 |
| Half vampire - half werewolf. At one point, at the peak of a long climb, I did let out a full volume wolf cry over the dunes - because we're in the Kalahari, for flip's sake! |
I am back from the Kalahari (or, as F. sweetly refers to it:
the “Halakari”), reunited mit the family, and my middle class trappings. The novelty of a mattress, or a microwave
oven, each solemnly awaiting your arrival, has not worn off.
The experience was very positive. Judging against the success metrics I put
down in public before I left, I am very pleased. Expert mover of goal posts that I am,
however, I can’t help but think that I could perhaps have done this a bit faster.
I entered the race with a ‘Protect the Asset’ mentality,
because (i) I didn’t trust my training, (ii) I didn’t trust my knee, and (iii)
the terrain on Day 1 required brutal bouldering with a still full pack (which I
got down to about 12kg wet weight, with the help of C. and Z., my companions
from Kenya), and clambering in and out of super hot and steep dry river beds
(which made me worry about snapping my right leg off entirely).
It also didn’t help that I had 2 scary experiences right on
day 1, which made me turn completely conservative when it came to
self-management.
The first one was when I was alone in the land of boulders
and river beds, and emerged around a steep sandy bend, and huffed my way up the
lip of the river to find a German lady (a competitor) sobbing on a rock. This was literally 2 hours into the race, so
I was a little taken aback. The German
spoke not a lick of English or French (didn’t even try Hindi) and so we defaulted
to my Grade 6 German. Had I, she asked,
passed any other Germans. I had, I
replied, and they were together a couple of kilometers behind us. I was very pleased to have been able to dredge
and jam the word ‘zusammen’ into my response.
Bafflingly, this elicited fresh sobbing from the German (it couldn't just have been because of my accent), whom I now
began to suspect of being unhinged and/or a risk to her own well-being, and more
troublingly, perhaps mine. A baboon
barked ferociously at us from atop a cactus about 10 meters away, and I felt a deep
longing to be on my way and away from this sad tableau. I asked half-heartedly if I could perhaps
help, and was hugely relieved when she waved me off with a red hanky.
The second and scarier episode of Day 1 was at the finishing
camp. I was feeling pretty good, having
loosened my legs (you generally ‘taper’ before start date, which means reduce/eliminate
running altogether, so I hadn’t run in about 10 days), and gotten some
confidence in the terrain/climate etc.
My buddy SR (who has featured in this blog before) had recommended that I
get a recovery massage at the camp, so there I was with closed eyes laid out on
the massage table. I suddenly heard moaning and shouting of such a ridiculous volume and of such a melodramatic
nature that I thought maybe some lycra-clad guys were horsing about near the
tents. It transpired that a competitor
was having violent spasms and cramps. My
masseuse murmured something about magnesium deficiency due to hydration
failure. In any event, this guy was
literally rolling around on the sand, howling, and begging ‘Please god,
help me!’ He was medevacked shortly thereafter. This both sobered me up and
ruined my massage, and I spent the night tossing about in my sleeping bag.
By the 40km stage, however, I felt I had acclimatized, and
my knee had not so much as murmured, so I decided to run less
conservatively.
The race itself was beautifully organized, and Nadia the
race director, was equal parts Mother Theresa and George Patton – funny,
patient, clinically well organized.
My one bit of constructive criticism was that the camp
culture was a little too competitive for my taste. I had come to the Halakari in the spirit of
amateurism, wearing my regular sunglasses and A’s triathlon stockings. I was therefore a little taken aback at all
the lycra, and ‘what time did you reach CP3 etc.’ There were a few genuine eccentrics, which I
appreciated (one British guy, a tentmate one night, pulled from his pocket set
of 5 nesting dodecahedrons he had machined himself, a good luck charm
requiring, he said, 160 distinct machine operations, each of which had to be
flawless or else you started from scratch), but there were also a lot of people
taking themselves and the race far more seriously than is appropriate.
