Finding Gobi

The start horn sounded, and what little noise there was from the small crowd disappeared from my world. The race began on a wide stretch of grass, and as we got under way, the usual crush of people was surging down the middle. You get all sorts wanting to take the lead on that first day, and I don’t mind so much. That’s the beauty of these races—even though world-class athletes are lining up alongside happy amateurs, there is no sense of hierarchy or rank. If you want to run at the front and can keep up the pace, then be my guest.

I had guessed that the start would be a little bit tricky, with the runners bunching up as they usually did, so I’d put myself far out wide of everyone else. I didn’t want to be tripped off the line, and if I went off fast enough, I could get ahead of the slower runners before the course narrowed and dropped down into a rocky canyon.

My plan worked as I soon fell in closely behind Tommy after the first 100 meters. It hadn’t been raining in the night, but the rocks were slippery from the morning dew. I struggled to keep my footing and felt a bit uneasy and took it steady, just like Tommy. I guess we both knew that if we put a foot down wrong and twisted an ankle, we’d have no choice but to put up with a whole lot of pain for another 150 miles or, worse yet, a Did Not Finish.

I heard someone move up behind me and watched as a Romanian guy flew right past me. He was skipping over the rocks as if they were mini trampolines. Once Tommy knew he was behind him, both of them pulled away from me a little. Keep it steady, I told myself. No need to worry. I had put together a detailed stage-by-stage race plan with my coach before I’d left Scotland. We’d looked back at my other races and noticed that I’d been making the same mistake a lot of the time.

I tended to start slowly and then make up ground as the week went on, particularly on the long day, which had become one of my strengths, when the stage typically covered fifty miles or more. The truth is I’m just not a morning person, and the first morning always seems to hit me hard. I’ve often found myself twenty minutes down on the race leaders at the end of day one, which makes it close to impossible to make back up.

Even in training runs I struggle to get going, and for the first mile or two, I always question whether I want to keep going. I spend those first few minutes feeling like I’d rather be doing anything other than running. But if I push through it, I’m usually fine, and during the last half of a run, I’ll be flying.

I trusted that as long as I kept Tommy and this Romanian guy in my sights, I’d be all right. If I was close at the end of stage one, keeping pace but not overcooking, I’d be putting myself in the best possible position for the rest of the week.

Halfway through the day, when the Romanian started to tire and fell back so far behind us that I could no longer hear him, I looked up and saw a sand dune towering up ahead. It was steep and wide, easily three hundred feet high. I’d seen dunes like it in Morocco, but this one seemed different somehow. The sand on the side looked harder and more compact, but the path I had to run up was soft and offered almost no resistance at all.

There’s a key to running up a sand dune, and I learned it the hard way back when I first competed in the Marathon des Sables. I didn’t know that you have to keep your stride as short as you possibly can, ensuring a quick cadence to avoid the sand breaking underneath your feet and slowing you down. I didn’t know that sometimes the longer path is easier than the shorter one. As a result, I tanked and came in so late at the end of the first day that I was seriously considering dropping out altogether.

Tommy attacked the dune ahead of me, but after just a couple of strides it was obvious that sand in the Gobi Desert was not like the Saharan stuff. It must have rained in the area overnight, and the sand was darker, clumpier. It gave way with the slightest pressure, falling away like weak clay, and at times I had to use my hands to gain a little extra grip. We weren’t running up it; we were scrambling.

Once we were finally at the top, I could see the dune more clearly. The only option was to run along the narrow peak that stretched ahead for almost a mile. On both sides, the dune fell away, and if anyone put a foot wrong, he’d end up falling all the way down to the bottom. It would take ages to clamber back up, wasting precious time and precious energy.

Tommy was loving it. “Look at this view!” he shouted. “Isn’t it magnificent?”

I said nothing back. I’m scared of heights and was terrified that I’d fall. I moved ahead as cautiously as I could. More than once my foot slipped, and I threw my arms out in a desperate attempt to regain my balance. At that point I didn’t particularly care how much ground Tommy made on me. All I could do was stare at where my feet were heading and hope that the sand held.

