The second most important item is sneakers. Well, this is my favorite pastime: to buy, run, become sad, and give away. I did so three times before I decided on the design and size. I chose Hoka Challenger ATR 3 (a pair is 660 grams).
I took one and a half centimeters bigger than my usual size. After all, it’s known that the main trouble for runners at the Sand Marathon is calluses. 90 percent of participants get them. The formula is very simple: heat + sweat + friction = calluses. Moreover, if some sand gets into your sneakers, you’ll have to throw away your feet.
To avoid getting sand into your shoes, gaiters, shoe covers with a hook and loop fastener, can be used. The hook and loop fastener is sewn to the sneaker and to the gaiter.
Wear them and you can safely run in the sand.
I chose RaidLight Desert Gaiters (76 grams): they are light and don’t rub. It’s very important to choose the right socks. Fivefingers13 prevent friction between the toes and help to save your feet. Before the MDS, I ran a marathon in Injinji (32 grams) and didn’t rub anything.
There is another strange technology for protecting the skin of the feet – tanning.
Yes, legs are tanned like a leather jacket. There is a simple recipe: make baths with lemon juice every day for a month before the race. The skin coarsens and becomes resistant to rubbing. It’s in theory. In practice, the same 90 percent suffer from calluses. I think they all tried to save their feet, and many of them with the help of tanning.
As for me, I don’t mind a couple of calluses. This will allow me to fully experience the desert and to suffer a little, as I love…
On my head, I wear a light Salomon Cap XA + Cap ear-flapped hat (95 grams) with neck protection from the sun. Sunglasses (30 grams) are for the same purpose. On my body, I wear my favorite Waa Ultra Carrier Shirt (174 grams) and comfortable Salomon S-Lab Exo Twinskin shorts (142 grams).
I have in my backpack a woolen shirt with long sleeves (205 grams) to keep warm at night, spare socks (39 grams), and weightless slippers (40 gramms) from the hotel to walk around the camp.
Treatment (78 grams)
The first-aid kit weighs a little, but everything depends on it. Therefore, I try to foresee any surprises (it doesn’t hurt to dream).
The first-aid kit includes:
– Loperamide – against upset stomach;
– Ketanov – against pain;
– Nurofen – against inflammation;
– Persen – against insomnia;
– Compeed plasters14;
– Alcohol for disinfection;
– Tape for knees;
– Sunscreen.
The “medical block” includes a mandatory doctor’s certificate, assuring the organizers that the runner will not kick the bucket at the first stage. I’m always astonished at the bravery of doctors signing such papers. Organizers also doubt the adequacy of Aesculapians, so they always require a cardiogram (and from old fellows like me – a cardiogram under load).
Charging (810 grams)
Well, how to go without devices? After all, it’s not for nothing that I graduated from polytechnics and I love all these pieces of metal. But…all these things weigh a lot, so I take only the most important.
The phone is not the most important thing, because there is no coverage in the desert and the iPhone turns into a pretty toy. Therefore, it will wait for me at the finish.
However, a Garmin Fenix 3 (82 grams) watch will run with me. I decided to shoot this six-day torture on GoPro HERO 5 Black camera (117 grams) in 4K mode, and later I will make pictures from the video. In addition, on a trial basis, I took with me a Garmin inReach Explorer + ®15 satellite messenger (213 grams). It allows communication with the family, calming the wife with the message “I’m still alive!” after each stage. By the way, this piece of hardware sends the host’s coordinates via space to a server every 10 minutes. And voila, you can see exactly where I’m crawling through the desert.
All this gear should be recharged. Therefore, I had to take a SunnyBAG LEAF + solar panel with a power bank (348 grams) as well as various cables and adapters (50 grams).
Many people take headphones and iPods. I firmly stand against headphones with music, audiobooks, podcasts, and other informational noise during the run. We are already overwhelmed with news, music, social networks, messages, videos, jokes, pictures, memes, calls, notifications, TV flickering, radio mumbling, and other trifles. During training, at least one hour a day, you enjoy the silence and the opportunity to listen to yourself and your body.
“Feet, how are you there?”
“Very well, Commander! Thanks for the new sneakers.”
“And you, dear heart, how are you?”
“I’m beating little by little…,” my heart answers out of breath, “Can we slow down?”
“Ok, we can, we will reach the hill and have a rest.”
Here the brain intervenes:
“Look! You’ve been thinking recently about the medals for the Triathlon. Here’s a solution – make them black, it will be unusual.”
