Finding Gobi

I saw something move out of the corner of my eye and forced myself to look down for a fraction of a second. It was the dog again. It wasn’t interested in my gaiters this time but, instead, seemed happy just to trot along beside me.

Weird, I thought. What’s it doing here?

I pressed on and attacked the incline. Zeng, the Chinese guy who was leading, is an accomplished ultra-runner and had pulled away from me a little. I couldn’t hear anyone behind me. It was just me and the dog, side by side, tearing into the switchbacks. The path was interrupted by a man-made culvert. It was only three feet wide, and I didn’t think anything of it, leaping over the fast-flowing water without breaking stride.

I could tell the dog had stayed behind. It started barking, then making a strange whimpering sound. I didn’t turn back to look. I never do. Instead, I kept my head in the race and pushed on. As far as I knew, the dog belonged to someone back near the camp. The little thing had had a pretty good workout for the day, conned some runners out of some high-calorie food, and now it was time to head home.

I was fifteen when I told my mum I was leaving the dingy basement and moving in with a friend. She barely said anything. It seemed to me she didn’t care. I guess since I’d already been staying with friends whenever I could—and the fact that when I was around, Mum and I fought endlessly, trading insults like boxers at a weigh-in—it couldn’t have come as much of a surprise. In fact, it was probably a relief.

I moved in with a guy named Deon. “Dion and Deon?” said the woman who ran the hostel when Deon introduced me. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” said Deon. “Straight up.”

She snorted and turned away mumbling. “I’ve heard it all now.”

Deon was a year older than me, had left school already, and was an apprentice bricklayer. He’d had his own troubles at home.

Even though we were both finally free from the struggles at home, neither of us was too excited about life in the hostel. The walls were paper-thin, and everyone else living there was older and freaked us out. The hostel was filled with homeless people, travellers, and drunks. Food was always going missing from the communal areas, and barely a night went by without the whole hostel waking up to the sound of a fight breaking out.

While I was still at school, I also took a part-time job pumping petrol at the servo. It brought a little bit of money in but not enough, and I had to rely on Deon to help with the shortfall each week.

I only just managed to keep up with my schoolwork, but none of my teachers showed any sign of caring about where I was living or how I was coping with life away from home. In fact, I don’t think any of them knew about my new living arrangements, and I wanted to keep it that way. I was embarrassed to go back to the hostel and tried to hide the truth from my classmates with their perfect, loving family homes.

Deon was the kind of guy who could charm the birds from the trees. We’d sneak into the pub on a Friday or Saturday night, have a few beers, and try to chat up some girls. I’d let Deon do the talking, much like I’d let him do the dancing. Aussie blokes from towns like mine didn’t dance in those days, and it was almost inevitable that when he finally came off the dance floor, Deon would take a mouthful of abuse and a few thrown punches. He’d just laugh them off.

One Sunday afternoon as we lay on our bunks wasting time, we heard shouting in the corridor outside. Someone was calling Deon’s name, saying he was going to kill him for sleeping with his girlfriend.

The two of us froze. I stared at Deon, who looked for the first time ever genuinely scared for his life. We both tried to act tough when we were in the hostel, but we were just kids—who at that moment were terrified we were about to get our heads kicked in. Luckily the blokes didn’t know which room we were in, and they kept moving up and down the corridor until they eventually left. That was enough of a shock to get us to move out of the hostel as soon as possible.

The Grand Hotel was a step up from the hostel, but it wasn’t much of a hotel. It was just a pub with a few rented rooms at the top. Instead of addicts, drunks, and homeless blokes, the Grand was home to guys who worked on the railroad or in the local meatpacking plant. One was an ex-pro pool player who had once beaten the national champion but had drunk all his talent away. Another was a traveller who had run out of money and simply decided to make Warwick his home. I liked listening to him talk. “Any place can be all right,” he’d say, “as long as you accept what’s wrong with it.”

I felt much happier at the Grand than I did at the hostel. I liked being in the company of the kind of people who had chosen their lot and were happy with it, even if it meant not having the perfect wife, the perfect house, and the perfect family. I felt free living among them, and for the first time in years, it seemed to me that all the things my mum had said that made me feel worthless and unwanted, an unlovable screw-up and a disappointment, might not necessarily be true. Maybe I could learn to get by after all.

