Namibian Viking

In one week’s time I am once again on the starting line on a gruesome desert race. This time in Andalucia, in southern Spain. The Al Andalus Ultra Trail is a very tough race they say. Imagine to run a marathon, but then to continue for another 8km. On top of this you have to do it in the mountains in Andalucia in the middle of the summer. This means the heat in the middle of the day will be +40 degrees and some of the climbs over 1000m high!

That sounds like a tough race to me, especially since I have very limited run training since April because of my knee.

Oh there is one thing I forgot to mention. When you have done the 50km in one day you have to wake up the next day and to it all over again! And after that second day you have to get up again on the third day and do it all over. In total it is 50km per day for 5 days in a row… Talk about groundhog day!

If it hadnt been for the fact that I have only run 79km in total since April I would have rated my chances with the race. But currently my concerns are very much around the fact that 5×50km is an awfully long way if you have an ITB that is inflamed.

What is required is a total commitment to the event and mentally I have to completely disassociate myself with the physical condition and focus why I am doing this.

Yet if I make it or not I cannot say at this point. I know that I am going down to Andalucia terribly disadvantaged than how I normally approach a race. My commitment is to 100% give it my everything. If I end up on the floor, in a hospital bed; or if I actually cross the finish line I will not know until Friday 17 July.

Until then, please keep your messages coming, they mean very much to me…

Thank you for your support, it will be needed now when I go into such a race!

Ps, if any of you want to sponsor me and Cancer Research UK, please click here.

I left CP1 feeling strong. I had stayed there for 30- 40 minutes or so, and as I left I knew that I was entering the Messum riverbed and some of the hottest part of the race laid immediately ahead of me. I soon realised how far it was to the actual start of the riverbed and also how bad following the dirt track was: 1) because the cars ensured the sand was broken up so you kept walking in deep energy-sapping sand, 2) because the road meanders like a river so you end up walking a less then ideal line from point A to B.

I am speed walking at this point and I am feeling good. I pass two participants, I feel really sorry for Richard who already had twisted an ankle (ironically whilst turning his head to the side to speak to the race medic and say that everything was ok, and then missed the hole in the ground). Richard was limping and I could see the agony he was in. I left Richard to continue my race. I am a firm believer that unless you are moving in exactly the same speed, it is less then optimal to go together on a race like this. Richard then went on to go to within 5km from the finish line where he collapsed some 25 hours after starting the race. Knowing that people him is down in Afghanistan working for a better world makes me feel proud to even live in the UK! In my mind he is one of true heroes if this year’s race.

I pass the Blue Peter crew when they are filming us and as always they are a happy break in the monotone environment. I was passed a number of times by the race medics and it always pulled me up and gave me energy. However at some point during this leg of the race I realise how different this race is from last. I remember how CP2 is going to appear from around the corner and although I seem to think that it is around every corner I keep being disappointed. I still feel strong, but I feel that the ability to move forward in speed is not there today.

Eventually I get into CP2 and it is around 5pm… I have covered little more then a marathon, but it has taken me 8 hours! As I sit down I feel strong. I feel that I am doing well and people around me say I look better then many participants coming into the checkpoint. I had decided I would have a hot meal already at this stage in the race, I felt that last years strategy to only eat once at the 60km CP3 was not ideal.

However it is here that my race changes character. From having felt strong and capable, all my energy saps out of my body and I find myself nodding off in the chair. Many more of my fellow participants come into the checkpoint, most looking ok, but some of them are struggling, such as Alex. He is the nicest of persons, and such an athlete; but today is not his day. In the end he drops out of the race with serious kidney implications. Alex will, like me, be back next year. For me a draw is not good enough, and for Alex he wants to show that he can master the distance.

It takes all my power to get up from my chair (and a fair bit of ass-kicking from others) and I start my walk to CP3. I almost immediately have to put on my head torch. I cannot believe that I am 30min away from CP2 and at the same time last year I was having a meal at CP3. This thought stays with me and I worried that I will not make the race cut off time. I have another 80km to go, and less then 4 hours to do each leg, I will have to speed up. Eventually I get into a faster rhythm and I keep this for 2 hours or so, even passing some of the other participants. The glow sticks on the back of other participants jump up and down and play tricks with my eyes. Mark (the founder of Across the Divide, who runs the event) is putting out new glow sticks on the route. The pace of this years race is so significantly different then last years that the supply of glow sticks was planned to be used on later stages in the race. Meanwhile reports of more people dropping out comes in and I feel so sorry for the ones that are not able to complete the event.

