Why am I doing this?

I am repeatedly asked why am I doing this, why have I embarked on the Marathon des Sables (MdS).

My Daughter

When I asked my 20-year old daughter why she thinks am I doing this, her reply was that this was her dad’s mid-life crises. The basis for her statement, I assume, is her exposure to psychology 101 and the assumption that Sigmund Freud was correct and that her dad is now driven by the fear of impending death, or alternatively that Carl Jung was right and that I am finding it difficult to deal with the confusion created by the misalignment between my life and my goals.

Her response got me thinking, am I afraid of death? The short answer is no, the reasons for my statement is highly personal and I will not expand upon it, beyond simple logic. If I was afraid of death, I would not expose myself to the extreme that is the MdS. I have always lived life, loved being alive, appreciated the gift that is life but never with a fear of death. My love for life and being alive ensures that I maintain the fine balance between recklessness and passivity.

The second possibility is that I am confused due to a misalignment between my life and my goals. This required a little more introspection which I found invigorating. But, unfortunately, the theory has failed again. I am quite satisfied with my life; I have everything that I ever thought was important, a wife, a daughter, a home where love is in abundance. I enjoy what I am doing daily and have done so for most of my adult life. I revisited my dream list and reflected upon its content with a certain level of satisfaction that I have achieved what I set out to do.       

I can, therefore, state with a high level of certainty that it is not a mid-life crisis that drove me to entering the MdS. Although, I do reserve the right to have a mid-life crisis if it can guarantee a private jet, super yacht, villa in Spain, beach house in Grand Cayman and a fleet of super cars with a Harley thrown-in to seal the deal.    

An Old Friend

A friend of mine from military days thinks that I am losing my mind and that it is a lack of memory that sees me commit to such insanity, it seems as if he remembers the pain more vividly then I do, so maybe he is correct. He recalls our muscle and blister pains, the treatment and hard times. I remember the excitement, the challenge and the small group of close buddies that made difficult times easier to deal with. The truth is that our combined view was the real experience.

It is not that I don’t remember the pain, the suffering and the hard times, but that I prefer to remember the great things. I have taken through life, one ultimate lesson learned from my time in the South African Defence Force, and that is that irrespective of how impossible a situation may seem, I have the ability to overcome it. As 20-year old kids, we didn’t know what we were capable of achieving, we didn’t know how far we could push ourselves physically and mentally, and we didn’t know what strength lay just below our exterior. But because of what we went through I now know.

So it isn’t a lack of memory that drives me but rather the fact that I do remember, I have an intimate knowledge that it is possible.   

At Work

Others around me simply think that I have lost it completely; “you are mad” is words that I hear regularly. I have not been officially tested yet, so to provide a medical response on my sanity status would be pre-emptive. I did, however, take the insanity test at http://penddraig.co.uk/pen/tests/sanity.htm as a precaution. It seems that I am less than 5% insane, so a 95% sanity level seems quite definitive. So to everyone that keeps on saying “you are mad doing the MdS”, the test don’t lie, I am all there!

My Dogs

My dogs don’t seem to have an opinion either way, they are just too happy for me to run regularly. They have me well trained, getting me to give them viennas, each time I return from a run. As can be imagined they are great supporters and encourage me to run, run, run!!

My Wife

There is one amazingly wonderful woman who inspires me daily and that is my wife. She knows me far better than anyone else. After 23 years of married life she knows who and what I am. She is a companion, a motivator, an encourager, a running partner, a wife, a mother and a dream come true. But above everything else she is an intelligent women who’s opinion I value, and who’s insight amazes me.

When I posed the question to her she simply smiled and said: “because you love it”, and she is right. The question, therefore, is actually not why am I doing this, but rather, why do I love doing it. To answer this question I will tell you about the race, a little about me and something about my view on life.

The Race

When I talk about the Marathon des Sables (MdS) most people find it difficult to conceptualise it beyond running. It is true that the execution of this event is a mechanical activity that most runners execute with a run / walk combination. I had a look at the 26^th Sultan Marathon des Sables race results, the winner Rachid El Morabity, completed the race in 20:56:19 or at an average speed of 11.99km/h. The last person over the finish line was April Scott in a total time of 77:43:17 or at an average speed of 3.23km/h. A Fellow South African, Philip Fouche, finished in 694^th position with a time of 60:40:48 running at an average speed of 4.14km/h. These are all amazing individuals for whom I have the greatest of respect; they are modern-day explorers, heroes and fellow travellers.

