Camp routine was
based around the timing of the sun setting and rising – following on from our
early night, the whole camp arose at about 5.30am as it got light. It was a chilly and relaxed start to the day. The day would see us queuing for vast swathes
of it, and bidding farewell to our surplus kit.
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| Early to bed, early to rise..... |
First off we had to queue in the centre of the camp for our
day’s water ration – something which sounds straightforward, but which
descended into farce pretty quickly as the many many volunteers struggled to
develop a seamless and efficient process for handing out a fixed number of
bottles of water to every person in front of them. We were glad to still have our extra kit with
us at this point as it remained chilly in camp until late morning.
After queuing for breakfast, we then queued for the MdS shop
where we all wanted a fancy MdS Buff, then for the proper queue of the day –
the control checks. Here we got to stand
in the sunshine (mercifully much warmer now, and indeed many folk were looking
like they were burning) and await our turn to hand over our bags that weren’t
coming with us on the race, then to pick up our water cards and race numbers,
explain how heavy our race packs were and talk to the medical team who also
gave us our medical cards and salt tablets for the week. In fact it was a pretty slick operation, and
once inside the admin tent I was processed through with the minimum of fuss and
churned out the other end stood blinking in the bright sunshine having one of
those “oh no, what have I done?” moments – this was now very real. Everything I needed to survive the next week
was in my bag on my back, and I had no way of changing things now. I’d managed to help out a couple of other
competitors with excess kit prior to the control checks where they’d either
lost items, or felt cold the night before – a silk sleeping bag liner and
rucksack pouch were donated to the benefit of my fellow runners.
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| Queuing for the final checks. |
In fact once we all got back to the tent there was much more
of a calm atmosphere. It was almost as
if the excess kit we’d all been fussing over and worrying about had been an
unnecessary distraction and with it out of the way and our choices made, we
could all relax a little. I was pleased
that my kit choices made back in the UK were still broadly what I had with me –
after all I’d trained with all my kit, had tried the food and knew what I would
want with me on the race. The only
additional items I had with me were a couple of spare Buffs which I forgot to
take out of my pack and a little treat for Easter Sunday.
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| Everything I could possibly need for a week in the desert. |
Today it got really hot between noon and 3pm – a taster of
what expect during the week. Luckily
today however the afternoon was spent drinking tea and eating biscuits in the
shade of the tent (the tea and biscuits were kept back to be consumed before
the race commenced).
The last bit of admin involved less queuing but was equally
as vital – one of the race volunteers came round to each tent to issue our shit
sacks for the week. I should explain,
hopefully without breaching too many taboos, the toilets were set up as follows
– for a wee, it was expected that you wandered what you deemed to be a
civilised distance from the camp and sought to re-hydrate the parched landscape
whilst enjoying the view. Clearly what
some people felt was a civilised distance was not what others would consider
appropriate. Mark in our tent was our
top culprit, barely walking 10 paces from the back of the tent, but then he
does live in Kilburn. For a more
substantial requirement, some cubicles were set up around the camp comprising a
tarpaulin wrapped around a metal frame.
Inside each cubicle was a plastic stool (forgive the pun) with a hole in
the seat. The idea was that you took
your shit sack and hung it over the stool then did your business, cleaned up
and took the bag out again (having first sealed it with a good knot) and placed
it in the bin found outside. It sounds
primitive, but it worked remarkably well – I didn’t hear of anyone getting a dodgy
stomach throughout the week, which in previous years had been a major concern.
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| That's Mark on the left - the furthest he went for a wee all week. |
Further good news for me was that my back, which had been
really stiff and aching after our long journey from the UK to the desert was
not causing me any great discomfort, and my calf muscle was feeling better all
the time. With everything more or less
in order our tent then settled down for the rest of the afternoon watching the
pack sizes of other competitors and wondering how they could fit a weeks’ worth
of kit into such a small bag. The only
exceptions to this were other Brits who generally had packs of a similar size
to mine, and the Japanese who as a rule had packs that wouldn’t have looked out
of place on a Duke of Edinburgh bronze award expedition.
Later in the afternoon there was a pre-race briefing at which
we heard about an 80 year old man taking part, and someone doing their 25th
MdS. There was also a group of
firefighters from France who would be pushing/carrying a chariot with disabled
kids in it for the whole race. And an
English guy doing it with an iron and ironing board, just for fun. Nuts, all of them.
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| Race briefing in the hot afternoon sun. |
A more sombre dinner at the race organisers catering
facility followed shortly after the briefing, and then off to bed early again,
by now I for one was incredibly nervous about the following day. I didn’t sleep well.
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