The Story

The hardest foot race on Earth. A slow jog through the Sahara. You might ask why? I would say to you why not? Yes, there are heaps of valid answers to that and I'm not going to list them here. I would answer a question with a question as I cannot think of any answer that would adequately convey what actually goes through my mind when, or if, you ask me such a question. I could say that I was a fat bastard and was rather sick of it so chose a goal that, on the face of it, was so monumental as to not actually be possible. For me. Or I could say that as I was such a lazy bastard I chose a goal, and indeed a form of exercise, that I would really not enjoy in order to force myself into doing something I don't enjoy. With the end result my mental discipline improves exponentially. But that wouldn't be completely correct, all I can really and honestly say in answer to the question why is the same answer I got from students when I was teaching English in China: "No why..."

Ok, now that we've covered the why, lets have a good look at the what. There is a lot more information on the Marathon des Sandes website than I can cover here, it is in French though. There is also an English website about said Marathon. But the Marathon des Sandes(which I have retitled the Marathon de Sade after a certain Frenchman who enjoyed pain) is basically a series of long runs through the Moroccan Sahara. Marathon des Sandes is Marathon of Sands in French. I'm thinking that being a desert marathon it would involve a little bit of this. Here is the wikipedia page on the Marathon des Sandes, which has some interesting facts about it.

I originally intended to run this all on my lonesome, but I thought it might appeal to a couple of other people and so I mentioned it to my two brothers. One of them seemed to think it was an awesome idea and has since begun training as well and the other shrugged his shoulders and said 'yeah, why not?' So we are now intending to make this a family affair. 1, 2, and 3.

As this is also about gaining fitness for myself I have a couple of things you may not want to see, however I believe it's important to place them here as it gives me a concrete changing point. First - photo's of myself in my underwear. Not usually something I would share with others, but once I have brought myself to a proper fitness level I think they will change a bit. I may or may not wear the same underwear in the next set of photo's to be put with these, they will arrive after I run my first Marathon.

bad photo

As you can see I'm not terribly fit. 

bad photo

Although I don't consider myself excessively large, I am definitely not slim.

Unfortunately due to my lack of bathroom scales at home and my inability to have a dollar or two in my pocket when I walk past those scales, height, how fat you are machines that are usually outside a pharmacy I don't know my weight. However, at most points in my life I have tended to weigh 95 to 100 kgs. I assume I'm around the same at the current point in time. I also intend to find out for sure in the not so distant future.