and bits of rock, and try as we may, none of us could sleep.
“This sucks,” someone uttered, the voice muffled by the sleeping bag and gusts of wind.
“I hope it’s not like this the entire time,” another cocoon exclaimed. “Could you imagine?”
We had prepared ourselves for lots of running on uneven terrain. We had trained wearing twenty-five-pound backpacks. Some of us had even sat in saunas to learn how to brave the heat. But none of us had ever considered trying to sleep in front of an industrial fan spewing sand into our faces. We realized during our first night in the Sahara that this would not have been a bad training strategy.
Our time in Ouarzazate had been pleasant. Temperatures topped out at eighty-five degrees, we shopped for poorly made jewelry, and we visited movie studios on the edge of town. Following a six-hour bus ride into the middle of the middle of nowhere, the niceties had ended. With two days to acclimate to the unforgiving Sahara prior to the start of the race, we were indoctrinated quickly.
***
As we stepped off the bus, the experience began to feel real. Padded seats and air conditioning behind me, I stepped into the dust and looked out into the distance. Miles and miles of parched earth stretched out, and the Erg Chebbi dunes stood ominously a mile away. Hundreds of meters high and countless miles long, the dunes resembled a scene straight out of a Hollywood production. We knew that we would be running through them on the first day of the event, but all of us tried to believe that there had been some sort of mistake.
“This is surreal; unbelievable,” someone said.
“This is awesome!” I screamed. Only moments before I had been despondent, terrified of the event. I had gulped as our bus left the poorly paved one-lane highway and drove over unmarked, bumpy dirt. My sudden manic rush was part of a pattern of recent mood swings. I let a scream go at the top of my lungs. It felt great to be terrified by the desert.
“Ted’s back!” someone exclaimed. A few people chuckled as they dusted off their packs and started walking toward the camp.
The “camp” was nothing more than a flat, dusty plain. The race organization had set up a horseshoe pattern of 120 dual-sided, Berber-style tents, which we were to call home for the following nine days. In the distance, set aside from our makeshift homes, was a series of sturdy, finished tents. In direct contrast to the black rags under which we were to sleep, the white tents were off limits to competitors. Complete with electricity, water, and mattresses, these dwellings would be moved from bivouac to bivouac so that race officials, doctors, and members of the press could be comfortable as they helped us suffer. Off to another side was an enormous inflatable structure resembling a forty-foot-high orange spider, which would be used as our dining hall for the first two nights. Until the race began on Sunday, we would be fed by a French catering company. The magnitude—and stupidity—of the event was clearly before me, but with enough creature comforts still at hand for the next few days, I quickly returned to schoolboy anticipation.
As I walked toward the ring of black tents, a slight breeze stirred enough dust to produce a slight haze. Warm but not hot, the air was the very definition of dry. A group of Americans approached a sign with instructions that would point us toward our tents. Like high school athletes trying out for the football team, dozens of people fought for position so that they could find out if they had made the cut. We all had, of course: we had paid our money. But finding out our meaningless tent number nonetheless filled us with excitement.
I could hear a different language being spoken in every direction. The locals (“Berbers”) spoke Arabic or French, the dominant language at the camp, with more than a third of all competitors and most volunteers hailing from France. Yet, within five minutes of stepping off the bus, I had heard Spanish, Dutch, Korean, Japanese, Italian, and a host of other languages that I could not place. Thirty-two countries in all would be represented in the twenty-third running of the Marathon Des Sables.
The Spanish, with their cheers, chants, and celebrations, were by far the loudest—until the bus with the Italians arrived. It felt like the pre-game party before a World Cup Soccer match as people chanted, waved flags, and yelled allegiance to their country.
As we meandered toward Tent 77, the atmosphere was electric: a mild dust storm, multiple languages, arriving buses, a few camels, and hundreds of temporary tents—all randomly set in the middle of a dust plain, in the middle of the Sahara Desert, with enormous sand dunes in the distance.
I arrived at my tent and reacquainted with my tent mates. I was a bit nervous because I had irresponsibly forgotten to check tent assignments, so I was uncertain who would be forced to subject themselves to my company for the following week. Aside from Brendan, a mellow forty-one-year-old Canadian who wrote for Lonely Planet Guide Books, I had known the others for some time. There was Andrea, a Canadian and self-proclaimed wine goddess who would carry a box of wine for the first five days so that she could enjoy a glass following the long stage; Karen, our third Canadian, whose radiant smile and energy instantly picked up everyone’s spirits; Jeff, originally from Atlanta but now living in Switzerland, the “former fat kid turned Ironman”; Michelle, from Colorado, the most experienced ultra-runner in the tent, having won a few fifty- and hundred-mile races back in the U.S.; Georgia, an Alaskan who had trained in positively miserable conditions and the only one of us who had already signed up to run this event the following year; and me. I was the guy that a lot of folks referred to as fast but was rapidly earning a reputation as a smart-aleck who would spontaneously sing country music (logical, given my California roots).
