Photos from MdeS

Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.

I’ve always kind of liked that quote. Nobody’s ever accused us of being smart. In fact, I just spoke to one of our oldest friends: Patrik, who has known both of us since we were toddlers. His comment was simply: “You should get your heads examined. There’s something wrong with you.” I remember the first time I broached the subject of running Marathon des Sables to Jakob three years ago. It was such a crazy, scary and absolutely impossible thing to contemplate. But strangely tempting. I mean, who were we to consider entering such a race? What had we accomplished? A couple of marathons and training for a half Ironman on Tjörn and we believed ourselves to be invincible. An Ironman and an 108k-race later, we applied for the race we’d dreamed about for so long. And we did it! Surreal is the word that comes to mind. And I’m so glad that I got Jakob to share the experience with me. It wouldn’t have been the same on my own, and the fact is that none of us would probably have crossed the finish line without the help of the other. At the moment Jakob and I are busy writing a chronicle about this year’s Marathon des Sables, but unlike our previous competitions this has been a multi-day event lasting for an entire week, not counting our adventures in Madrid and the first couple of days in the desert prior to the start. So it’s taking a while longer than we thought. So to satisfy your demand for news, here are some official photos that we’ve borrowed from the official website for the Marathon des Sables. On some of them, you can even identify the two of us!

Right here, for instance. Diagonally right above Union Jack, me crossing my arms and Jakob wearing red shorts.

Oh, and once again we would like to thank all of you who have supported our charity through your donations! The website will be open for a while longer, so those of you who haven’t hade the opportunity to donate yet: please do so right here! You’ve donated € 2 350 so far and we’re only € 150 short of our goal of € 2 500!!!

The heli hovering above us at the start of the Unicef charity stage 6.

Entering a black gravelly field after passing through the dunes of Jebel Debouaâ.

Even though the foot exam looks interesting, you can find Jakob packing his bag to the right of the seated woman’s head.

And here you can spot your’s truly to the left of the runner in the foreground, sporting my blue shorts.

Carole presenting a runner with his documents.

One of the checkpoints where we entered from the left, received our water bottle(s) and exited to the right, often finding shade under the panoply of the car for a couple of minutes.

You wouldn’t BELIEVE how much we were chasing these guys! They were really fast. No, really!

The absolutely steepest part of the entire race: scaling El Otfal Jebel at Stage 2. A 25% average incline.

Awesome! Stunning!

Male top three; 1) Mohammed Ahansal, 2) Salameh Al Aqra and 3) Miguel Capo Soler.

The female winner Meghan Hicks from the US, coming 17th overall!!! Absolutely unbelievable achievement.

A little postscript: for a really interesting race report, read Meghan Hicks’ (the female winner of the race in the yellow shirt above) story on the webpage of irunfar.com. Photos above courtesy of Cimbaly.