Last Hard Weekend



Warm up: get down there!

With Iain now back in the UK until MdS; would I be able to motivate myself to get out of the compound and hit the desert on my own? It took until about 2pm on the Thursday, but I got myself loaded up into the Landcruiser for a trip down to the Escarpment to the South of Riyadh. I have wanted to go for a run down there since spending a few days driving back and forth whilst observing acceptance tests for a new piece of Guard equipment, but could never talk any of my training partners into making the trip.

Mp3 player's down here somewhere



I drove off the motorway just as it starts to carve its way deep into the rock, and followed the track that runs across the top of the phenomenal feature for just under a kilometre and parked behind a man-made burm just a few yards from the edge of a huge re-entrant. On taking in the spectacular view I decided that the re-entrant was just about climbable and thought that it would make a good warm up. It was a cool day and dust caused visibility to be low, so I took the opportunity to try out my new Buff (sporting a nice St Andrews flag pattern, as I have been sponsored by the Riyadh Caledonian Society).

It took me 45 minutes to get down and back up, and I was certainly warm by the time I’d finished the ascent. The rock formations and views in all directions were beautiful and I had to resist the temptation to get the camera out every few steps. On getting back to the car I found that my mp3 player had gone missing in action, which means having to buy a new one, but more annoyingly; having to compile a whole new playlist.

Your friendly neighbourhood 'pest-man'

I set off along the top of the escarpment with an aim of running for about an hour around the edge and then heading back to the car by the shortest route along the track. The edge is by no means straight and there are many re-entrants and crags hidden from view, so there was a lot of direction changing and climbing involved, but it put some serious energy through my legs and toughened up my ankles somewhat. The ground was unimaginably rough, but I tried to run as much of it as possible, only falling over once (Iain would be amazed!). The panoramas just got better and better, with the dust adding to great effect.

Have to admit; it gave me the willies walking over that!

I wanted to get across to the most prominent outcrop within view, but the hidden re-entrants meant having to box out a considerable distance, and even then I had to go out further and climb up and down some cheeky valleys. Eventually I made it around and was rewarded with a stunning walk across a bridge of rock, to what felt like a floating island that had 300 metre drop-offs 300° around. Running back was somewhat less interesting!

After enjoying a night of the ‘Red Hot Chilli Pipers’ at Salwa Compound, I awoke for another day’s outdoor training on the South side of Ban Ban Sands off the Qassim Road. I had the honour of training with Mo; Riyadh Road Runners' superstar, and MdS veteran (placing 59^th). We ran around 14km to the East across fairly flat and uninteresting plain, Mo will have covered a much greater distance as he was having to do ‘runaways’ to keep his engine firing, as my pace wasn’t quite cutting it for him! Our destination was the ‘Mountain of Madness’, a sombre looking lone sand dune that erupts from the otherwise flat plain. This feature is used by Red Bull for its extreme hill-climbing events, where customised off-road vehicles are thrashed up the steepest of slopes to try and reach the summit. The sand was still damp from some rare rain that had fallen in the previous days. Mo and I tackled the dune along its western ridge, which was a mistake, as our feet slipped off either side – lesson learned; always head up a face if possible.

Some of my SANGCOM friends were on the area, and Gary hitched a lift to the top of the dune on a local’s quad bike so that he could photograph my torture. Getting down was eminently more fun and took a whole lot less time. At the bottom we had a chat, and I decided that I’d already done too much this weekend, when I was supposed to be tapering down my training; so I headed off with the gang for some desert driving, leaving Mo to run back to his car on his lonesome (in significantly less time than it took us to get there).