As the seven of us tossed our bags beneath the flaps of our Berber tent, that became home. Those bags would be our only means of subsistence over a seven-day event.
“These tents are pretty nice, eh?” Karen offered, echoing a thought many of us had.
“Eh?” I asked, poking fun at the Canadian stereotype.
Not missing a beat, Karen went into a sarcastic but professorial explanation, “Oh, sure. The ‘eh’ is great, eh? It can be used at the beginning, middle, or end of a statement. It’s so flexible, eh?”
We chuckled as everyone shook hands to reacquaint or meet for the first time.
“Did you guys see those dunes?” Jeff asked.
“Those things are ridiculous!” Georgia responded.
“They can’t make us run through the middle of them, can they? I mean, we’ll sort of run to the side, don’t you think?” Karen looked at us, hoping.
“They can do whatever the heck they want!” said Andrea. “And I’ll bet you that, just to piss us off, we’ll be forced to climb to the very tops of all of them.”
After a few minutes of shuffling around in the tent, tossing our bags from side to side, and making general observations, we realized that the waiting had officially begun. It was Friday afternoon, and the race would not begin until Sunday morning. Back home, we would have gone to a movie, taken a walk, or planned to meet up for drinks. But, stranded in the middle of the desert with forty hours to kill, the challenge became finding ways to entertain ourselves. Anyone for a game of “toss a rock into the dust?”
“Anyone know what time dinner is?” Jeff asked. All of us had become ravenous in recent days, as if our bodies had finally been informed of what they were up against and had decided to try to pack on a little extra weight.
“I think that I heard 7 or 7:30,” I offered.
“Or 8 or 8:30,” Karen quipped, poking fun at the race organization’s penchant for flexible timing. That morning alone, we had been told to be ready for a 9 a.m. bus pick up at our hotel. Our promised five-and-a-half-hour bus ride actually took an hour longer—once we left the hotel at 11 a.m.
“Whenever it is, I am going to eat a ridiculous amount,” I promised. “I might just eat twenty of those little French cheeses that are so popular around here. And then I’ll eat twenty more.”
“They’ll probably prepackage your meal in a little bag and slap your hand if you try to take more,” Andrea threatened, a subtle reference to the bagged lunches they had passed out on the bus. All of us were beginning to learn to use humor to confront the uncomfortable life that lay before us.
Suddenly, our food discussion was interrupted. “Are any of you guys Americans?” a woman asked enthusiastically with a thick British accent.
“We’re all Americans—or at least residents of the fifty-first state,” I joked, looking at my Canadian companions to see if I could get a rise out of anyone. No one flinched.
“Oh, great,” the lady responded. “We’re with ABC, and we’re trying to find Jay. Do any of you know where Jay is?” She was referring to Jay Batchen, the representative for the U.S., Canadian, and Australian contingent—and the man who had been playing father to all of us confused, running children.
Jeff introduced himself and pointed about twenty yards away, guessing at the approximate location of Jay’s tent. Each of us, in turn, said hello to Clarissa and the two men lingering over her shoulder.
“Clarissa,” she stated, smiling with hand extended.
“Ted . . . Archer,” I responded, shaking her hand and smiling back.
“Oh! Ted Archer! You’re Ted Archer?!”
I looked nervously from side to side, my eyes darting around to search for context cues. The last thing I expected upon arriving in Morocco was to have my reputation precede me—whatever that reputation might be. Now I was staring at someone from one of the nation’s largest media outfits, worried that the camera would swing in my direction and grab footage of my dumbfounded expression.
“Uh, maybe . . .” I droned, staring slyly at her in hopes of figuring out why exactly she had heard about me. I had spoken with someone from ABC weeks earlier when their producers had called a number of Americans to research the event, but it had been a relatively routine discussion. It had never occurred to me that I had made any sort of impression.
“Wait, I’m confused,” Clarissa confessed. “You’re Ted?”
“Yes, I guess. It depends.” I stalled; Clarissa obviously did not understand my breed of humor.