Some 3 hours into this leg of the race something goes wrong. I stop noticing the surroundings, up until now I had kept count on the number of scorpions I had seen on the road in the shine from my head torch, but now it is all a blur. I start to feel weak, negative thoughts are entering my brain and the pain is stronger then at any time during the race. The pain doesn’t bother me so much, it is more my inability to walk straight line that worries me. I am struggling to lift my feet off the ground, let alone walk. Nick is passing me and he is running again! I am so impressed but I cannot even begin to try to summon the strength to keep up with him.

My condition is getting worse and I have such an urge to just lie down. I know how dangerous that is (not so much for snakes and scorpions, but more for the risk of hypothermia), but still my body tells me to lie down. I am feeling very nauseous and I struggle to comprehend how I should get to CP3, even though I know it is only 5-6km ahead. I don’t know how much time pass, but it feels as if my body is a pressure cooker and I am getting near boiling point.

What happens now is difficult to describe, both because I cannot really remember everything, but maybe more due to the fact that it is more of an outer body experience. On one had I am in pain and only want to lie down and on the other hand I am almost watching myself is this state. I can almost assess my own situation and the conclusion I draw is not good. Would this be the end of my race? But this is just the start of my series of race challenges, how could it be I struggle so much.

My negative thoughts are interrupted by the head lights of a car coming towards me in the distance. I remember feeling scared and lonely and wanting them to be with me. At night in the desert lights travel far and it is seems to take forever before the car reaches me. It is Amy, the head race medic who also was here last year, and Kobus, my Namibian friend and race guide. Immediately they see that I am in a bad state. Amy asks me to sit in the car, she helps me to take off my race pack and she prompts me to eat something and give me a dried fruit stick. At the first bit I projectile vomit. At the third vomit Kobus disappears and it is not until the next day that I get to know he also threw up, when I ask him why he simply says “that is what friends are for”! I think this is my first ever recorded sympathy vomit.

At the point where Amy and Kobus finds me, my body checks out. I am no longer responsible for staying alive. I can hardly sit up and I am falling asleep with Amy supporting me so I don’t fall out of the vehicle. When she says that “Joakim, I will have to pull you from the race” I cannot really comprehend; but at the same time I understand that it is over. At that moment in time I do not care, I just want to  to sleep.

I have a vague memory of the Blue Peter film crew turning up and interviewing me, but I have no idea if what I said made any sense or what they asked me. I don’t think it was any solutions to world famine or similar, since the clip was not in the final show. This is pretty much the last thing I remember from that evening. I have been told that I looked like a ghost when I was carried into the tent and when my body started to cramp and shake Amy put me on IV drip. People who manned CP3 said it resembled a war zone, as if in an episode of M.A.S.H.! People passing out, people staggered into camp on feet that cannot be described in words, snakes crawling through camp and even under some of mattresses the participants sat on!

At some point during the night I was moved to the finish line of the race. I remember waking up for a brief moment in Faan’s old army truck, just at the point when the IV drip was ripped out of my hand! We were lying on boxes mattresses and assorted bits of kit. Eventually I woke up at around 7am at the finish line, hearing the voices of Darren (winner by less then one minute!) and Tom. I went out and helped them to applaud all the participants who slowly but surely made it into camp.

What a race, the Namibian Ultra Marathon in 2009. Out of 23 participants only 12 made it to the finish line. All in all – A hell of a race.

So what did I learn, well that will be the focus of my next blog post. However did it deter me from future races? No way… Will it stop me from coming back to the Namibian Ultra Marathon? Hell no, less then a week after I came back to UK I signed up for next year’s race! Namibia, I’ll be back!

What is it to be successful in an ultra marathon event? To win, to make it to the finish line, or maybe just to give it everything you have got? When I was lying in the tent at CP3, 12h after the start of the race, IV in my hand and cramps moving through my body waking me up from a semi-conscious sleep I can say that at that point I didn’t possess even the slightest strength to do anything but fall back into sleep.

Later I was told that I was being transported the 60km to the finish line in an old army truck, IV still in my vein, the bag of fluid hanging from the ceiling of the truck, my head resting on a plastic box and we were all thrown around like the balls in the Euro-lottery draw, and I was still asleep. Also at that point, I guess I can conclude that I didn’t have more to give.

Still after all this, already the morning after the race, when I saw some of my fellow participants hobbling over the finish line I was asking myself: “Could I have done more, did I pull out to early”? Was there something that I could have done at the point when I was taken off the race by the medic that would have allowed and enabled me to finish the race?

