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Mac:
So if you’re number thirteen, you gonna give me a share of that cool half a mil?
Jason:
I’m going for the shits and giggles, you know that. I’m not gonna win. But I want my place in the history books. Mark my words, Mac. This is going to be a race to remember.
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1
Adrienne
The plane door opens and I step out into a furnace. The blast of heat is intense and immediate, accompanied by a fierce wind that forces me to hold on to my cap to stop it from being blown away. The same winds had almost diverted the plane to a different airport – much to the consternation of everyone on board. We’re all in Morocco for the same reason, after all.
The Hot & Sandy race. I still can’t quite believe I’m going through with it. Up until the moment I boarded the chartered plane at London Gatwick, I thought about turning back. The reasons not to run felt so much more important than why I’ve come out here.
For one, there’s Ethan. I’ve never left him for this long before. Even though he’s ten, he’s still my baby. And the last time I raced … I can’t even finish the thought without shuddering. The horror of it still has a lock round my heart, a cage I can’t break free from.
Then there’s Pete. He also got an invite. Running my first race in seven years against my ex doesn’t seem like the smartest plan. Pete is surprisingly relaxed about it, but I think it’s because he doesn’t see me as competition. I don’t even see me as competition. Showing up at the start feels brave enough for me.
Last – but definitely not least – Boones. The mysteriousrace director of one-name-only notoriety, the Madonna of the running world. I’ve never wanted to run in one of his races. Only Boones made sure this was an invitation I couldn’t refuse.
Ethan, for his part, is delighted to have both his parents racing. He’ll be tracking us on the website, watching our every step. He looked up Boones online and put together a booklet of facts, like it was some kind of school project. Boones lives deep in the forest of North Carolina. He launched his first race – Big & Dark – over thirty years ago. Only ten people have finished his races in their history. No woman haseverfinished.
‘You’re going to be the first, Mum,’ he says, filled with the kind of innate confidence I wish I had in myself.
But focusing on the facts helps me too. I like to visualize the challenge ahead, mentally prepare for the pain – putting some padding in my pain cave, so that when I enter it during the race (and it’s inevitable that I will), I have something to bounce off to stop it from hurting so much. It’s what I did when I broke the course record at the Yorkshire 100, and when I podiumed at UTMB. It’s what I try to do now.
The lack of information about the race has made that task difficult, though. All I know is what I’ve gleaned from the website, loaded from a QR code on the invitation: a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile five-day stage marathon across dunes, dried-up riverbeds, and the rock-strewn mountains (known locally as jebels) of the infamous Sahara Desert. The first two stages are twenty-five miles. The third and fourth are fifty miles each. Then the fifth day is the big one – one hundred miles – already nicknamed the ‘long day’. Eachstage will be timed and must be completed within a strict limit – bringing up the rear will be two Berber volunteers and their camel to sweep up any stragglers. Temperatures might range from freezing cold in the night to over fifty degrees centigrade in the day. Sandstorms are likely, as are venomous creatures. We are expected to navigate the route using only a copy of a map hand-drawn by Boones and a compass. And every runner must carry their own food, sleeping bags and survival gear for the length of the race. All we will be provided with is water every ten miles or so and an open-air tent each night set up in traditional style by the Berbers in a miniature city known as a ‘bivouac’. There will also be medics and photographers along the route, and we will be wearing GPS tracking devices.
So far, so manageable. But I know there will be curve balls to come. Boones is famous for them.
The invite itself had been the first surprise. When it arrived on my doorstep, I thought it was a prank. I was going to put it straight in the bin. Then I turned it over.
On the back was a handwritten note.
COME ANDFIND ANSWERS.It read. Then, underneath, a licence plate:LK1XXFG.
My heart pounded so hard, I could hear it ringing in my ears.It couldn’t be.
Seven years ago, I’d had one of the worst nights of my life. Yes, I’d won my race. But at the finishing line, the police had met me with the awful news: Ethan had been in a hit-and-run accident.
They never found the driver.
Who did it? That became the question that dominated my life. Who had tried to hurt my baby?