“Oh, great. We’re looking for you, too. Bruno, our producer, has been getting the pre-race e-mails that you’ve been sending. They’ve been great, so we’re looking forward to talking with you, too.”
Relieved, I explained to her that I had forgotten that I had included Bruno on a series of thoughts, musings, and rants in the run up to the race. It made sense now: ABC did not know me, but rather knew of me, having read a few of my half-witted e-mails.
“Matt, this is Ted Archer. Let’s get a shot of him with the camera.” Matt, an unassuming and normal-looking man—normal except for the massive black camera that seemed to have “We embarrass people on national TV” written all over it—swung my direction and stuck a giant black, glassy eye in my face.
“Can we get your name for the camera?” he asked.
Throughout the past few weeks, I had been aware that ABC might have a crew on-site. But nothing had prepared me for that one moment where self-consciousness took over and caused me to think, Ted, it’s time to be interesting. Are you interesting? Be interesting. Do something or say something interesting. I looked into the camera and offered a weak wave and a smile.
“Uh, hi. I’m Ted. How’s it going?”
Real interesting, Ted.
For the next few hours, the joke became that ABC had sent “Ted’s camera crew.” My tent mates chided me for the attention that I had received. Their presence had definitely changed the mood. This was ABC! While the French and British had always had well-recognized media on-site, this was a first for us Americans.
Prior to arrival, we had all thought how exciting it would be to have ABC along with us. After months of being introduced by friends and family as the “crazy friend” and having to explain to disbelieving ears our plans to run 150 miles through the Sahara Desert, it would be an exciting sense of vindication to get our proverbial fifteen minutes of fame. Even in today’s digital age, with Websites dedicated to everything from ultra-running to poodle hairstyles, there is no denying that it would mean something special for our event to be featured on ABC. Finally, we thought, everyone back home would get to understand a small piece of the insanity that had consumed us for months. They would experience it alongside us; they would understand.
That had at least been the thinking until the camera showed up.
Here we were on parched dirt in Northern Africa, awaiting the most grueling physical feat of our lives. We had trained, but we were in the final stage of our preparation: commiserating with one another in hopes of settling our nerves prior to the start. As we spoke with some race veterans, we realized in waves just how difficult our journey would be. We would be hot. We would ache. We would suffer.
And we now realized that there would be a camera obsessively documenting our every struggle. At those moments when we felt like crying, felt like being alone, felt like having a private conversation, we might very well have all of America watching us. We had all seen so-called “reality” television shows in which the participants crack, trying to avoid the camera but all the while being documented in the name of boosting ratings. We wanted the attention but were worried about reaching an ABC saturation point.
Many of us felt bittersweet about the crew. Clarissa, Matt, and Bruno seemed nice, but would we want them around when our feet had blistered, we were dehydrated, we were vomiting, or we were delirious?
My own concerns were alleviated that night when, during dinner, they just so happened to sit at a table beside me. Their proximity gave me an excuse to explore these animals, to conduct a little research and learn whether or not they would be pleasant company once I had turned miserable. After finishing my ration of pasta and a single French cheese chunk (Andrea had been right about the portion control), I slid over and asked them what their initial take was on this event.
“We’re just blown away, honestly,” Bruno responded, leaning forward with wide eyes and obvious enthusiasm. “We’ve been a lot of places before—Afghanistan, Iraq, you name it—and we’ve seen nothing like you people.” It was genuine flattery and awe.
“Yeah, I guess that the food they’re serving you now is a little better than what you’ll be eating out of your backpack in a few days, so I imagine that the experience will change a little,” Clarissa said, again smiling in what was to become her trademark greeting throughout the race.
“We’re really just looking forward to watching how you guys fare,” Matt offered. He was the quietest of the three, only occasionally interjecting his comments.
My tent mate Brendan slid over from our table to join the conversation. For the next half hour, we were surprised at the number of questions that ABC had for us. Everything about this event was new to them; everything was fascinating. Their expressions and questions were the same that we had received back home: intensely interested probes that were layered in partial disbelief.
“I mean, are you nervous?”
“How do you think you’ll feel?”
“Do you think your feet will hurt?”
“What in God’s name possessed you guys to want to do this race?”
They did not know it all; they were not arrogant; they seemed to have no preconceptions about the story that they were going to tell. Rather, they were researchers who could not help but be fascinated with their subjects. It was calming and encouraging to realize that they were human. They were reacting just as our friends and family had for months, not like a journalistic stereotype of the brash, fast-talking producer who arrives at a scene with an agenda and a timeline. They had signed up for the full experience and would be learning and suffering alongside us.