Sure, be safe and do your best, but also don’t forget to
wear pants bro! You would be hard-pressed
to find me wearing a pair of lycra pants advertising a brand of pasta or
mineral water on my bum. Death before dishonor (or Buitoni).
What I learned:
Bite sizes of the elephant: To paraphrase Charlie Chaplin’s advice
(life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot), it is
critical to break the race up into constituent parts. It is not, therefore, a 250km race, but 29
CPs, strung along like pearls on a necklace.
Make it to the next CP as fast as possible without borrowing too much
from the future, that’s it. My mantra
came in very handy here, as I reminded myself to just keep moving ahead, with intentionality.
Concentrate when you run:
This was a new one to me, and very counter-intuitive to my normal
approach. I tend to zone out, listen to
music, watch the landscape, plant the seed of a solution to a problem and let
the background mental apps mull it over etc., and I thought this race would
give me tonnes of time to do all this.
In fact, if I didn’t will myself to get a rhythm going early in the stage, I found myself
ambling along, distracted and unfocussed.
So I started counting to hundred as I ran, and allowing myself a brief walk
when I got to a thousand. This was meditative, and required
only the backburners of my mind, which left me free to negotiate the terrain
(rocks, scree, sand etc.), navigate (I got lost twice!), and take in my
surroundings (best thing: a string of 5 female ostriches running alongside me
for a bit, and then making a hard right and accelerating into the sunset).
Trouble shoot early and often: Because of the equipment-heavy nature of the
race, my inexperience, and the fact that it is hard to buy anything technical
in Kenya, I had all sorts of wardrobe and equipment malfunctions (pinched nerve
in the upper back from my pack, chafing, blisters, jiggly frontpack, sunscreen
fail). Again, SR had cautioned me to
address each one as soon as I became aware of them, to preempt them from
becoming race-enders. So I slathered on
the sunscreen (SPF 30 is not enough, even for me!), changed socks often, and tried numerous different pack
configurations (never really fixed this one, and my back still hurts a lot as I
type this).
Emails help, a lot: One of the joys of the race was to have
washed and bathed at finishing camp, and then find a quiet corner (check for
scorpions!), and lie with your head on your pack and read the mail. Thanks to everyone who wrote, and what a
range there was: one-liners (HAbuza), hilarious blast from the past (K.Sahni),
poems (S.Ryan – also thanks for the Injinji socks, which I wore and laundered
every day in the desert, V. Fotuhi), loving support from the fam (my sweet A., F and S sent funny missives, which had my chapped lips cracking from the grinning) practical
advice re: feet, and schadenfreude from NYC (Nijinski Horner). Now I understand why a soldier reading a
letter is such a cinematic shorthand for nostalgia and poignancy.
I don’t know if I would do this race again, but I definitely
recommend it. I lost 3 kgs between the
start and the finish, which is pretty standard.
Below are some highlights from the week…(all photos below are by the pro photog who followed us around, and was also super nice).
SO happy to be home.
Yours in lycra,
Ak-la-fonque
 |
| Quiver Tree (misnomer, as this is basically the dinosaur version of an aloe plant - a succulent). |
 |
| Getting a toe-nail removed. I kid, I kid... |
 |
| Happy campers at ze finish... |
 |
| Good example of terrain to be covered. Keep your wits about you or you will get lost and/or break an ankle... |
 |
| Desert skiiing |
 |
| Pharmacy on wheels. |
 |
| 44 degrees in the shade. This is me pouring my precious drinking water over my head to get relief... |
 |
| As Nelson from the Simpsons would say: "Ha ha, you're not lucky" Blisters abounded, but were dealt with decisively by the medics. The string is left in to allow the fluid to drain |
 |
| The race organizer's deployed a flipping drone to keep track of us - makes sense I guess! |
 |
| Me with my 'trophy' at the 45km finishing camp - a 5 liter water bottle meant to last till the next morning. |
 |
| Let's just say that 'chafing' was a bit of an issue... |