As much as I hated being on top of the dune, when it came time to run down it, I was in heaven. I put a bit of power into my legs and sprinted down as fast as I could. By the time I hit bottom, I overtook Tommy. I felt his surprise and heard him keeping close behind me.

We ran side by side for a while until the Romanian caught up with us, and then the three of us traded the lead from time to time. The course took us through muddy fields and over bridges, alongside a giant reservoir. The vast sands and cruel heat of the Gobi Desert were a couple of days away, and we ran through remote villages that belonged in another century. Tumbledown buildings squatted on the land like an abandoned movie set. Occasionally we’d see locals, standing and staring impassively at us. They never said anything, but they didn’t seem bothered by us either. It wouldn’t have made any difference to me either way. I was flying by this time, full of hope that the race in the Gobi Desert might not be my last race after all.

4

I was born in Sydney, New South Wales, but grew up in an Australian outback town in Queensland called Warwick. It’s a place that barely anyone I meet has visited but one that contains the kind of people everyone can recognize. It’s farming country, with traditional values and a strong emphasis on family. These days it’s changed a lot and become a small, vibrant city, but when I was a teenager, Warwick was the kind of place that would fill up on a Friday night. The pubs would be crammed with hardworking men looking for a good night out involving a few too many beers, a couple of fights, and a trip to the petrol station—which any self-respecting Australian calls the ‘servo’—for a meat pie that had been kept in a warmer all day and was hard as a rock.

They were good people, but it was a cliquish town at the time, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. I knew I didn’t belong among them.

It wasn’t just the scandal of my abnormal childhood and family situation that prompted people to react badly. It was the way I behaved. It was who I had become. I went from being a polite, pleasant little kid to an awkward, pain-in-the-ass loudmouth. By the time I was fourteen, I was the class joker, riling the teachers with my crowd-pleasing comments, getting thrown out of class, and swaggering my way out of the school gates as I walked to the servo for an early afternoon pie while the other fools were still stuck in class.

And when my school year ended and the headmaster greeted each of us with a handshake and a friendly word about our futures at the final assembly, all he could say to me was, “I’ll be seeing you in prison.”

Of course, there was a reason for all this, and it wasn’t just the pain of losing my dad—not just once but twice over.

I was falling apart because everything at home seemed to me to be falling apart.

It seemed the loss of her husband hit my mum hard. Really hard. Her own father had returned from the Second World War traumatized, and like so many men, he turned to alcohol to numb the pain. Mum’s childhood taught her that when parents are struggling, home isn’t always the best place to be.

So when Mum became a widow in her early thirties with two young children, she coped the only way she knew how. She retreated. I remember days would go by and she’d be locked in the bedroom. I cooked meals of eggs on toast or spaghetti out of a can, or else we went to Nan’s, some other neighbour’s house, or, if it was Sunday, church.

From what I could see, Mum would go through phases where she became fixated with keeping the house immaculate. She cleaned relentlessly, and on the odd occasion that she did cook for herself, she’d clean the kitchen frantically for two hours. Neither I nor my little sister, Christie, could do anything right. Kids being kids, if we’d leave crumbs around the place, smear our finger marks on windows, or take showers that lasted longer than three minutes, it might upset her.

Ours was a half-acre, filled with trees and flower beds. While Mum and Dad used to love working in it together, after Dad’s death it was up to me to get out and keep it tidy. If I didn’t do my chores, I felt life wasn’t worth living.

When Mum would start nagging at me, pretty soon she’d be yelling at me and screaming. “You’re useless,” she’d say. I’d scream and yell back, and soon we both would be swearing at each other. Mum never apologized. Nor did I. But we both had said things we’d later regret.

We argued endlessly, every day and every night. I’d come home from school and feel like I had to walk on eggshells around the house. If I made any noise or disturbed her in any way, the whole fighting thing would start up again.