“Yes, that’s a great idea, thank you.”
“No problem! Anytime!”
I don’t know about other people, but I get many ideas while running. The brain, cleared of debris, can calmly put everything in its place and then give an answer. A week in silence in the desert! This is real mental purification!
It’s true happiness to run hundreds of kilometers, get calluses, starve, overheat, freeze, feel the taste of water, gobble up a scorpion, and look at the stars! And most importantly, it’s great to be alone with yourself and finally turn off all these other people’s voices in your head.
Cooking (206 grams)
Everything is very simple here: you eat what you take. To prepare food, I took a MSR Titan Tea Kettle 850 ml saucepan with a lid (130 grams), a Lifeventure Titanium Mug 450 ml (55 grams), a spoon-fork (10 grams), a lighter (11 grams), and… that’s all. A gas stove is prohibited due to the high temperature in the desert.
There are two popular ways of warming up water in the desert:
– Alcohol tablets. I turned down this idea because an experiment showed that at least six tablets should be used at a time. If I have to cook 12 times for the whole marathon (twice a day), I need 72 tablets. That’s a considerable weight, so brushed away this idea;
– Twigs, sticks. It’s all very simple! You run to the camp and look for combustible material, twigs and sticks, which were not found by other runners and local berbers16. The berbers are guys who are as sly as a fox, as they will sell a bundle of brushwood for 50 Euros! Here an athlete takes a risk – a backpack without provisional fuel reserves is 300 grams lighter, but then you have to eat cold food. Competition for wood fuel is high in the desert. I decided to take a chance.
As a third point, I would like to offer you an MDS lifehack: another option of making a fire – to warm the water by burning friends’ letters, which the organizers of the competition print on paper. During the marathon, letters can be sent to:
http://live.marathondessables.com
The letters warm all the senses!
So, the total weight of my backpack without food and water is 3400 grams. Clothes and shoes on me weigh 1300 grams.
Food reserve (3400 grams)
It’s even hard to call it food during the race. The main thing in the diet during the competition is not the taste, but the ratio of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and weight. Organizers regulate the number of kilocalories – 14,000 per race. Not less. More is allowed.
It’s strange: only 2,000 calories a day. We burn 4,000 kcal per day during an ultramarathon. And what about the heat?
The sand? The backpack? If my experienced comrades hadn’t given me good advice, I would have taken a minimum of 4,000 for a day. But experienced people say that 2,000 is usually enough.
Six months before the competition, I began experimenting with sublimated17food containing no moisture. Dry powder. Dust. But if you add water – mmmm… It turns out delicious. In the world there are many manufacturers of sublimates, so I tasted five options and stopped at MX3 – the food is quality, sometimes even tasty.
The price is about 6 Euros per serving. I bought 20 different dishes, tasted them, chose the best ones during the Rubicon, and ordered them again.
As one member of the MDS said:
“The main thing in the diet at the race is diversity.”
Dmitry Erokhin, participant of the MDS
So I’ll have two new dishes every day. I decided to fill the intervals between breakfast and dinner with nuts and dried fruits: they are high in calories and don’t take up much space. Moreover, every day, I’ll take 50 grams of pure carbohydrates for a quick recovery after running. Plus, tea with sugar to while away long evenings.
In short, I decided to take a risk and took food containing precisely 14,000 kilocalories for seven days of competition. If it’s not enough, I’ll have to eat sand and speak well of my experienced comrades.
While packing my things at home, continuing to struggle with excess weight, my family and I poured the sublimates out from heavy foil packs into cellophane zip bags, then sorted and packaged dried fruits by weight.
The savings amounted to 250 grams. Reduced weight and volume – this is good, but the fact that I have to wash the saucepan every time is not good.
So, my whole food weighs 3,400 grams, in average 410 kilocalories per 100 grams. Not bad. My backpack without water weighs about seven kilograms, with water – eight and a half. Not very hard. But it is to the detriment of comfort. I hope I won’t envy my provident friends.
The acclimatization or a week in Morocco
Backpack is stuffed. I’ve gone through all the necessary trainings and studied all the info. Mental state is just fine. Feet are ready to go. I reassured my family of my safety and asked all my friends to cheer for me. Here comes the day of departure.
Morning in Chisinau. Alarm. Pants on. A banana. Bag on the shoulder. Lots of hugs and kisses. Padremobile to the airport. Then the plane: Rome, Casablanca, Marrakech.
