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‘At least he gets to be out there, in the running,’ Dale mutters.
I don’t correct him, but I wasn’t referring to Pete. For him, running is a sport – a hobby. For my sister, Yasmin, it had been a lifestyle. A passion.
Dale pulls his cap off, wiping his hand across his brow. His whole face is covered in a thin layer of sand, darkening his sparse beard.
Ali holds out bottles of water for us both, which I take gratefully. It’s blazing hot, and I wonder how the runners are handling it. It’s not even that I’m drenched in sweat, because the sweat evaporates the moment it appears, leaving behind a salty, grainy residue that mingles with the sand.
I’m not the only one suffering. Dale staggers as he opens the car door.
‘Are you OK?’ Ali asks Dale.
‘Fine, fine. How the heck do you handle this heat?’
Ali smiles. Then he squints as he looks up into the sky. ‘The temperature is going to climb even higher today.’
‘Is it normal for this time of year?’ I ask.
‘It gets hotter every summer. More sandstorms. More heat.’
‘Christ,’ Dale mutters.
‘Where to next?’ Ali asks us.
‘The second checkpoint,’ Dale says, quickly, not letting me get a word in. But I’m happy for him to take the lead.‘I want to make sure I catch the elites coming in. I doubt they’ll spend long there.’
Ali nods, consulting the map, and drives away in the direction of the second checkpoint. We’re quite far from the runners but we catch a glimpse every now and then. I spot medical personnel on the route too, parked in their Jeeps, ready to jump into action in case any of the emergency beacons are activated.
‘What do you think of all this?’ I ask Ali, gesturing at the map of Hot & Sandy pasted up on the dashboard.
He laughs, considering his answer. ‘It’s impressive!’
‘Oh, come on,’ says Dale. ‘You don’t have to be all PC on us. You think we’re all crazy white people, don’t you?’
Speak for yourself, I think.
‘Coming to your desert and running until we die.’
‘You do know some of the top runners out there are Moroccan, right?’ I say.
Dale rolls his eyes. ‘It’s got to be the money, though, in this case. Five hundred thousand dollars.’ He lets out a low whistle. ‘People will do crazy things for that kind of cash.’
‘It’s a fortune,’ says Ali.
‘That Boones guy – do you know much about him?’ Dale asks me.
I shoot him a look from the front seat. ‘Not really,’ I say. It’s not even a lie.
‘This doesn’t really seem like his kind of race. Everything else he’s done has been so raw, pared back. He calls this “Pure & Simple” but it’s anything but. All those medics, the corporate sponsors – heck, even all of us with our cameras and drones. He says he wants to see how far people are willing to go. But will hereallyput people to thetest if it comes down to it? Seems to me like Boones has had his teeth removed.’
‘I wouldn’t underestimate him,’ I say. I don’t elaborate further.
We arrive at the second checkpoint, which is only manned by a couple of volunteers. Their task is mammoth, too big for the two of them: setting up shelter, unloading hundreds of bottles of water ready to pour into the runners’ containers.
‘They look like they’re struggling,’ says Dale. ‘Hey, can we help?’ he asks the nearest one.
I sigh. Somehow, despite what I said to Boones, I’m roped into helping with the race, after all. I hammer stakes at the corner of the tent shelters so that runners can rest if they want and hang plastic bags from a post to collect any rubbish, trying to keep the desert as clean as possible.
As I move to the tables, ripping open huge packs of bottled water and setting them out in neat rows, I hear a shout.