Well I guess I will never know to 100%. I have my own conclusion and later in this race report I will come back to this . But before I start talking about my conclusions and what I have taken away from this event, let me tell you about the event itself.

There were many things I took with me to Namibia that made me feel that I was full of confidence. I had trained another year, I had the experience of last year’s event and except for the last two weeks training had gone well. I had logged less miles on my feet, but on the other hand I had been swimming and cycling too, so all in all, I had done my training.

Back in Namibia
To add to the preparation I had booked a week in Namibia ahead of the race to acclimatise better. I had two days in the desert mountains in Naukluft National Park, hiking 10-12 hours per day. This had the additional benefit that I got my back used to a heavy pack (camera equipment). Even if this was just hiking, I still got to feel the Namibian sun and the heat that I was going to have to deal with in the race.

I also took two rest days in Sossusvlei, some of the most picture perfect place I have ever been too. I had a great time and managed to get some good shots and also to see some of the wildlife.

I had a good session stalking an Oryx and to get a shot with the photogenic animal with the backdrop of the red sand dunes of Sossusvlei is a real treat. The Oryx is an amazing animal and they can go in the desert for more then 3 months without water. Later I would learn that I would struggle to go 30min without water!

Back in the Namib desert

And so I was back in the desert. This time the camp was further away from Brandberg. The camp was on a little plot in the middle of the Namib desert, about 80km as the crow flies from the sea. We settled in with little pain and woke up to a beautiful sunrise the morning before the race. I was reminded by the real dangers of this race when I saw movement 2 metres ahead of me. A horned adder, the closest I had ever been to a wild potentially lethal venomous snake. With a stick I managed to move it into the sun and got some good photos of it. However the thought of running through knee-high grass suddenly seemed less appealing. During the race I didn’t see any snakes but several participants saw or heard them hissing at them running past! At checkpoint 3 snakes had to be removed from the area on more then one occasion. The desert is truly wild. To add to this we found a scorpion on the race morning, something that I had not previously encountered in Namibia. During the evening I saw about 10 different scorpions passing just before my feet as I walked through the Messum crater, so sure enough, the Namib desert is wild.

Day before the race
The feeling was different this year. I knew what was ahead of us, and I shared my thoughts with Andy, who also was here last year. I think we both confided in eachother feeling that we were “in the know” whilst the others where blissfully unaware what was waiting for them.

I did a short interview with Helen from Blue Peter who was out here doing the race. This would mean a TV crew would follow her around and we would even have an helicopter coming in for the start of the event! I felt confident that I was properly prepared. I even had my racepack packed and ready the night before. A mile away from last years morning scramble trying to fit everything I needed in the pack! I was convinced that I was going to complete the race, as long as I wouldn’t have a major injury.

Race morning
I woke up and felt relaxed. Most of my things were packed up already, so I went up and head an extra breakfast (noodles for maximum carbohydrates). Even though I had packed the day before there were of course many many things to take care of prior to the race. Nerves starts to set in. This year we weighed in before the race and with my shoes and clothes I was 83kg, which seems about right. I felt strong and I was ready to start the race. The helicopter that was going to film the start arrived and it all started a bit of frantic last minute thoughts and preparations. People gathered at the start line (well, the imaginary start line). Fran gave us some last minute comments and counted down from 10.

Race start
Last year I had made a point to take the lead the first 50 metres of the race, and counting down on the start line I felt an urge to do the same. I think I actually made a false start! Maybe the first false start ever recorded in a 24h Ultra Marathon? We were away and I was leading the field. The helicopter is going sideways in front of me, and I have to hold my hat to make sure it stays on my head!

It seems like a slow pace, but no one is overtaking me and I keep looking back. It feels a bit ridiculous that I am leading the group now, but soon enough Tom, Jerry and Tom overtakes me and put the world back in order again!

I run in my own pace and slowly but surely participant by participant come up and pass me, and it doesn’t bother me. I know what there is ahead and am in no hurry. It is 9am and it is already hot. There is something in the air that makes it incredibly hard to run and soon enough people start to speed-walk. I try to keep jogging, even though the pace is not much faster then the people speed walking. I come up to the improvised checkpoint 0.5. This was setup since the organisers had added 6km to this years race and they were all added on the first leg, so they had broken it up with a station at 10km or so. I refilled water and then was off again, not stopping more then 2 minutes or so. I was back on the long road and I knew that it was going to be a long way away before I would break into the dried-up riverbed. I see Emma coming up to me and she is looking a bit in distress, it turns out that she wasn’t certain on the route and at exactly the same spot where Tom overshot the course by 5km she was about to do the same thing. I show her the way and she goes ahead with her light small steps. Once in the riverbed I go for an “as-the-crow-flies” route, rather then following in the meandering road, mainly because the road is a dirt track with a foot of loose sand and it is too punishing on my legs. By this time I am walking and am in no position to run.

