Two Burst Condoms!

One of only 2 locals we saw on the 25 mile run

The weekend that I’d been looking forward to since first meeting Iain at the Riyadh Road Runners’ 10 miler had arrived. The plan was to meet Iain and his friend Carl at Salwa compound Thursday morning, head into the desert, park up and run for five to six hours, camp out, trying our race rations, then meet Dave (another of Iain’s colleagues) at the dunes and run for two hours over the sand. As I’ve learned in the Army; no plan survives contact with the enemy, and this was no exception.

I met up with Iain as planned, but Carl couldn’t make it, so it was a romantic trip for two into the wilderness. We loaded up my Landcruiser and set off for an area about 25km to the North of Ban Ban Sands. As a race veteran; Dave had told Iain that this area was ideal for training for MdS, and had all the ingredients for helping us to prepare. We parked up in a valley that offered a cover with a few trees, but found a rather interesting smell greeted us upon opening the vehicle doors. We prepped our running gear, including my newly sewn in ‘Pico Freeloader’ Solar Charger, and set off along the valley floor.

The terrain varied from gravelly track, desert plain and patches of sand, to what resembled the lunar surface or the edge of a volcano. For most of the improvised route, which Iain planned on the hoof using a hand-held GPS, we were able to run at a fairly steady rate, and we managed to maintain a pace similar to what I achieved in last week’s marathon. The rougher ground had us hopping and skipping and prevented running completely at times. The sweat was pouring off me and was in my eyes mixed with sun tan lotion, preventing me from affectively focusing on the ground and I ended up taking a few tumbles, opening up a nice wound on the palm of my hand in the process.

We ran for four and a half hours, with few breaks and estimated that we covered something like a marathon distance. I used seven or eight 600ml bottles of water and put my ‘Xtreme’ caffeine tabs in most of them. I started with about 11kg in my pack and finished with 7.5kg, doing the maths from my water consumption doesn’t work out until you open the pack to find that my warm kit had soaked up the balance. Water-proofing will definitely be necessary.

On the approach to the vehicle, we observed where the strange smell was coming from – a dead camel was laid in the ‘dead ground’ North of our proposed campsite, this was quickly un-proposed. We moved a feet hundred metres along the valley and put up the tent and laid out the desert carpet. We collected some fire wood and settled into routine of post-run admin, cooking and playing with fire (Iain seemed very keen on the latter!). The freeze-dried rations were very tasty, we tried chicken korma and beef hotpot and later enjoyed chocolate pudding, which was like lumpy chocolate milkshake with sand in it (glad I ordered more of the cinnamon ones).

We were testing out our race sleeping systems, which are rated down to zero degrees, but my vehicle display read 18 degrees and it was quite chilly. I took a tip from Mark Hines’ book and took condoms (much to Iain’s concern) to make improvised inflatable pillows, using the sleeping bag stuff sack as a pillow case. My first attempt was a failure, as I over inflated the Jonny so a big bulge was sticking out the end of the sack, and every time I put my head on it – all the air pushed out into the bulge. That condom burst as I tried to get it out of the sack. I blew the second one up to the correct size and managed to get it to stay inside the sack, but as soon as I went to sleep and my head became a dead weight – the bloody thing popped! The rest of the night was uncomfortable and cold, and every time I put my injured palm on my T-shirt; the sweat salt gave me a nasty shock.

Morning routine was fairly slick, but breakfasts were quite disappointing; strawberry porridge was okay, but the hot sultana cereal was pretty inedible. We packed up the tent, loaded up the car, and set off back towards Ban Ban, then headed past it to the North-West. We met up with Dave and Carl and set off on a plod up, down, across and between some fairly impressive dunes. Iain went off weaving his own route to add some distance to the main pack, and I felt brave enough to follow him on a few jaunts, including a hell of a climb up a real monster slope, which I kind of regretted half way up! I cut away and headed back to the car after about an hour, as I was expecting a friend to arrive in Riyadh that morning and had to get back to the flat.

The weekend was a big confidence boost for both; Iain and me. I was hugely relieved that I could actually run on the second day, and Iain was hugely relieved that the condoms were used as pillows!