The sun was high enough to eradicate all areas of shade and the sand surfaces lapped up its radiation and then re-transmitted it. Within the still and silent bowls, temperatures were unbelievable. As I descended into them, I could feel the heat scorching my face like the blast from an open oven door. The sand was so hot that it was burning to touch, and this became a serious problem when going uphill, for I still had to use my hands on the steeper parts of some slopes . . .
The wind had built up and was suddenly blowing in my face. Even with sunglasses on, I found sand poured into my eyes. I knew from my compass that I should now be heading almost with the wind. I decided to head right. It was a struggle to walk in that direction, for the wind must have been up to something like forty knots and the whipping sand was painful as it scoured my legs and arms. I worked my way sideways, head bent against the blast, looking for the route. I began to retrace my steps – or I would have done had they still been there. The wind had carried away all trace of my passing just moments before. I began to grow anxious. I had only a couple of litres of water and could not afford to mess about like this . . . It brought home to me how easy it would be to get lost completely . . .
My body churned out more heat from the effort of ascent. But as I climbed, so did the sun. By the time the canyon widened and I emerged on the upper slopes of the mountains, it was beating down on me ferociously. The last thousand feet to the col were desperate. I reached the col shortly before midday and found others who had got there before me crouched beneath a small rock overhang, trying to escape the fierce radiation while they drank some water . . .
As we ran across the last ten miles, even the further litre and a half of water provided at the last checkpoint could not prevent our problems. Bodies were churning out waste heat so fast that we simply could not shed it all. Simultaneously the ground, the air and the sun poured more heat into us. Hyperthermia became inevitable.
Bearing in mind that Mike, who was well known for understatement, had written this, I made a firm decision to avoid involving myself in any such hot activities. He was, after all, a uniquely strong individual, both mentally and physically. He was also at the peak of his life, in terms of the best age for endurance racing, and he had acclimatized himself and his team with long, hard training hours in a heat chamber.
So, some eighteen years later and now aged seventy-one, when my charity Marie Curie discussed the possibility of my entering this same Marathon des Sables (MdS), I went to meet Mike, who is now Senior Lecturer in Nutrition at Southampton University, to check whether he felt that I could manage it. I explained that, if I were to complete the race in 2015, I would be the oldest Briton to do so which could be used by Marie Curie to raise at least £1 million to recruit more nurses.
Mike pointed out that people over sixty-five are more prone to heat stress as their body often fails to adjust adequately to sudden changes in temperature, and they are more likely to have had a previous illness which might have altered their body’s heat responses and caused them to take medicines which block or reduce their ability to sweat and regulate their body temperature. Since I had experienced two heart attacks, undergone cancer treatment, was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, and as a result was taking daily prescribed medicines, this did not bode well for entering this particular race.
However, the temptation to raise £1 million was too great to be resisted due to common sense, so I swotted up on various heat-related facts and Marie Curie obtained a last-minute entry for me.
I signed on with Rory Coleman, a top trainer of ultra-marathon runners who was based in Cardiff, and he advised me, as Mike had done, to spend as much time as possible acclimatizing in a heat chamber (or a hot country). This proved impossible, but I approached Paul Sykes, my long-time sponsor who underwrote the costs of my fundraising activities, but only when he was sure that I wouldn’t be likely to die in the act.
As a result I needed to have relevant cardiac tests carried out, and these Rory organized in a heated laboratory at Kingston University’s School of Life Sciences, and the outcome was good. ‘To recreate the MdS environment, we set the temperature at 40 degrees and the humidity at 30 per cent,’ said Dr Hannah Moir, Senior Lecturer in Health and Exercise Prescription.
Ran was on the treadmill in there for an hour. We measured his heart rate and core temperature. He maintained his core temperature at between 37 and 38 degrees, which is really good, meaning he has a good thermal response at dissipating the temperature while he’s in that thermal environment. His heart rate remained very stable at 100bpm [beats per minute], which was also what we like to see. He sweated a lot but was drinking to replenish the lost fluids. His body is very well designed for coping with extreme environments. He is the oldest person we have hosted here for MdS training, but age is not a factor in an individual’s coping response with heat. He responded very well, probably much better than I would, and I’m 31.
Rory summed up some of the likely factors of the marathon.
When the body’s heat regulating mechanisms are overwhelmed, this can result in death. In Morocco for the race, the temperature will be super-hot. When your body warms up the ambient air around you, you cannot dissipate that heat – you can’t sweat the heat out. You’ve also got the problem of humidity. Now it’s about 25 per cent humidity because they have a lot of spring rain. So there is water vapour in the air, plus the temperature, meaning a British Caucasian is simply going to cook. You very quickly become hyperthermic.
Avoiding hypothermia is critical. An inability to cool the body through perspiration starts a chain of events, with other symptoms, including nausea from dehydration, vomiting and headaches. Low blood pressure can lead to fainting or dizziness, while the heart attempts to maintain adequate circulation. Confused, hostile or seemingly intoxicated behaviour can follow, while the worst case scenarios include unconsciousness, multiple organ failure and death.
