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Life at the bivouac
We finally arrive at the camp after a 7 hour ride and a flat tire we had to change... That was a good welcome to Morrocco! We already have our minds full of pictures of the Morroccan desert, mountains, Jebels and Oasis. It is about 7pm and we contemplate the beautiful sunset as we arrive.
My tent mates
We are allocated to our tent. Until the end of the race, we will sleep every night in the same tent with the same 8 people. This will become our new family and probably the opportunity to tie links that we will never forget. Our tent has the most eclectic mix of people you can imagine and I am so glad I got to deeply know every single person in our new home:
- Thierry is a very successful mechanical engineer who owns a practice that works with all sort of industries including a majority of projects working on nuclear plants. He also owns many other businesses like restaurants nearby where he lives in West of France (Cherbourg)
- Sebastien is a hospital director in West of France. He came here with his best friend Thierry.
- The other Thierry is an emergency doctor and will be our wise advisor for the tent - why is it so important to talk salt tablets? -.He is coming here for the second time attempting to finish MDS.
- Christophe has a top secret job (no joke) that involves working with the president. That's all I can tell :-)
- Cyril is a plumber. Outside of work, he is passionate about running and also a very experienced judoka teaching judo and continues to progress as a master he is currently 4th dan and fisnished in first position of several trails in west of France.
- Edouard is the commercial director and former digital manager (what a coincidence!) of a large French insurance company. We said we would do a business lunch when back in Paris :-)
- Pierre is the youngest in the tent and from his 25 years old he is already an experienced ultra trailer. In his spare time, he is a computer scientist.
From left to right: Christophe, Pierre, me, Cyril, Edouard, Thierry. Photo taken on the charity stage (last day)
Recovering under the tent after the first stage
Sleeping
The first couple of nights in the tent are tough. We sleep on the floor, which has lots of rocks and I have a very thin gym mattress which I cut in half to gain some weight. The mattress only covers the upper part of my body so I feel the rocks on my legs and feet. My backpack serves as a pillow and it is too painful to sleep on the side or on the stomach, so I have to learn to sleep on the back. Last but not least, nights are cold, around 7 °C (~45°F) and windy.
As we get up around 5:30am and nights are always discontinuous, we go to bed almost as soon as the sun sets after 7pm. After the first stage and the 3rd night sleeping on the floor, the tiredness helping, I finally find a good technique to sleep on the back and get used to it. But it is not the case of most of my tent mates like Christophe who only manage to sleep 3-4 hours every night and wake up with a huge backpain.
The 4th night is one of the worst night we spend. We go to bed as usual around 8pm but a sand storms start to blow up the camp from 11pm. Tents fly away, including ours, and I wake up like in the middle of the nightmare trying to collect my stuff so they don't fly away too. The 8 of us spend the night until 4am all laying on the back holding the tent so it does not fly away at the mercy of the wind. After that night Thierry 2 decides to quit as he did not close the eye of the night and the first couple of days racing have been tough for him.
Tents the morning of the send storm. Ours flew away so we had to tie it again during the storm but other tents collapsed (see the one on the left)
My bed after the night spent in the sand storm
Selfie taken after the night spent in the sandstorm before stage 3. I don't look so fresh after sleeping 3 hours...
Managing your food and water
One of the only activity we have on the camp is eating. Eating is important to recover and get some energy for the effort but it is also the only thing you think about when there is nothing else to do. Everyone eats lyophilised dishes as they provide the most interesting ratio calorie weight but they are all disgusting and taste the same. From day 3, we are all dreaming about having a good steak with fries.
Like most runners, as soon as we arrive at camp, we look for stones and dried kindling wood to light up a fire on which we can put our extra light cooking pot to boil water.
When you cross the finish line of a stage, the organization gives you 4 bottles of water. Generally you drink the first bottle almost straight away. You also have to keep one bottle of water for the first 12km of the stage on the following day (they don't provide water until the first check point). That means you have 2 bottles of water to use wisely. 1 bottle generally goes in the food to hydrate iophilized dishes collation after the stage, dinner, + breakfast. Then you can use some of it to wash your face and feet and even do a laundry of your sockets if you can afford that luxury. In any case, you have to manage your water extremely carefully and give the priority to your hydratation of course.
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