I made it - we made it! The huge surprise was my daughter Christy's arrival in Cairo announcing she would be racing with me instead of Mary . Two weeks before the race my son-in-law said to Chris, 'You know you should be doing this race with your Mum instead of training for Trail Walkers (a 100kms race in Hong Kong). Chris rang Mary Gadams to ask if it was too late to enter, Mary was thrilled to have Chris take her place as she had been so busy with all the organising she had had little time to train... and it was a total surprise for me. It was wonderful to have her along adn somehow we made it. Here is Chris's final blog sent from the cyber tent at the last campsite - it says it all!

So let me talk you through the last 26 hours -
30-Oct-2009

Sahara Race (Egypt) 2009
So let me talk you through the last 26 hours -
Yesterday morning we woke at 4.30am - already fairly testing. Got all my gear ready, taped up feet, gagged on freeze dried breakfast, ran to loo tent but usual stage fright so nothing happened, panicked it would happen in first 5 minutes of race surrounded by 128 race companions. Ran round looking for mum while five minute bell sounding in the distance. Find mum faffing in tent, way behind schedule, panicked we'd be left behind. Grab mum's rucksack, haul it to start line, try not to sound like a plonker shouting "mum, hurry up!!". Mum comes hobbling over, one shoe on one shoe off "Darling let me take a quick picture of you near the camel" shit! scramble over to camel, smile and say cheese,
"5...4....3...2"
"Mum quick get your shoe on" sweating profusely, quickly chuck her pack on her back,
"1....go" and we're off. I am completely exhausted and we have 86.5 km ahead of us.
First 40km not too bad. There was a bit of wind and we did it in 6 hours. This may not sound very quick but in this heat with a backpack on, in soft sand and 46.5km still to go, you just can't go too fast or it's over before it begins.
Conversation is pretty limited along the way as major effort is being put into just moving forward, even thinking is minimal as it just takes up too much energy. I thought I would be having some seriously profound thoughts during this trip but most of the time it's just 'Gosh it's quite hot.' 'Crumbs my feet hurt.' 'Wow that sand dune was further away then I expected'. 'Funny, I thought more time had gone by.' That sort of thing, except replace every first word with an expletive.
Mum felt nauseous throughout the day so it was incredibly hard for her to eat anything which was a real worry but the medics gave her a pill at every check point and she ploughed on like the trouper she is.
We crawled into checkpoint 6 at 8pm, the last 2 hours and had been deep soft sand and we were completely shattered, 14 hours on our feet! There was hot water and a tent so we made pot noodles and climbed into our sleeping bags.No sleep was had as leg ache was so intense so at 1am we got up again to prepare for another 6 1/2 hours of walking through the night. It was very cold and our legs were killing us but we marched on. Mum put Dolly Parton on her ipod and I ( ipodless) tried to do some thinking - see above.
 The last hour was excruciating, up and down sand dunes forever and I finally lost my cool, I know, can you believe it? I just cracked and started openly swearing, kicking sand around and shouting at the miles of empty space around me where there was meant to be a campsite. Mum was finding the whole thing equally unfunny and at her absolute lowest she crumbled and said "oh bloody hell, this is ridiculous!" at which point I knew she'd reached the end of her teather. At 8.35am and some 26 hours after we started we saw the camp perched right on the top of a humungous sand dune - hilarious. I thought it was going to be a scene out of the Perrier advert with mum and I crawling up on our elbows but somehow we managed to muster enough energy to climb this thing and arrive in camp in a dignified, utterly exhausted fashion.
Would I do this again? Absolutely NOT!!!!!!!!
Cannot wait to come home. Craving rice and soy sauce with stir fried vegtables. Miss my children like crazy. Miss you Nicko and never want to spend a day away from home again - except possibly small trip to The Farm?
I'm coming home YIIIIIIIPPPPPPEEEEEE!!!!!!

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February 2010

The pain is a distant memory - I'm just beining to think that the Atacama Desert  marathon might be 'fun.'