Were this a scientific study, they would be criticized for being too close to their subjects. But, since I cared more about my own experience, I felt honored to have them along. It was clear that we would be teaching them through our actions, not taking stage directions. Whatever America saw, it would be genuine, and I no longer felt concerned that Clarissa, Matt, and Bruno would make us miserable with their giant black glass eye.
As Brendan and I returned to our tent, it struck us how quickly the temperature had dropped. Shivering as we shined our headlamps on the ground, we were tired from a day that had begun a world of comfort away. The winds had begun to pick up a little, and small bits of sand shot toward our faces.
We got back to our tent and shook our sleeping bags free of sand. Karen, Andrea, Georgia, Jeff, and Michelle had already buried themselves into their sacks, and we too settled down to try to sleep. Tomorrow would bring nothing exciting, just another day of learning to dance with the desert.
Fifteen minutes after lying down, it was obvious that no one had actually gotten to sleep. With the winds whipping and sands blowing ever more, someone vocalized the nervous anticipation that every one of us felt inside: “I can’t believe that we’ve got to wait a whole other day before we get to run.”
4
The Day Before
“I wish we could just start today. Waiting sucks.”
It was Saturday, and everyone in camp had begun stirring just after sunrise. After a night of sandstorms and discomfort, all of us in Tent 77 were a bit crankier than we had been twenty-four hours earlier. Sleeping on compact dirt and pebbles has a way of doing that. I had only slept a few hours all night, and I was certain that everyone else had suffered equally.
I spent a few moments wiping the sand off of my face and then used my pinky finger to try to clean my ears. I had been warned that “sand will get everywhere, and you’ll just stop caring after a while,” but I decided to try to feel normal for as long as possible. My tent mates were having a few groggy conversations, and the sounds outside our tent had changed as well. Mostly, everything sounded subdued: conversations were somber, and even peoples’ footsteps seemed slower. Our camp was very much stirring, but not yet fully alive.
I lay in my sleeping bag a while longer, hoping that perhaps I could drift back to sleep. But I remained uncomfortably wide awake—and further aggravated by my level of consciousness.
Exhausted, I nonetheless decided that I should be the one to provide remedy for the hitch in everyone’s giddy up. Clearing my throat and mustering as much twang as I could, I dug deep and channeled Brad Paisley: “Well, I love her…” I sang, pausing for several seconds before continuing, “But I love to fish.”
A few chuckles came in from surrounding tents. Someone groaned, “Oh my God.”
“I spend all day out on this lake, and hell is all I catch. Today she met me at the door, said I would have to choose. If I hit that fishin’ hole today, she’d be packin’ all her things, and she’d, be gone by noon…” I trailed off and could hear Brad’s wailing guitar trail off behind me. It was time to cap it off: “Well, I’m gonna miss her,” I sang, garnering a few more laughs and a few pleas to, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop.” I felt better, anyway, and whether or not others did, there did at least seem to be a bit more energy. At 6:30 a.m., we had all day before us—and our only planned activity was our group’s mandatory race check-in meeting at noon. Motivation would be difficult during a day that had no purpose but to stand between us and the start of the race.
Wandering around the camp, I decided to check in on some other friends. In the clutter and disruption of our arrival the day before, I had not had the time to see where everyone had been put. The Dreamchasers group (the folks from the U.S., Canada, and Australia) had been assigned to ten tents in two rows. Starting at Tent 80, I slowly walked by, peeking my head in to see which faces I recognized.
Two tents from mine I found Andrew, a twenty-one-year-old college student from Tennessee. We had shared a hotel room in Ouarzazate for three nights before the race, so I had taken a special interest in him.
With the exception of a ten-mile “fun run” organized by a local fraternity, Andrew had never run a race before. That experience had ended with beer drinking, whereas our days would end with a specially formulated recovery drink in powdered form. In the few nights before being bused to the desert, we had talked about our respective training regiments. It certainly seemed that he had prepared well, having completed several training runs of more than thirty miles with a backpack weighing more than thirty pounds. Though he had never signed up for other races, he did not appear to have taken this event lightly, even taking the time to vacuum-seal his food for the week in order to save space.
By the time I had reached Andrew’s age, I had run only two races: the 1997 and 1998 editions of The Big Sur International Marathon. I had trained for both, but I knew absolutely nothing about running. I neither drank nor ate anything throughout both races, and both years I spent a week afterward relearning how to walk. The thought of a thirty-mile training run with a heavy backpack would have been absurd to me. I marveled at Andrew’s will and preparation. He had flown thousands of miles to conquer the world’s toughest footrace, spending months preparing himself to do something that, at his age, I would have derided as being positively insane.
