Did not finish…13 Apr
Late at night, day before yesterday, I was found on the road by the race medic at 61km into the race. At that point I was not able to walk in a straight line and was fighting the urge to lie down, I knew this would be a very dangerous thing to do. Amy, our race doctor and saviour of many people during the race, asked me to sit in the car with her for a while. I had a single bite of a energy bar to re-gain energy, but I immediatly threw up. My state quickly got worse and when I was put in a rest tent cramps and shivers started, a sign of very serious exhaustion and the body shutting down.
After a night on IV-fluid I was yesterday morning waking up feeling very empty. I cannot tell you much about the night, because my memories are very much blurred from the point of meeting Amy.
Two days afterwards I have mixed feelings. On one hand I am happy I was found in time for Amy to take care of me early enough in my state to be able to get me back to normal in just a day or two (another guy in the race unfortunately collapsed and was on IV and slept for 24h after the race!). On the other hand I feel very empty and filled with questions about why I didn’t manage to complete this year’s race.
In total 9 out of 23 runners pulled out, or was pulled out of the race, in comparison to last year when 1 out of 9 pulled out. The winner of last year’s, Tom, came third this year, on a time which was close to 4 hours later then what he did last year. All in all the majority of the people were 5 – 6 hours behind the general pace of last years race. The heat and a very hot wind, which was not there last year, took it’s toll on all of us.
I have still a day and a bit left in Namibia to gather my thoughts and I will write a more conclusive race report once back in the UK. At the moment I have a strange feeling of being extremely lucky to be as OK as I am now, and at the same time feeling empty for not having completed the race.
Thank you all for sending supporting messages (for those of you who have texted me, my phone has died, so sorry for not getting back to you).
/Joakim
3 Responses to “Did not finish…”
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Hey Joak, Gutted to hear about it – sounds as though the conditions were pretty harsh though (and that’s relative to the normally harsh conditions anyway!). Hope you’re recoving now back at home and have some enegery by the time we head down to Devon!
You’ll just have to stick another event on the end of the other 4 and keep the 5 in 5 going!! How about the London-Brighton?? that should be a walk in the park for you! 60 miles in 12 hours… easy!
CYA Soon!
Chrs,
Tom
Good to hear you’re back up on your feet again! There’s more races to come!
Still a very impressive feat!
Damn! I hope you recovered alright?!