April 7: Runners take to the sand
By Alex Blodgett, Team U.S. Army Watch

It would appear that virtually every runner is now in survival mode, a dramatic change from yesterday.

As I sit here typing this dispatch three hours after coming across the line earlier this afternoon, we are in the midst of a sand storm and there are many competitors still on the course. The heat and sand dunes are taking an early toll.

Today's course again was relatively short at 20 miles. However, after an hour of running on dry river beds with light sand we finally had our first experience with the great equalizer, the sand dunes.

This persisted for another hour (in which I labored over a lot shorter distance). The final hour and 15 minutes was on a dry lake called Iriqui. Although extremely flat and thus easy running in theory, the ground temperature had worked its way above 120 degrees Fahrenheit by noon and drained every last bit of energy out of my already largely depleted system. With the bivouac in site (4 miles away at first sighting — a perverse byproduct of the desert), I refused to let myself slow to a walk, although my body was screaming for a break. The last hour of the leg was consumed with the thought of what the 50-mile section has in store for us on Thursday — unimaginable at this point.

Although difficult to compare to anything I've done in the past, my body and mind felt as though I had just finished an Ironman in terms of the constant pounding and sheer exhaustion. It is impossible at this point to compare it to an Eco-Challenge; in this race the day-after-day cumulative damage is isolated. In my case, it's isolated in the feet and back. (My pack has gone from 18.5 pounds to probably less than 15 pounds on the assumption that less food will be offset by less wear and tear on my back and legs — such trade-offs are a constant common denominator in every conversation at night.)

Chloe and I both spent a few minutes in the medical tent, as most racers have. Chloe lost her large toenail and I had what appeared to be a rather innocuous blister fixed at great personal pain. The callous on my toe was so thick that the medic (French and very attractive) had to keep attacking the blister with her scalpel until it finally felt as if she had extracted every last nerve ending in my toe.

I am not looking forward to a return visit to the medical tent, and plan on having Salomon design a new shoe for all us on the team if we return, to replace our standard Nikes. Yet another lesson is that this environment requires very specialized footwear.

A little background on how we spend the evenings: After dinner of freeze-dried food, which is heated in the sun (rather than on a conventional stove — I ditched mine after day 1), most people are settling in by 7:30 to 8. Because of my evening dispatches, I am not back to the tent until 9, and the other night I found myself in a tent of Italians that had all fallen to sleep. I missed our tent because the evening was so dark. We now prominently display our American flag and National Geographic banner out front. (By the way, comet Hale-Bopp and the stars are absolutely spellbinding from this vantage.)

Not one of us in the tent has had any consistent sleep since arriving in Morocco. I wake up probably every 30 minutes. The heavy burlap fabric tents slap in the constant wind, and the rugs offer no reprieve from the hard and rocky ground. Nerves haven't been a problem for me, as I'm as relaxed as ever; however, with all the hydrating required there is at least one of us getting up every 30 minutes to urinate. Our U.S. Army Watches with their self-luminous liquid tritium are a mixed blessing, as they are a constant reminder of just how little sleep we are getting.

The snoring is now less of an issue, as we are all equal offenders. The volume is still quite audible around camp, but just marginally more obnoxious than the French next door who are in full kitchen chit-chat by 5 or 5:15 a.m. each morning. Yesterday's conversation revolved around what these modern-day warriors think about while having sex.

Weather: 120-plus degrees Fahrenheit and cloudless. Tip of the day: stay home!