By the time I was fourteen, she’d had enough. “You’re out,” she said one day as, following yet another storm of mutually hurled insults, she pulled out cleaning supplies from the cupboard. “There’s too much arguing, and nothing you do is right. You’re moving downstairs.”

The house was a two-storey home, but everything that mattered was upstairs. Downstairs was the part of the house where nobody ever went. It was where Christie and I played when we were little, but since then the playroom had become a dumping ground. There was a toilet down there, but barely any natural light, and a big area that was still full of building supplies. Most important for my mum, there was a door at the base of the stairway that could be locked. Once I was down there, I felt trapped, stopped from being part of the family life above.

I didn’t argue with her. Part of me wanted to get away from her.

So I moved my mattress and my clothes and settled into my new life—a new life in which Mum would open the door when it was time for me to come up and get food or when I needed to go to school. Apart from that, if I was at home, I was confined to the basement.

The thing I hated most about it was not the fact that I felt like some kind of a prisoner. What I hated about it was the dark.

Soon after Garry’s death, I started sleepwalking. It got worse when I moved down, and I would wake up in the area where all the broken tiles were dumped. It’d be pitch black; I’d be terrified and unable to figure out which way to turn to switch on the lights. Everything became frightening, and my dreams would fill with nightmare images of Freddy Krueger waiting for me outside my room.

Most nights, as I listened to the lock turn, I’d fall on my bed and sob into the stuffed Cookie Monster toy I’d had since I was a kid.

Normally I don’t take a mattress with me on a race, but I was worried my leg injury might flare up at some point crossing the Gobi Desert, so I’d packed one specially. I blew it up at the end of the first day and tried to rest up. I had a little iPod with me, but I didn’t bother putting it on. I was fine with just lying back and thinking about the day’s race. I was happy with third place, especially as there was only a minute or two between me, Tommy, and the Romanian, whose name I later found out was Julian.

Instead of an army surplus tent, we were in a yurt that night, and I was looking forward to it being good and warm as the temperature dropped. Meanwhile, though, I guessed I’d have to wait a while before any of my tent mates returned. I ate a little biltong and curled up in my sleeping bag.

It took an hour or so before the first two guys arrived back. I was dozing when I first became aware of them talking, and I heard one of my tent mates, an American named Richard, say, “Whoa! Dion’s back already!” I looked up, smiled, and said hi and congratulated them on finishing the first stage.

Richard went on to say he was planning on speaking with the three Macau guys as soon as they got in. I’d slept all through the first night, but according to Richard, they’d been up late messing with their bags and up early talking incessantly.

I wasn’t worried too much, and thinking about Lucja and how she’d got me into running in the first place, I drifted back to sleep.

I first tried running when we were living in New Zealand. Lucja was managing an eco-hotel, and I was working for a wine exporter. Life was good, and the days of having to hustle the golf courses for food money were behind us. Even better, both our jobs came with plenty of perks, such as free crates of wine and great meals out. Every night we’d put away a couple of bottles of wine, and on weekends we’d eat out. We’d take Curtly, our Saint Bernard (named after legendary West Indian cricketer Curtly Ambrose), out for a walk in the morning, stopping off at a café for sweet potato corn fritters or a full fry-up of eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, mushrooms, tomato, and toast. We might get a pastry on the way home, crack open a bottle of something at lunch, then head out in the evening for a three-course meal with more wine. Later we’d walk Curtly one more time and get an ice cream.

People would tell me I was a big lad, and they were right. I weighed 240 pounds and was heavier than I had ever been in my life. I didn’t do any exercise, was an off-again on-again smoker, and had created a dent in the sofa where I lay and watched sports on TV. I was twenty-six and eating myself to death.

The change came when Lucja made some new friends who loved running and fitness. She got onto her own health kick and started slimming down. She explained that she wanted to look good in a bikini, and I—like a typical guy from my part of the world—told her she was being ridiculous.

But I didn’t believe what I said. I knew she was made of strong stuff, that she was determined and was going to see this through.

Lucja quickly got into running and found that she was completing her three-mile loop faster and faster.