The barking and whimpering continued until I was twenty feet past the culvert. Then there was silence. I had a moment of hoping the dog hadn’t fallen into the water, but before I could think about it much more, there was a familiar flash of brown beside me. The dog was back by my side again.

You’re a determined little thing, aren’t you?

Soon the track became even steeper as the temperature dropped lower. The cold air had numbed my face and fingers, but I was sweating. The increase in altitude made my breathing tight and my head a little dizzy. If I was going to run without stopping all the way up the mountain, I knew I’d have to dig in even more than usual.

I hate mountain running. Even though I live in Edinburgh and am surrounded by the beauty of the Scottish Highlands, I avoid running outside and up hills whenever possible. Especially when it’s wet, cold, and windy. But give me a desert baked in 110-degree heat, and I’ll be as happy as any runner out there.

People often ask me why I like running in the heat so much. The answer is simple: I’ve always felt the most freedom when I’m running beneath a blazing sun.

It started when I was a kid. After Garry died, I turned to sport in the hope of finding refuge from the troubles at home. I’d spend hours outside playing cricket or hockey. Time would stop when I was outside, and the more I ran and pushed myself, the heavier my breathing became, and the louder my heart beat, the quieter the sadness and sorrow grew within me.

Maybe you could say that running in the heat was a form of escape. What I do know for sure is that as I ran in the Gobi Desert, I was no longer running to get away from my past. I was running towards my future. I was running with hope, not sorrow.

My pace slowed as every step became its own battle. There was snow all around, and at one point the track ran alongside a glacier. At other times the mountain would drop away at the side. I guessed there were some pretty dramatic views this high up, but I was thankful the cloud was so low that it was impossible to see anything more than a thick wall of grey mist. The experience was surreal, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

The checkpoint finally came into view, and I heard people call out the usual encouragement. Once they saw the dog, they shouted a little louder.

“There’s that dog again!”

I’d almost forgotten the little dog at my side. All the time that I’d been struggling up the hill, the dog had kept pace with me, skipping along as if running 2,500 feet up into the sky was the most natural thing in the world.

Once I was at the checkpoint, I faced the usual range of questions about how I was feeling and whether I had been drinking my water. Checkpoints are there to give runners an opportunity to refill their water bottles, but they’re also a chance for the race team to check us over and make sure we are fit to carry on.

This time, however, it was the dog who got far more attention than me. A couple of volunteers took some photos as the dog sniffed about the checkpoint tent. As soon as my bottles were full and I was ready to go, I moved out, half expecting this might be the point when the dog decided to leave me in favour of a better meal ticket.

But when I and my yellow gaiters started running out, the dog joined me straightaway.

If the climb to the top of the mountain had been tough, then the descent was its own unique sort of pain. For more than five miles the route took me straight down a path covered in rocks and loose stones. It was brutal on the joints, but like any runner, I knew that if I ran at anything less than 100 per cent, I’d get caught by whoever was behind me.

And that’s exactly what happened. I was feeling sluggish and struggled to hit anything close to my maximum pace on the descent, and soon enough Tommy glided past me, quickly followed by Julian.

I was annoyed with myself for giving too much on the ascent. I’d made a basic error, the kind I knew better not to make.

I checked myself. Getting annoyed could lead me to make another basic error. At times in the past, I’d let myself obsess about a mistake I’d made. Over the course of a few miles, the frustration would build and build until I’d lose all interest in the race and bail out.

I tried to distract myself by concentrating on the view. Coming down from the mountain at one point, I thought I saw a giant lake ahead of us, stretched out wide and dark beneath the grey skies. The closer I got, the more it became clear that it wasn’t a lake but a huge expanse of dark sand and gravel.

As the path flattened, I settled into a steady six-and-a-half-minute-per-mile pace, bursting through the final checkpoint, not bothering to stop for water. I saw Tommy, Zeng, and Julian up ahead and found they hadn’t opened up the gap as much as I had feared. They were racing one another hard, and with less than a mile to go, there was no way for me to catch them. But I didn’t mind so much. I felt good to be finishing strong without any hint of pain in my leg. I could hear the drums that played every time a runner crossed the finish line, and I knew that finishing a close fourth for the day would hopefully be enough to keep me in third overall.

