Friday 20 April 2012

Stage 2: 38.5km (24 miles)

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Endless, endless valley beds

More Patrick Bauer chat. More ACDC. And....shuffle!

Felt pretty good after stage 1. Kept an eye on the blisters. On reflection I was rather paranoid about them. Been looking at too many gruesome pictures of people's feet. They got worse today, but were still manageable. Thank goodness I wasn't getting any on any weight bearing areas.

Stage 2 was a cool 52 degrees. I couldn't really tell the difference between this and stage 1 to be honest. It was just hot full stop.

Stop press: I managed to shuffle all the way to checkpoint 1 today! Rather pleased with myself. We then hit some small dunes (dunettes - how cute!) followed by another loooooooonnnnggggg valley bed stretch. The valley beds seem to hold the heat in more and are a little like an alternative reality. You move but you don't. You can see the trees in the distance (or can you?) but they don't come any closer.

Until they do.

Pretty tired by the third checkpoint but still had about 10km of dunettes (not so cute now). My overwhelming need at this point was to lay down and sleep. I was even fantasising about working out how to sleep while shuffling and tried it a bit.

Managed to shuffle in the last half kilometre or so.

I was very pleased to reach "home" today. By now our camp was complete luxury to me. A sight for sore eyes. Sultan tea sponsors the Marathon des Sables so you are welcomed over the finish line with a hot cup of sweet Moroccan mint tea. Heavenly.

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