“You’re so unfit and unhealthy, Bubba,” she said, calling me by the name I was now beginning to dislike. “I could beat you.”

I was lying on the sofa at the time, watching cricket. “Don’t be stupid. I could beat you easily. You’ve only been at it for six weeks.”

In my mind, I was still a sportsman. I was the same kid who could spend all day playing cricket or running about with his friends. Besides, I had something that Lucja lacked—a killer competitive instinct. I’d competed so much as a teenager and won so many matches that I was convinced I could still beat her at any challenge she threw at me.

I found some shorts and tennis shoes, stepped over Curtly, who was sleeping on the front step, and joined Lucja on the street outside.

“You sure you’re ready for this, Bubba?”

I snorted in disbelief. “Are you kidding? There’s no way you’re winning.”

“All right then. Let’s go.”

We kept pace—for the first fifty feet. After that, Lucja started pulling away from me. My brain was demanding that I keep up, but it was impossible. I had nothing to give. I was like an old steamroller whose fire had gone out, gradually getting slower and slower.

By the time I’d covered another hundred feet, I stopped moving altogether. Up ahead, the road made a slight turn and went up a hill. The defeat felt heavy within me.

I stood bent over, hands on knees, retching, coughing, and gasping for breath. I looked up to see Lucja way ahead of me. She looked back at me for a second, then carried on running up the hill.

I was enraged. How could I get beaten? I turned around and walked back home. With each step, the anger was joined by something else. Panic.

The healthier she became and the more weight she lost, the greater my risk of losing her. On the day of the run, I knew she wouldn’t stop, that this wasn’t just a phase or a passing fad. She was determined, and I knew she’d keep going until she was happy. And when she reached that point, why would she stay with a fat bloke like me?

I woke up again but this time to the sound of the Macau boys coming back into the tent. They were all pumped up at having completed the first stage and were spreading out their kits, looking for their evening meals. That was when Richard pulled off his headphones and started talking to them in what sounded to me like perfect Mandarin.

Judging by their reaction, they understood every word he said, and they were taking it seriously. They looked like schoolboys being told off, not knowing where to look. As Richard was finishing, he pointed at me. They all stared in silence, grabbed their food from their bags, and slipped out of the tent.

“What did you say?” asked Allen, one of the British guys in the tent.

“I told them that tonight they had to be quiet and more organized. They’ve got to get their stuff organized before dinner, come back, and rest. That guy’s here to win.”

They all turned and looked at me.

“Is he right?” asked Allen. “Are you here to win?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I’m not here for fun, if that’s what you mean.”

Richard laughed. “We got that impression. You’re not exactly sociable, are you?”

I laughed too. I liked this guy.

“Yeah, some of that’s because I’m cold, and some of it’s just how I get through these races.” I paused. “But thanks for saying that to them.”

It was six thirty in the evening when I shuffled out of my sleeping bag and wandered outside the yurt carrying a bag of dehydrated whatever-it-was I was going to eat that night. While we have to carry all our own food, bedding, and clothes on a multi-stage ultra, at least our water is provided. I found the fire where water was being boiled and made up a chilli con carne–flavoured meal. It tasted pretty bland, just like it always did, but I reminded myself I wasn’t there for fun. It had the bare minimum calories I required to keep going, and I needed to eat every last bit of it.

Everyone was sitting around the fire and chatting. I liked the idea of resting in its glow and soaking up the heat for a while, but all the seats were taken, so I crouched down on an uncomfortable rock and ate. After scooping the very last traces of food from the corners of the bag, I headed back to the yurt. It had been a good day—a really good one, in fact—but I’d need a solid night’s sleep and an equally good day tomorrow to keep my number three slot. I’d started the day as an unknown. I guessed that from now on people would be a bit more aware of me in the race. And that could make things difficult.

It was when I got up that I saw a dog. It was maybe a foot tall and sandy coloured with great dark eyes and a funny-looking mustache and beard. It was walking around between the chairs, getting up on its hind legs and charming people into giving it bits of food. Getting runners to part with any of their food this early in the race was no mean feat.

