MdS #4: Welcome to the Bivouac

I'm rushing out of the bathroom, petrified that I will miss the shuttle and never even make it to the start line. As I run out of the Kenzi Azghor hotel, I breather a sigh of relief when I see that the extensive bus line is so long that it is actually right in front of my hotel's entrance, which is about 500 meters from the bus loading area.

As we shuffle along, I see some people I recognize, but between all the people herding, we ultimately all end up on different shuttles. It doesn't matter too much since we'll all end up in the same place eventually.

As we get on the road, we are finally give our "road book", our guide and bible for the coming week. We can finally look and begin thinking about the actual race course. The creative guy next to me actually already know what the course was like, but he recommended not searching for it as it does ruin the surprise somewhat. For me, I was excited to finally see what I was getting into. With each passing moment, the race became more real and more tangible.

Two rest stops and about 6 hours later, we've crossed the Atlas mountains and pull up to a party in the middle of the desert. Red carpets have been rolled out, lined with volunteers and camels. They people cheer us on toward the bivouac that we would call home for the next week.

Based on information from the road book, we would be moving the bivouac location every two stages. One day would be a loop back to the same location, and the next day would be a point-to-point run to the next location. I was eager to settle in and meet my roommates for the week.

When I arrived, Kevin and Brittany from Syracuse were already setting up. Then, Ivor from the UK arrived. Next was an elite team of Dave, Magda, and Desiree. Finally, Ryan from South Africa strolls into the tent. The eight of us would be squeezing together in each others' space for the next week, and I was excited for it.

Ryan, Magda, and Des were all elite runners who had a shot of taking spots on the podium. This energy and attitude definitely help set a tone for the week and motivated me to be my best as well. Most of the tents were very social and chatty as everyone got to meet each other. But ours definitely had an air of focus on top of the normal chatter. The aura around top athletes who are competing to win is just different, and their mental game is on another level.

I took another pass through my pack for the week. At this time, we still had all of our belongings. But tomorrow morning would be the official admin checks, where we would have to give up our luggage until we returned to the hotels at the end of the race. Whatever we had after the checks would be the only things we had for the rest of the week, and it was also what we would have to carry on our backs through the desert.