Just as at each of the day’s checkpoints, the dog was the focus of attention at the finish. People were taking pictures and filming, cheering for the little brown mutt as it crossed the line. The dog seemed to like the attention, and I could swear it was playing to the crowd by wagging its tail even faster.

Tommy had got in a minute or two before me, and he joined in the applause. “That dog, man! It’s been following you all day!”

“Has it had any water?” asked one of the volunteers.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe it drank at some of the streams on the way.” I felt a little bad about it. I didn’t like the idea of it being thirsty or hungry.

Someone found a small bucket and gave the dog some water. It lapped it up, obviously thirsty.

I stepped back, wanting to leave the dog to it and get away from the crowds a little. Again I thought it might wander off and go find someone else to follow, but it didn’t. As soon as it finished drinking, it looked up, locked eyes on my yellow gaiters, and trotted over to my side, following me wherever I went.

It was hot in the camp, and I was glad we’d left all that horrible alpine cold up in the mountains. From now on the race was going to be about coping with the heat, not struggling through the cold. From tomorrow onward we’d be in the Gobi Desert. I couldn’t wait.

As soon as I sat down in the tent, the dog curled up next to me—and I started thinking about germs and diseases. It’s crucial during a weeklong race to keep as clean as possible because without any access to showers or wash basins, it’s easy to get sick from anything you touch. The dog was looking right into my eyes, just as it had earlier that morning. I had a few hours before my six-thirty meal, so I pulled out one of the packs of nuts and biltong. The dog’s stare was unbreakable.

With a piece of meat midway to my mouth, it struck me that I hadn’t seen the dog eat a thing all day. It had run the best part of a marathon, and still it wasn’t trying to beg or steal any of the food I had in front of me.

“Here you go,” I said, tossing half the meat down onto the tarpaulin in front of it, instinct telling me that feeding by hand wasn’t a risk I wanted to take. The dog chewed, swallowed, spun around a few times, and lay down. Within seconds it was snoring, then twitching, then whimpering as it drifted deeper and deeper into sleep.

I woke up to the sound of grown men cooing like school kids.

“Ah, how cute is that?”

“Isn’t that the dog from last night? Did you hear she followed him all day?”

She. The dog had run with me all day, and I’d never thought to check what sex it was.

I opened my eyes. The dog was staring right at me, looking deeper into my eyes than I would have thought possible. I checked. They were right. It wasn’t an it. It was a she.

“Yeah,” I said to Richard and the rest of the guys. “She stuck with me all day. She’s got a good little motor on her.”

Some of the guys fed her, and again she took whatever she was given, but gently. It was almost as though she knew she was getting a good deal here and she needed to be on her best behaviour.

I told the guys I’d been wondering where she came from and that I’d guessed she’d belonged to whoever owned the yurts we’d stayed in the previous night.

“I don’t think so,” said Richard. “I heard some of the other runners say she joined them out on the dune yesterday.”

That meant she had put in almost fifty miles in two days. I was staggered.

It also meant she didn’t belong to the people back at the previous camp or to one of the race organizers.

“You know what you’ve got to do now, don’t you?” said Richard.

“What?”

“You’ve got to give her a name.”

6

I stopped running less than a mile in and cursed my stupidity.

The last twenty-four hours had brought all kinds of weather our way, from the snow and rain of the mountains to the dry heat that greeted us as we came down to camp. All night high winds had been tearing at the sides of the tent, and when I got up, the temperature was the coldest for any start yet.

The cold bothered me. I’d been looking forward to the day, knowing it was going to be flatter and hotter, but, instead, I’d found myself shivering on the start line. While the other runners went through their pre-race routines, I’d thrown off my backpack, rummaged around inside, and pulled out my light jacket, completely upsetting my usual precise and carefully prepared race start.

And now I was taking it off again. After a few minutes the sun had come out, and the temperature had started to rise. I should have been happy about it, but I could feel myself start to overheat in my wet weather gear. With five hours of hard running ahead of me, I had no choice but to stop.

As I pulled at zippers and plastic clips and shoved the jacket away, I noticed Tommy, Julian, and two others run past and reclaim the lead.

Then one more runner approached, and I smiled.

“Hey, Gobi,” I said, using the name I’d given her the night before. “You changed your mind, did you?”

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