Clever dog, I thought. There’s no way I’d feed it.

PART 2

5

The yurt had been so hot I’d barely been able to sleep all night, but as I walked out the next morning, the air was cold enough to make me shiver. The ground was wet, and the Tian Shan up ahead appeared to be covered in low dark clouds that were surely going to dump more rain on us.

With a few minutes to go before the eight o’clock start, I took my place on the start line at the front of the pack. After coming in third yesterday, I felt as though I belonged there.

People were a lot less nervous than before. I could even hear some of them laughing, though I tried my best to block out all distractions and focus on the challenge ahead. I knew we’d face mile after mile of ascent as we headed up into the mountains, followed by some dangerous descents. We were already at an altitude of seven thousand feet, and I guessed that some runners would already be struggling with the lack of oxygen. Today was going to make things harder by taking us up to more than nine thousand feet.

My concentration was broken by the sound of more laughter and a little cheering behind me.

“It’s the dog!”

“How cute!”

I looked down and saw the same dog from last night. It was standing by my feet, staring at the bright yellow gaiters covering my shoes. It was transfixed for a while, its tail wagging constantly. Then it did the strangest thing. It looked up, its dark black eyes taking in my legs first, then my yellow-shirted torso, and finally my face. It looked right into my eyes, and I couldn’t look away.

“You’re cute,” I said under my breath, “but you’d better be fast if you’re not planning to get trodden by one hundred runners chasing after you.”

I looked about to see if anyone was going to come and claim the dog and get it out of the way before the runners took off. A few other runners caught my eye, smiled, and nodded at the dog, but none of the locals or the race staff seemed to notice.

“Does anyone know whose dog this is?” I asked, but nobody did. They were all too focused on the ten-second countdown to the race start.

“Nine … eight … seven …”

I looked down. The dog was still at my feet, only now it had stopped staring at me and was sniffing my gaiters.

“You’d better get away little doggie, or else you’re going to get squashed.”

“Five … four …”

“Go on,” I said, trying to get it to move. It was no use. It took a playful bite of the gaiter, then jumped back and crouched on the ground before diving in for another sniff and a chew.

The race began, and as I set off, the dog came with me. The gaiters game was even more fun now that the gaiters moved, and the dog danced around my feet as if it was the best fun ever.

It seemed to me that the cute moment could become annoying if it carried on for too long. The last thing I wanted was to trip over the little pooch and cause injury to it or myself. Then again, I knew there was a long stretch of single track coming up in which it would be hard to overtake a lot of the slower runners, so I wanted to keep up the pace and not lose my position with the front runner.

I was thankful when, after a quarter mile, I looked back down and saw that the dog wasn’t there. Probably gone back to its owner at the camp, I thought.

The track narrowed, and we entered a flat forest section that lasted a few miles. I was in second, a few feet behind a Chinese guy I’d not seen before. Every once in a while he’d miss a marker—a pink paper square about the size of a CD case attached to a thin metal spike in the ground. They were hard to miss, and in the forest sections there was one of them every ten or twenty feet.

“Hey!” I’d shout on the couple of occasions that he took a wrong turn and headed off into the forest. I’d wait for him to track back, then fall in again behind him. I guess I could have let him keep going or shouted my warning and then carried on running, but multi-stage runners have a certain way of doing things. If we’re going to beat someone, we want it to be because we’re faster and stronger, not because we’ve tricked them or refused to help when we could. After all, pushing our bodies as hard as we do, everyone makes mistakes from time to time. You never know when you’re going to need someone to help you out.

The forest fell away as the path started its climb into the mountains. I kept up the six-minute-mile pace, concentrating on keeping my stride short and my feet quick. My body remembered the hours I’d spent with my coach standing beside the treadmill, beating out the rapid cadence to which he wanted me to run. His shouts of “one-two-three-one-two-three” were like torture at first, but after a few sessions of spending a whole hour running like that, three minutes on then one minute off, my legs finally got the message. If I wanted to run fast and not feel the crippling pain anymore, I had no choice but to learn how to run this way.