Rory advised me to run in black, not white, clothing, although many top runners would disagree. Rory argued that, under their white hair, polar bears have black skin to absorb more heat. Black clothing, he maintained, absorbs both sunlight and the heat radiating from the body, but if your garments are loose-fitting and there is a wind, then that wind will convect the heat away faster than it is absorbed. White clothing reflects sunlight, but it also reflects internal heat back towards your body, so that the net effect under identical conditions is less cooling than if wearing black. Hence, Rory concluded, desert-dwellers like the Saharan Touareg wear loose-fitting black clothing and use black tents.
Omanis had often explained to me that they wear more than one layer of clothing in order to keep the heat out. But the reality is that the extra layer is helping to stop their sweat evaporating and thus maintaining a cool layer of air next to their skin.
At Gatwick I joined Rory and the other six runners in his team, all ‘proper’ ultra-runners, although one, Angus, was fifty-six years old and, I was happy to note, at least semi-geriatric.
Following my first heart attack and bypass surgery, I had been warned by the cardiac surgeon that I should never allow my heart to tick at more than 130bpm, and I had done my best to heed his advice ever since.
Unfortunately the French organizers of the Marathon des Sables had set vigorous race rules with the specific aim of forcibly removing any and all participants who, however keen to continue, were lagging behind specific cut-off times at each desert checkpoint. Also, to cull anyone lagging between checkpoints, there were two mean-looking Touareg with camels bringing up the rear. Should these camels catch up with you, their owners would tell the race organizers who would remove you either by helicopter or Land Rover.
The week before the race, Marie Curie announced my participation and the national media, presumably because there was little going on at the time, gave the fact wide coverage. This had the advantage of raising more money for the charity and, from my point of view, increased my apprehension about the ignominy of failure.
I looked at the race entry data
sheet, and among the facts and figures I found the following:
— There were over 1,300 competitors, and of these:
— 30 per cent were repeat competitors
— 70 per cent were international
— 30 per cent were French
— 14 per cent were women
— 30 per cent were in teams of 3 or more
— 90 per cent were alternate walking and running
— 3 km/hour is the average minimum speed
— there were 450 support staff
— 120,000 litres of water would be drunk
— there would be 300 Berber tents and 4 camels
— 120 all-terrain vehicles and 25 buses would be provided
— 2 helicopters and 1 Cessna would be available
— 57 medical staff would be available with 6.5 km of Elastoplast, 2,700 Compeed plasters and 6,000 painkillers
— the distance covered in the marathon is 250 km
A later report stated that ‘there were fears that Ranulph would not be able to finish the event after the 91 km fourth stage, which saw him run for more than 30 hours with just one hour of sleep, while towards the end of the race he relied on painkillers to numb a back problem.’
And this report also stated that ‘Ranulph has previously raised £6.3 million for Marie Curie. In 2007 he climbed the Eiger from its north face for the charity, and in May 2009, at the age of 65, he became the oldest Briton to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. During the Marathon, his trainer at times had to force him to rest. Ranulph said, “I was getting dizzy, I had a stabbing pain in my back and it was extremely hot. There was a period when I thought I’m not going to make it.”’
When the competitors get to the checkpoints, everyone taking part in the race is given their emails by the organizers, and one towards the end from my wife said, ‘Enough is enough. Elizabeth wants her daddy back, not a corpse.’
My lasting memory of the Marathon des Sables is of intense, energy-sapping heat and the twin fear of going too hard and damaging my heart or going too slow and being caught by the camels. Ninety-eight marathon runners dropped out altogether, and the other older member in our tent, in his 50’s, spent time on a nasal drip completely dehydrated.
At the end I was asked for my overall impressions of the experience for an online diary:
Were there any pieces of kit you wish you’d taken?
In soft sand you get pressures on your feet and your back because your trainers are slipping. It started rubbing very badly on the part of my foot that had been frostbitten and had had the skin replaced with skin cut off my hip some years ago. So I got a knife and cut a hole in the side of the boot, but then, of course, you’ve got sand pouring in, so I Velcroed if off so that I had less pressure but kept the sand out. That worked very well as a modification. I’ll have to patent it.
What is your best memory of it?
The finish – it was a huge relief. I turned around and gave two fingers to the camels.
And the worst?
The worst parts were trying not to have a heart attack, although recognizing the oncoming symptoms, but not being able to slow down because of the camels, the time and your watch ticking. Another bad thing was having made a mistake at night when we were doing the 60-mile stretch, which was a very long, hard stretch and I had a low torch battery. I thought I knew where the next foot would land, but actually it landed three feet below where I thought it would and I got a jolt up my back – that’s when I started really needing lots of painkillers.
When the camels reach you, you’re out of the race?
Yes. On one occasion – this doesn’t sound like much unless you are there – we got to a huge sand dune area with 13 minutes to spare. So, you can imagine when you’re wanting to slow down but you can see the checkpoint is a long way away and the camels are behind. That’s a bad situation to be in.
The French race organizer was rightly proud of the event, which he had first launched thirty years before, and he announced that this year, 2015, would be the toughest and longest of all to date. Most of the 1,300 entrants listening to this announcement greeted it with cheers, but I did not find my enthusiasm mounting.
