subject: A View Of Endurance Running Through Sahara Desert [print this page] For a long time I have been fascinated by Endurance Running and back in June 2006 I did my first Endurance Running in the Gobi Desert in China and wow that was an experience out of this world with the scenery and the mental challenge I faced there. At many times things got so rough that I was sure that I would never do this again but never say never because just few weeks after my first run I had paid my entry fee to yet another Endurance run which had to take place in the Sahara Desert and once again I had to go through 250 km in 6 days
Endurance Running through Sahara Desert this time as before I had to run carrying all my own stuff in a back pack to survive such as sleeping bag, food, clothes for all 6 days. The only thing the race organizations would provide during the race was hot water at night and bottled water during the day at check points.
With a length of 250 km for the entire race the 6 days was split into 6 stages and the distance covered each day was changing with a short run one day and a long day on stage 5 with 100 km to be covered. The last part of the long run was finished in the dark and the last 15 km was through soft sand - Sure did I did tired legs.
To make everything a little bit different from the Endurance Running I did my first time I decided that I wanted to compete as a team with 2 other guys. The 3 of us had to keep up at all time if we had to much distance between us ( not more than 6 meters) we would get disqualified.
When hungry after a long day of running most food might seem nice but after a few days with powder food each day gets less appealing. The problem is you need the energy and you have to eat everything to keep up high spirit when running and keeping our goal in mind that we wanted to win we knew we could not go through without eating all the food. The sun is burning most of the time when you run in the desert and many of our competitors had to give up either because they dehydrated or got a heat stroke. This was a good reminder to us that we had to keep drinking a lot of water all day long and not waste to much because we only had 1.5 liters between the check points and with 10-15 km between each check point and at the same time running in sand, can be a challenge it selves on top of the Endurance Running.
As the days went by and we got closer to our goal the more experience and knowledge when got from running as a team. Running as a team you really face many obstacles which you do not face when you compete by yourself. For an optimized team everybody has to run at the same pace, get tired at the same time and eat at the same time but this is usually not the case and one really have to let go and follow the team flow because first then you get stronger as a team. In the end we managed this and it gave us the first place in that race - we made a short film of our experience so please have a look at our Endurance Running in Sahara Desert
