Page 18 of Runner 13

Stella

And they’re off.

Boones got his way, as usual.

The race is on. I’m kneeling in the dirt, a few steps ahead of the starting line, my camera pointed at the line of runners.

The sun’s rays beat down on the back of my neck.

Fierce. Prickly. Why am I not sitting by a pool like Pete is?

The question has crossed my mind several times.

Just find a driver to get me back to Ouarzazate. Leave Boones to his final shebang.

But I can’t bring myself to go.

So if I’m still here, and the race is going ahead, then I might as well do my job while I keep an eye on things.

I start with several shots of the elites – Nabil, the front runner, tall and strong, long-limbed.

His lips are set in a firm line, his eyes looking out to the horizon, hardly blinking.

Next to him, Farouk, shorter and stockier, keeps his expression a little less serious.

He reminds me of my cousins, always with a small smile playing on their lips, like they’re in on an inside joke.

At the signal from Boones they leap off the starting line, powering ahead of the pack.

A helicopter flies overhead, swooping low and sending up clouds of dust that I shield my lens from.

I squint up at the sky and think I catch sight of Boones in the chopper, leaning out of the open door behind a cameraman.

He must have jumped in straight away, wanting a bird’s-eye view of his creation.

The fun runners jog past me next, and I continue taking photos until the last runner is off the line.

Already some people are walking. Do they really imagine they can go the entire way without breaking into a run?

Conserving their energy, perhaps. It could be a strategy.

I fear that they will be the first ones Boones will weed out.

After the last runner is away, a camel follows, two men walking beside it.

I snap a photo – it might work for the charity’s social media.

A funny anecdote. And, with that, my first job is done.

I stand, stretch and wander back towards the bivouac.

There’s still plenty of activity, even though the runners are gone.

The tents are almost all broken down, and the equipment is being loaded on to the backs of trucks ready to be moved and set up at the next location.

‘Stella!’

I look up. It’s Dale, waving me over to one of the Jeeps.

‘This is our driver, Ali,’ Dale says, once I reach them.

Ali puts his left hand over his heart and extends his right to me. I shake it. ‘ As-Salaam-Alaikum ,’ I say.

Ali smiles. ‘ Wa-Alaikum-Salaam ,’ he replies. ‘Welcome, sister, it is nice to meet you.’

‘And you,’ I reply.

He looks young – maybe only eighteen or nineteen – his dark hair covered by an NYC-branded baseball cap. He’s wearing a traditional moss-green thobe overtop of his jeans.

‘You’re sure you’re qualified to do this?’ Dale asks, looking Ali up and down.

Ali seems to take his scepticism in stride. ‘My uncle has been running tours in the desert for many years. I do much of the driving in my time off from university. You’re in safe hands, trust me. Five stars on Tripadvisor,’ he adds.

‘I want to be first to get the best shots, so that means we’re going to have to be fast and flexible, ready to move at a moment’s notice. Can you do that?’

Ali stands straight, like he’s receiving a military order. I can’t tell if he’s mocking Dale, or if he’s on board. ‘Whatever you need,’ he says, and he gives me a wink.

I suppress a smile behind my hand.

‘Let’s go then. What are we waiting for? I need to catch up with the elites.’ Dale clambers in the back of the Jeep. ‘You coming?’ he asks me out of the open window.

I hesitate, staring out at the bivouac, marvelling at how it’s returning to its original state.

Our existence being wiped away, as if we had never been there.

Even the starting flags have been taken down, ready to move to the next camp.

Boones’s trailer is gone. I don’t even know how I would arrange a car back to Ouarzazate anyway at this point.

I get in the car but I take the front seat next to Ali. ‘I’m ready,’ I say.

Ali waits until he sees me clip in my seat belt, then he’s off, driving out into the sands.

We don’t follow the runners directly but instead trace the edge of a large dried-up riverbed, keeping a high vantage point.

Ali drives for about half an hour, one ear to a radio, before pulling to a stop next to a large boulder, its pitted and cratered surface tempting us to climb it.

Clambering up with our equipment isn’t easy, but from the top we get an incredible view, looking down on the cracked-earth ground of the wadi. It’s like we’ve driven to Mars.

‘Look, there!’ says Dale. He thrusts his arm out and I follow his pointed finger.

The first runner appears on the horizon at the head of a thin line of mostly white shirts bobbing up and down.

They shimmer ever so slightly in the heat haze reflecting up from the ground, like moving mirages.

I’m amazed at how quickly they’re able to run in such intense heat and on such little sleep from the storm. They’re superhuman.

Dale starts snapping away as Nabil – the current leader – steams past us far below. Dale doesn’t even stop to adjust the settings on his camera, whereas I’m slower, more deliberate.

I’m not worried about photographing the elites anyway. My charity clients will be nowhere close to them – they’re probably hours away – so I focus on getting images of the landscape, showing off the vastness of the desert they’re running through, the remote nature of the challenge.

Dale finishes before I do and he jumps off the boulder. I stay a bit longer, relishing in the grandeur of the vista in front of me. I’ve got to hand it to my dad. He knows how to choose a location.

‘Are you much of a runner?’ Dale asks me as I climb down.

‘Not really,’ I say. ‘I leave that to my fiancé.’ I don’t share with him who my father is. That’s none of his business. ‘What about you?’

‘Before my injury I couldn’t get enough. My family were all runners. My mother even competed in the Olympics.’

‘Really? That’s incredible.’

‘I had to take up ultrarunning just to get out of her shadow!’ He laughs. ‘No, she inspired me. It was running with her that made me realize; it takes me a marathon distance before I really start to love it. Ultras, man. They’re an addiction.’

‘I knew someone who felt like that,’ I say.

‘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 he really put people to the test 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.

The first runner – it’s now Farouk – has appeared already.

He’s setting a storming pace, but the other elites aren’t far behind.

I instinctively grab my camera, taking photos of him coming up over the rise and towards the checkpoint.

A whole series of cars arrive now – the medical teams and the rest of the volunteers.

‘Where’s Nabil?’ I ask Dale, who’s at the next table.

When we’d last seen them, Nabil had been ahead.

‘No clue. Maybe something happened?’

Farouk enters the checkpoint via my table and I photograph the volunteer topping up his water bottles – although it appears he hasn’t drunk that much over the course of ten miles.

His acclimatization to running in this kind of heat means he’s more efficient with his hydration intake.

The next person to appear is Rupert, his dark hair peeking out beneath a bright red cap.

Then, finally, Nabil strides into view, along with the first of the women: to my surprise it’s Adrienne, looking strong.

My throat catches, as I strangle down tears. Watching her run – it’s like the events of seven years ago never happened.

If I had my choice, I’d never have seen or spoken to Adrienne again. I’d blocked her after Ibiza and dodged her approaches until she finally got the message and gave up. Yet life weaved a tangled web that kept us connected – not least because I couldn’t help falling in love with her ex-husband.

I’d met Pete a few months before Ibiza, at a race – naturally.

I was crewing for Yasmin during a fifty-mile race in northern California, waiting around for hours at the halfway checkpoint for her to pass through.

The conditions had been atrocious that year, and some of the support teams were held up when the main road to the trail flooded.

Pete had hobbled into the checkpoint, injured, and with no crew in sight.

I’d taken pity on him and offered him one of my homemade flapjacks as a pick-me-up.

We got to chatting and he DNF’d the race to continue the conversation.

He always says it was the luckiest twisted ankle he’d ever had.

After the race and her incredible performance, Yasmin and I were asked to join Coach Glenn’s training camp in Ibiza. And Pete had asked me out on a date.

Seven years since everything changed.