I was also impressed by Andrew’s genuine, collected demeanor. He had not come to the desert on a macho bet or to conquer anything. His reasons were as simple, but determined, as any of the rest of ours: to finish the race and learn something more about himself in the process. He showed me a Frisbee that his friends had signed to wish him good luck, and he told similar stories of having been made fun of in a respectful, almost reverent way. I saw nothing of myself in him; in fact, it occurred to me that he made a much more enjoyable companion to us than I would have been at twenty-one.
“How’re you holding up?” I asked, seeing his eyes through the mummy hole of his sleeping bag.
“Oh, man,” he moaned. He looked up and offered a disgusted expression. “I slept horribly; this chest-cold-cough thingy kept me up all night.”
I winced a little. For the past few days he had made casual references to a bug that he had picked up on the plane from New York to Casablanca. It had seemed to subside somewhat, but it was obvious that his first night in the desert had allowed the sickness to reassert itself.
“Sorry to hear that, Andrew,” I offered. He knew that my greatest fear for this race was the unknown—that a force outside of me would somehow prevent me from finishing the race or performing as well as I had trained for. I was less scared of the heat and mileage than I was of spraining an ankle or popping a knee. Getting a chest cold certainly fell into that category, and I had nothing but sympathy to offer him: “Just try to rest as much as possible today, and hopefully the adrenaline will cure everything by morning.”
“Thanks, man. I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he offered, yawning and still rubbing his eyes. I told him that I would see him at breakfast and then continued walking to inspect other tents.
I next found George and Leigh, two good friends who traveled around together to run the world’s most grueling ultra-marathons. I had met them both at a running camp in Death Valley six months prior, and I remembered being simultaneously intimidated and impressed by them. I had traveled to Death Valley to learn how to run longer distances, and they were telling stories of their countless 100-mile finishes. Just this past February I had met up with them again—this time in Texas for the Rocky Raccoon fifty-mile race, our way of preparing for the Marathon Des Sables. They were just as mythical the second time around: capable, determined, accomplished, and unwavering. My first-ever fifty-mile run was “just another fifty” for George and Leigh.
An ex-Army man in his fifties, George had been recalled during our post-September 11 wars. I could imagine him in Afghanistan with kids half his age. I could imagine them whining from a long march, sore feet, or aching backs, and I had no doubt that George would have quietly plodded along. He does not look like an ultra-runner: shorter and stockier, determined but quiet. In both Death Valley and Texas, I had concluded that he was one of the tougher men alive, but he would never admit to it. Rather, he remained understated. It was as though he saw his role at these events as being to provide comfort and protection to his good friend Leigh. He came to cheer her, not so much to run himself.
Other than an equally accomplished running resume, Leigh was a mirror opposite. She was in her forties and talked about her grown children, but she could easily pass for a twenty-something. Even this morning, after a night of sandstorms, she looked ready for a photo shoot. Wearing her running skirt and a stylish top, she had fashionable hair that belonged in a shampoo commercial. I could not be sure, but she even seemed to be wearing makeup. Had I not seen her 100-mile finisher belt buckles and heard George’s stories of her triumphs, I would never have believed that she was a running machine.
“Well, Ted!” Leigh yelled, enthusiastically. “Did you come to visit us?” Just hearing her enthusiasm was enough to wake me.
“I did, in fact,” I responded. “How is everything going for you two?”
“Oh, fine,” George offered. I was confident that I would get the same understated response whether he had just won the lottery or been informed that he had contracted a life-threatening illness.
Leigh’s reaction seemed more human, more in-line with my experience: “Oh, okay. Last night was sort of tough, huh?”
But just as I had started to think again about the night’s sandstorms, Leigh quickly changed the direction of the conversation.
“I’m trying to decide which top to take,” she said exuberantly. She had a few articles of clothing in her hands and was half pointing to the shirt she was wearing. Here we were, a day away from what was to be the most brutal week of my life, and Leigh was not just unfazed, but consumed by an entirely different line of thought. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I noticed George roll his eyes.
“Leigh, I just can’t help you,” I chuckled. Her earnest eyes made me laugh even more.
“But I want to make sure I look good during the race,” she pleaded. She was smiling but very much sincere, not wanting me to in any way diminish the importance of proper race fashion.