As a running event, there is no doubt that this race lives up to its status as “the world’s toughest foot race”. What makes this race tough is a combination of activity, environment, demand and discipline. The distance is between 240 and 250km’s run over a six day period in 6 stages. In total the race is the equivalent of 5 ½ marathons or nearly 3 Comrade Marathons. The longest single stage is longer than 80km’s and the shortest is 22km’s. The average day temperature is 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) and at night temperatures can fall below freezing. There are few roads to run on, and the running environment can range between soft sand dunes (at least 20%) to rocky outcrops that are so steep ropes are needed to reach the top. Runners are expected to carry everything they need in their back-packs, sleep in Berber tents, be self-sufficient and have the physical and mental stamina to remain focused. This race is so extreme that there is no standard training program for it. Most marathon training programs include a single 32km long run distance as part of its preparation, Comrades Marathon training has a single 42km long run, and a 50 miler program typically has a 45km long run. For the MdS I have a 160km long run scheduled plus a number of 50km long runs. My average weekly total is around the 130km mark, peaking at 180km’s per week, with numerous three consecutive day totals reaching as high as 105km’s.

However, the MdS is more than a foot race, it is a journey. This journey is not just 6 days long, but starts a year or so before the event and lasts a life time afterwards. The Australian, Cliff Mc Kinley, ran the MdS in 2007; he provides some clarity on the race on his blog where he says: “anyone who tells you about their place (in this race) or asks you about yours just don’t get this event!” [http://www.canteen.org.au/default.asp?menuid=201]

This is not a race, it is a journey.

For some of us it is about making a difference, we contribute our time and effort to bring awareness to the plight of people who have the most basic needs that remain unsatisfied. We place ourselves against nature and our own inner daemons in an effort to do what is needed to extend a hand of friendship. In an act of neighbourly love we do what we can to bring relief to fellow humans whom we don’t know, but who will experience the smallest of gestures as life changing. I salute those runners who did so for charities in the preceding 26 MdS races, in my eyes you are real heroes!

As with fellow MdS participants I am a modern-day explorer. Together we will set ourselves against the elements in an environment that few people will ever see, let alone experience in its raw beauty. But we will explore much more than the environment within which we will live for a brief moment, we will explore ourselves. It is in the Sahara desert where we will have to find within ourselves the strength to overcome our fears, the strength to deal with pain, the inner discipline to do what we set out to do and the belief that we can complete this amazing journey.      

The Runner

Who am I, is a question that we are faced with at various stages throughout our life. Sometimes the question speaks to identity and we ask it in an effort to find ourselves. Other times the question has a much deeper intention, such as when we try to identify our place in this world or within our own family or community. There is a third dimension to the question of who I am. The question hopes to define the “me” in terms of my character when every aspect of civil luxury, comfort and ease of existence has been stripped away, and all that is left is an individual who must find spiritual, physical and mental strength

The last question can only be answered when you are isolated, without comfort, and at the point of ultimate exhaustion. It is only when you have reached your known limit that you have the opportunity to know how far you can extend this limit. It is at this point that you have the ability to define who you are, not in terms of status or social standing, but in-terms of your own existence. It is this ability for self-discovery that I love; it is the ability to redefine who I am in terms of life itself. This is why I love it! My wife is correct, she knows me so well. I am on this journey to find within me the beauty of life itself, a beauty that is not clouded by our secular existence where we become distracted by aspects of life that have no value in itself. I am here, on this journey, to find kindness within me, the humility, the love for a stranger, the love for my family, friends and myself, the caring that is needed to make the world a better place, and to find all of it within a wilderness that is perceived as being lifeless.

As part of who I am, I have set-out on this journey, not only to redefine myself at the most basic level, but also to make a difference, to contribute to those causes that need to be heard, but who often don’t have the voice to make their plight known. In the weeks to come I will tell you more about each one of these so please revisit my blog and take this journey with me.

Thank you for visiting my blog, and I hope that you will be inspired in the months to come to find your own journey.

Genis