Desert Marathon Training - ultramarathon tips for beginners, 2nd edition: Preparation for the Marathon des Sables

You've just run, stumbled and staggered forty miles in the last couple of days and the sun is beating down. The rays seem to pierce your skin and it feels like your organs are starting to glow. Your pack chafes your shoulder and the red raw skin is somehow slippery. You wonder if it is blood. The back of your t-shirt is a sodden wet toad. You kick yet another small black rock as it skitters away like a scarab. Cursing, you feel the stinging pain of the blood blisters under your nails. Part of you vaguely wonders if it might be a Thursday. You never could get the hang of Thursdays. Just as you start to close in and gain ground on that old looking French chap just up ahead, his deep tan, grey hair and the wrinkles of a loosely fitting birthday suit, the slope increases. Like a leather back turtle he surges forward. You raise your eyes to chance a look. Sweat beads sting and partially obscure the path ahead winding out of sight. Meandering up and away between two alien looking outcrops of ancient orange rock. The wind whistles down the dusty gap like a hot hand pushing you backwards. Just for malevolent fun it funnels dust eddies at your eyes to make them all gritty. You gulp another swig of water past sun baked rimy lips and vaguely wonder why you still feel thirsty despite drinking litres of the stuff. You think about chomping down a salt capsule and try to remember if it time to eat yet. The slope gets the better of you and you lapse back into a walk. But that's not too bad. You tell yourself that each painful footstep is taking you ever closer to a large inflatable teapot and a lovely cold shower. Actually there isn't going to be a shower. Just a square of hot dusty carpet on a rather lumpy desert floor.