Upon arrival I had to wait for an hour in a queue. Finally I left the airport and my lungs took in the hot air of the Morocco night. Half an hour later I was already snoring in my hotel.
My first morning in Marrakech was boiling hot. I crawled down for breakfast and met my future “roommates’ – Pafnutiy (= Pavel, Pasha, Pashka etc.) and Jurasic. They had already been here for 2 days fighting the heat off with juice18 mixed with local wine, and having massages and sunbathing. My new friends quickly gave me a fill-in as to local lifestyle so soon we were smoking a hookah enjoying the sunny sky and the cool swimming pool.
Pashka’s happy voice announced that his luggage (his backpack with all the stuff) never reached Marrakech and got lost somewhere in the Mediterranean region. He seemed quite positive about it but actually there’s nothing funny.
More experienced friends warned him: keep all the important stuff with you. Shame. At least Pafnutiy has good friends, so he immediately reached out to them and they sent him all new things from Moscow. While waiting for them to arrive he borrowed something from me or from the hotel (like slippers).
Marrakech is a big and vivid part of the Arabic world so we decided to start with a walk around the city.
The city is all minarets, markets, crowds, hustle, dirt, women covered in black and men in white… Altogether it feels quite oriental and ancient.
Over the day we managed to tick off the whole list of mandatory attractions: dined on delicious lamb at the market, taught the Berbers to dress meat correctly, hugged a couple of snakes, hypnotized a fakir, rode around in a donkey carriage, wandered through solitary streets. Having completed the list we returned to the hotel.
It could have gone quite well if I hadn’t forgotten my iPhone under the Morocco sun – it clearly wasn’t its best day ever.
The next day we went for a run to check out our equipment for the MDS and our abilities to sustain the heat. The main objective was to get an idea of how fast we could run under such conditions.
Our run took us to the airport where we met two more martyrs – I mean runners. They were Iya from Russia and Vlad from Ukraine. Also Pashka had finally gotten his luggage. Based on its looks I can suggest it visited at least Chile and Sydney.
To celebrate happy morning events (and to show affection to our feet) we went for a pedicure. If only those feet knew what they were about to sustain…
The following day I inspected my backpack and carefully repacked all my food checking every calorie out of those prepared for seven days. Again I came to the conclusion that I’d go with two meals a day, one bite of nuts, and two glasses of tea (from one teabag). Eventually it turned out I was right.
Left to right: carb shake19 for quick recovery after running, breakfast-lunch, lunch-dinner, a bite (nuts and dried fruit), energy gels20 for power charge during the run, teabags and sugar. X-day is some spare food for emergencies.
Then I packed together food for the first two days and stuffed my backpack. The digits on the scales were quite a nice surprise: 6.35 kg. Just the necessary minimum, within the range of sanity. Great!
Примечания
1
one of a series of long-distance triathlon races consisting of a 2.4-mile (3.86 km) swim, a 112-mile (180.25 km) bicycle ride and a marathon 26.22-mile (42.20 km) run. It is widely considered one of the most difficult one-day sporting events in the world.
2
to participate in a multi-stage competition, where you need to swim and run. Unlike triathlon, swimrun involves multiple legs of running and swimming, which alternate with each other
3
a distance of 21.0975 km
4
a distance of 42.195 km
5
one of a series of short-distance triathlon races consisting of a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) swim, 56-mile (90 km) bike ride, and 13.1-mile (21.1 km) run.
6
the oldest and most popular track and field race in the world for super-marathon distance. The 90 km long distance courses through the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa
7
one of the most famous swimruns
8
the unique ultramarathon relay taking place in Moldova and crossing the whole country
9
same as ultramarathon runners. Those brave guys who run more than 42 km and 195 meters
10
a device that you can take with you on a trip, to a marathon or to other places where there is no mobile connection, and from which you can signal “OK” and “SOS”
11
part of the timekeeping system attached to your BIB number, which allows you to record your time
12
personal race number, which is issued to a runner.
13
fingersocks or 5-toe socks. It’s about socks, right!
14
the best plasters in the world for treating blisters and corns.
15
same as a satellite tracker, only with an additional texting feature.
16
an ethnic group living in North Africa, in Central and Western Sudan.
17
food subjected to vacuum drying. Takes up little space, great for a hike, sometimes even tasty.
18
liquid prepared by squeezing fruit or vegetable flesh.
19
useful supplement for quick recovery after intense physical exertion.
20
a synthetic derivative of glucose, created from chemical reagents for maintaining energy in super long-distance races.