Rory stayed with me from the beginning. On the fourth day, after long hours of no wind and a maximum temperature of 53°C, I did not feel good. The Daily Telegraph report that day stated:
Trainer expresses fear that Sahara race could put too much strain on explorer’s heart as the team enters the fourth day of the race in the Moroccan desert.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes may be forced to pull out of the Marathon des Sables as he starts the fourth day of the ultra-marathon in the Sahara. Rory Coleman, his trainer, said, ‘Today is the biggest test for Ran. We need to be really careful. I don’t know if he is going to make it.’ The explorer, who turned 71 in March, has complained of dizziness during the 156 mile race.
Sir Ranulph, who has had two heart attacks and a double heart bypass, said, ‘I feel a rhythm under the wire in my heart where they sewed me up. I think what brings it on is the soft sand and the steep hills.’
Sir Ranulph is 46 miles into the fourth stage of the event after arriving at a checkpoint at 4.30 a.m. this morning, having set off at 8.30 a.m. the previous day. The explorer walked across dozens of sand dunes under the moonlight. Speaking live from the desert on BBC Breakfast this morning, Sir Ranulph said, ‘Last night was pretty horrific. It’s hell on Earth. You’re trying to go up hills and your feet are slipping backwards in the sand. I had some really shaky moments. My head torch faded and I couldn’t see the hills.’
Coleman said, ‘In these temperatures, just doing one hundred paces is for anybody really hard work, let alone if you’re carrying all this gear and you’re 71 years of age. His heart – that’s my big concern – making sure that we keep it at 75 per cent rate.’ Coleman is taking part in the event for the twelfth time. Talking about the fourth stage of the race, he said, ‘It was superbrutal – and the toughest Marathon des Sables stage I’ve ever done.’
Ranulph said, ‘When I get back to the UK I’m going straight to my surgeon to see what’s gone wrong with my back. Two people broke a leg. Another man thought it was all sand, but there were hidden rocks and he cut his face open falling onto a rock. Another one cut his stomach open and there were entrails around. I got away pretty lightly really – ninety-six people dropped out.’
Thanks to the support of Paul Sykes, the expertise and patience of Rory Coleman, and the dedicated fundraising activities of Marie Curie, the challenge raised over £2 million.
Back home in the UK a week after the event, there was a bitter wind and non-stop drizzle as I carted endless loads of old bricks to a dump. Shivering with the cold, I remembered my mother’s old saying:
As a rule, man’s a fool
When it’s hot he wants it cool
When it’s cool he wants it hot
Always wanting what it is not
APPENDIX I
Heat and the Human Body: The Mechanics
The body’s temperature control is the hypothalamus section of the brain. It tells how hot or cold we are, thanks to a number of sensors in our skin, within our core and in our bloodstream. If too hot (above 37°C/98°F) it signals our skin to sweat more and the blood vessels in our skin to widen which speeds up the blood flow rate and thus the rate of heat loss from the blood. It only takes 90 seconds (on average) for blood to circulate through all of our body’s 100,000 km of blood vessels.
The effect of sweating lets warm water leave our body and, as it does so, it cools our skin. Our body should always maintain its core temperature of 37°C (whether we are Inuit or Touareg) unless some illness affects us.
As a general rule, the body turns most of the food we eat into heat. When working hard our muscles can briefly generate as much heat, up to 2 kilowatts, as does a small electric fire, and even when we are at rest our body only ‘feels’ comfortable when the air around it is slightly cooler than it is. We breathe out warm air and, in normal conditio
ns, expect to breathe in colder air.
Anthropologists blame the sun’s heat and light for our upright stance and our skin colour. Like plants, we are energized by photosynthesis and can be described as solar-powered.
Our skin pigmentation is strongly selected by climate, and our early African ancestors were probably all dark-skinned with the melanin protecting them from excessive sun damage to their skin. Those tribes that moved away from the tropics would evolve to have lighter skin, the better to synthesize the Vitamin D (from the weaker sunlight) needed for bone metabolism.
Today this rule still holds good, as evidenced by migrants to Britain from the Indian sub-continent who suffer from an above-average rate of vitamin D deficiency troubles. And, at the other end of the skin colour scale, the number of white people who settle in or sunbathe in unaccustomed hot zones and develop skin cancers.
Some six or seven million years ago in Africa there was a population of small apes that were the common ancestors of both man and of our closest cousin, the chimpanzee. The population must have then divided into two groups which started to live apart and tended not to interbreed. The cause of this division is probably that the two groups started to occupy different environmental niches. At around that time the African climate became both hotter and drier, and it seems that this led to a thinning of the forests and an increase in the areas of savannah. With a reduction in the number of trees, some of the apes started to live on the ground and then moved out on to newly open grasslands. Others remained more arboreal, living within the forests. The result was that the two groups were exposed to different environmental demands and this led to their slow evolutionary divergence. The tree-dwelling group slowly evolved towards the two species of modern chimps. The ground dwellers embarked on the path that would eventually lead to man.
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