Her line of thinking was a luxury, I thought. Neither she nor George had any doubts that they would finish the race. Having completed so many ultra-marathons, this was just the next challenge. They knew how their bodies would feel after seventy, eighty, or ninety miles. Sure, the Sahara had heat and unpredictable terrain, but Leigh had seen and done enough that she no longer had to worry herself with the details that consumed mere mortals.
I was a considerably faster runner than both of them, but I was much less certain about my destiny. Sure, if I finished I would finish faster than them. If I finished. I knew that there was a possibility that I would hit a wall. My mind kept fixating on the race’s road book and the ominous dunes a mile away, but here Leigh was concerned with looking her cutest. It was certainly a refreshing break from my obsessions.
“You’re hilarious, Leigh,” I responded. We chatted a while longer about our anxieties and perspectives on the event. Eventually, I left them to pack and repack their backpacks, the last remaining entertainment prior to our group’s noon check-in.
As I traveled around to the rest of our group’s tents, I found that most of the folks I knew were in two other tents. Jay, our dad for the week, shared a tent with a number of Marathon Des Sables veterans: Toby, an Englishman with an exceptional, albeit at times disgusting, sense of humor; Terry, who was back after finishing the previous year; Ed, who had returned after a year off; and Mark, another Brit who was a world-class 10K runner and marathoner but who had been forced to withdraw from the MDS two years earlier. There was Laurie and “Trader Jeff,” and of course “Bunny” (Marianne DeMarco), who had become somewhat of a blogging legend during the run up to the race. Her postings to various running forums had offered us a unique look into what happens to a person’s psyche when her toenails begin to fall off during training. Her dry and outrageous sense of humor left us constantly waiting for what would come next.
We all shared a nervous anticipation, a desire to get started. But each of us was dealing with the day before a bit differently. The more neurotic among our group continued to pack and repack their backpacks, checking to make sure that they could locate the mandatory race items (a lighter, safety pins, compass, snake bite kit, disinfectant, knife, aluminum blanket, flashlight, batteries, sleeping bag, signaling mirror, whistle, and a minimum of 2,000 calories per day). With only a few hours until mandatory check-in with the race officials, obsessive personalities wanted to make sure, make sure, make sure, and make sure that they were in compliance with all of the rules.
The more relaxed of the group simply relaxed, lazily lying on their sleeping pads and awaiting the call to breakfast. A few left their tents to explore the bivouac, and a few more adventurous souls had decided to make the mile walk to Erg Chebbi, hoping to learn something about the feared dunes that would confront us the following morning.
That was my morning—a seemingly endless drift. I wandered from place to place, as though I could avoid emotions by visiting and observing others’. In this manner, I managed to pass the entire morning before arriving back to my tent shortly before noon. None of my tent mates was present, so I picked up my backpack and headed for check-in, hoping to beat the rush.
After speaking with race veterans, I had built up check-in as a grinding experience. I had expected the French race officials to scrutinize me for being an American. Though I had brought more than 3,200 calories per day and had a pack that weighed 7.5 pounds more than the required 14.3 pound minimum, I was prepared to need to justify every item that I was carrying.
“That’s freeze-dried lasagna, 560 calories.”
“Those are Pop-Tarts, 400 calories.”
“That’s one and a half ounces of macadamia nuts, 365 calories.”
“That’s an ounce of crushed potato chips, 150 calories.”
“Knife? Yes, right here in the left-side pouch, underneath my Band-Aids and next to my lighter.”
“Spare batteries are in the right-side pouch underneath four pair of spare socks.”
“I not only have an EKG with the required trace form, but I also have a seventeen-page stress echocardiogram with a full review, performed by a cardiologist and with a complete release.”
As I tramped across the dusty plain, I worried endlessly. I had trained for the better part of a year, flown thousands of miles, and spent thousands of dollars. And yet, all of my preparation could be ruled irrelevant at race check-in: If someone disapproved of my gear or a doctor disliked my EKG, I would end up playing less of a role in the 2008 Marathon Des Sables than the camel munching brunch outside the registration tent.
I walked into the race organization’s tent, offered my name, and was given a tag with my bib number: 466. It was then that I noticed that the ABC crew had been following me, no doubt in hopes of capturing my impending arguments with the medical personnel. But all of my obsessions and preparations were for naught; I cleared the entire process in fewer than ten minutes. My bag was weighed, but never checked for compulsory items. The doctor asked me if I had trained and was satisfied when I mentioned my coach’s name—Lisa Smith-Batchen, who had won the race in 1999.