After what feels like an eternity I can see the tent and the Blue Peter film crew is there filming me as I approach the the first check point, Checkpoint 1 (CP1). 10 people or so are trying to share the shaded space and I sit down on a chair and relax, refill water and try to eat. I try to empty my shoes of these sharp grass seeds that keep coming into my shoes. They are a real pain and rub, itch and the discomfort is very real. Emma had taped elastic bandage around her shoes to keep the seeds out, and it is a trick I will remember to next year. Generally I would say gaiters are not needed for the Namibian Ultra, however they would have been nice for this first leg.

All in all I was feeling strong though. I knew what was left to do and I felt I had it in my body to meet the challenge head first. I was going to be proven wrong on the next leg of the race, but sitting at CP1 gathering strength, I found myself feeling confident. After about 30-40 minutes I left and there was no way I was going to run now. Speed walk was the only way in the heat.

The trouble had started, and in the next part of the race report, you will get to know why Amy, the race medic, pulled me off the race after 61km.

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

I am hobbling a bit! Not good with only weeks to go to Namibia. I did a 5 hour session yesterday and in the end of it the tendence on the top of my foot hurts. Nothing bad, but not good with so little time left to the first race. 

I had this type of injury before. 12 months ago when I trained for Namibia last year I got this every time I passed 3 hours. This year I have been doing less running, but more combined running and cycling. I think yesterday when I did 65km cycling and 26 km running I pushed it a bit too far. Even though cycling is low impact, over time it does put a strain on your feet. This together with the fact that the 26km yesterday was around Box Hill in Surrey left my foot in a bad way. Box Hill is a tough 13km loop with the first half having small up and downs, and then the end of each lap is a massive climb. 

I was going to start to taper (slow down) after this weekend anyhow, so I will just have to start to do that one day early. 

It wont stop me from getting on the bike and go up to Hamstead and maybe enjoy the sun and a game of Tennis with Martin S. but I will definitely take it a bit easy.

Onwards and upwards, bring on Namibia, with a slightly injured foot or not!

A loud animal cry to my right, and my heart raced and I jumped in the air… I was 5 minutes away from home tonight, when I suddenly got pulled away from my meditative state of running. At first I didn’t know what it was and then I saw them. Two foxes were fighting next to a car, less than 2 metres away from me!

Immediately I was back in Namibia last year, when I saw the hyena, a much more scary moment, but because the first cry came when I was so close by, my heart was really racing. It was really good to be brought back to Namibia, however I have definitly more pleasant memories of my two trips there!

It makes me wonder what I should do this time, what will I meet and what will I feel? I guess to a certain degree you could argue that I should not spend time thinking about it, since the only thing I know is that it will be different from last time!

However, what should one do when one meets a hyena in the middle of the night? Any suggestions? Please use the comment field below, I very much appreciate your comments and happy thoughts that will help me on the way!

This morning I so did not want to run into work… I looked out and it was raining quite hard and I was shivering as I stepped out on to the street. The backpack seemed heavier then normal, the dark darker then normal, and the pavement harder then yesterday.

Having said that, I am here now, and feel much better for having done the run!

I have now been back in training for about a week. Training is going well and the daily routine of either running or cycling into work is settling in. In the pool Ben and I are back in training. Vicky (swim coach) has been resting her voice over Christmas it seems, judging by how much she shouts at us. I’ll put her forward for the US Marine Corps!

Two weeks left to Tough Guy I am very much looking forward to be crawling in the mud again, running through fire and swimming in muddy water. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday!

Today I was able to go for a run again. It felt really good to finally be running after a long time in bed. My new trainers felt good as I started to head out of the village where my parents live. I was going to run about 10km to the nearest village, where they have a pool and I had checked that they were open on their website. A gorgeous day and -2 degrees made it a really nice run. But once there I started to wonder, the car park looked suspiciously empty…

As I went up to the entrance I saw a sign “closed due to technical problems”! So no swimming for me and I just had to start to run back another 10km. Towards the end I managed to speed up a bit and I felt really good.

In the afternoon I took a back pack and went out to do some training for my back. I walked for about 1 hour, starting with 8kg and then 20kg for the last 40minutes (went to the supermarket). 20kg is definitely too heavy to carry comfortably, but a good session!