Copyright

This is a work of nonfiction. The events and experiences detailed herein are all true and have been faithfully rendered as remembered by the author, to the best of his ability, or as they were told to the author by people who were present. Others have read the manuscript and confirmed its rendering of events. However, in certain instances names of individuals have been changed.

HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published in the UK by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

FIRST EDITION

© Dion Leonard 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Cover photograph © Jasper John

All photographs used with permission. Photographs from the 2013 and 2014 Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon are courtesy of KAEM; photographer Hermien Webb.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Dion Leonard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Source ISBN: 9780008227951

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008227975

Version 2018-06-27

Dedication

For my wife, Lucja.

Without your endless support, dedication, and

love, this never would have been possible.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Part 2

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part 3

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part 4

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Part 5

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Part 6

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Picture Section

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The camera crew finished up last night. Someone from the publisher arrives tomorrow. I can still feel the jet lag and other side effects of forty-one hours of travel in my body. So Lucja and I have already decided to make this, our first run of the year, an easy one. Besides, it’s not just the two of us we need to think about. There’s Gobi to consider.

We take it easy as we pass the pub, drop down beside Holyrood Palace, and see the clear blue sky give way to the grassy mountain that dominates Edinburgh’s skyline. Arthur’s Seat. I’ve run up there more times than I can remember, and I know it can be brutal. The wind can be so strong in your face that it pushes you back. The hail can bite into your skin like knives. On days like those, I crave the 120-degree heat of the desert.

But today there’s no wind or hail. There’s nothing brutal about the air as we climb, as if the mountain wants to show itself off in all its cloudless glory.

As soon as we hit the grass, Gobi is transformed. This dog that’s small enough for me to carry under one arm is turned into a raging lion as she pulls forward up the slope.

“Wow!” says Lucja. “Look at her energy!”

Before I can say anything, Gobi turns around, tongue lolling out, eyes bright, ears forward, chest puffed. It’s as if she understands exactly what Lucja’s said.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I say, pushing the pace up a bit in an attempt to loosen the strain on the leash. “She was just like this back in the mountains.”

We push farther up, closer to the summit. I’m thinking how, even though I named her after a desert, I first saw Gobi on the cold, rugged slopes of the Tian Shan. She’s a true climber, and with every step we take, she comes more and more alive. Soon her tail is wagging so fast it blurs, her whole body bouncing and pulsing with pure joy. When she looks back again, I swear she’s grinning. Come on! she says. Let’s go!

At the top, I soak in all the familiar sights. The whole of Edinburgh is spread out beneath us, and beyond it is the Forth Bridge, the hills of Lomond, and the West Highland Way, every one of whose ninety-six miles I have run. I can see North Berwick, too, a full marathon distance away. I love the run along the beach, even on the tough days when the wind is trying to batter me down and every mile feels like a battle all its own.

It’s been more than four months since I’ve been here. While it’s all familiar, there’s something different about it as well.

Gobi.

She decides it’s time to descend and drags me down the hill. Not down the path, but straight down. I leap over tufts of grass and rocks the size of suitcases, Lucja keeping pace beside me. Gobi navigates them all with skill. Lucja and I look at each other and laugh, enjoying the moment we have longed for, to be a family and finally able to run together.

Running isn’t usually this fun. In fact, for me, running is never fun. Rewarding and satisfying, maybe, but not laugh-out-loud fun. Not like it is now.

Gobi wants to keep running, so we let her lead. She takes us wherever she wants to go, sometimes back up the mountain, sometimes down. There’s no training plan and no pre-mapped route. There are no worries either. No concerns. It’s a carefree moment, and for that and so much more, I’m grateful.

After the last six months, I feel like I need it.

I’ve faced things I never thought I’d face, all because of this little blur of brown fur that’s pulling my arm out of its socket. I’ve faced fear like I’ve never known before. I’ve felt despair as well, the sort that turns the air around you stale and lifeless. I’ve faced death.

But that’s not the whole story. There’s so much more.

The truth is that this little dog has changed me in ways I think I’m only just beginning to understand. Maybe I’ll never fully understand it all.

Yet I do know this: finding Gobi was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.

But being found by her—that was one of the best things.

PART 1

1

I stepped through the airport doors and out into China. I paused and let the chaos take a good hard whack at my senses. A thousand revving engines in the car park ahead did battle with a thousand voices around me as people shouted at their phones.

The signs were written in both Chinese script and what looked to me like Arabic. I couldn’t read either language, so I joined the crush of bodies that I guessed were waiting for a taxi. I stood a foot taller than most people, but as far as they were concerned, I was invisible.

I was in Urumqi, a sprawling city in Xinjiang Province, way up in the top left corner of China. No city in the world is as far from an ocean as Urumqi, and as we’d flown in from Beijing, I watched the terrain shift from razor-sharp snow-capped mountains to vast stretches of empty desert. Somewhere down there a team of race organizers had plotted a 155-mile route that took in those freezing peaks, the incessant wind, and that desolate, lifeless scrubland known as the Gobi Desert. I was going to run across it, knocking out a little less than a marathon a day for four days, then almost two marathons on the fifth day, and an hour-long sprint for the final six-mile stage that would bring the race to a close.

These races are called “multi-stage ultras”, and it’s hard to think of a more brutal test of mental and physical toughness. People like me pay thousands of pounds for the privilege of putting ourselves through pure agony, shedding up to 10 per cent of our body weight in the process, but it’s worth it. We get to run in some of the remotest and most picturesque parts of the world, and we have the safety net of a dedicated support crew and highly trained medical crew on our side. Sometimes these challenges can be excruciating, but they’re also life changing, and reaching the finish line is one of life’s most rewarding experiences.

Sometimes things don’t go so well. Like the last time I tried to run six marathons in a week. I ended up in the middle of the pack, in agony. At the time it felt terminal, as if I’d never compete again. But I recovered just enough for one last shot. If I could run well in the Gobi race, maybe I’d yet have some more running in me. After all, in the three years since I’d taken up running seriously, I’d found out how good it felt to be on the podium. The thought of never competing again made me feel queasy inside.

If things went wrong, as they had for another competitor in the same race a few years back, I could end up dead.

According to the Internet, the drive from the airport to the hotel was supposed to take twenty or thirty minutes. But the closer we got to the hour mark, the more agitated the driver became. He had started out grouchy when he realized I was an English-speaking tourist and quoted me a price three times as much as I was expecting. It had got only worse from there.

By the time we pulled up outside a redbrick building, he was waving his arms and trying to shove me out of the cab. I looked out the window, then back at the low-resolution image I’d shown him before we started the journey. It was kind of similar if you squinted a bit, but it was obvious that he hadn’t brought me to a hotel.

“I think you need some glasses, mate!” I said, trying to keep it light and get him to see the funny side. It didn’t work.

Begrudgingly, he picked up his phone and yelled at someone on the other end. When we finally made it to my destination twenty minutes later, he was livid, shaking his fists and burning rubber as he sped away.

Not that I’d been bothered. As much as ultra-running batters your body, it also assaults your mind. You learn pretty quickly how to block out distractions and mildly annoying things like lost toenails or bleeding nipples. The stress coming from an enraged taxi driver was nothing I couldn’t ignore.

The next day was a different story.

I had to travel a few hundred miles out of the city by bullet train to get to the race headquarters in a large town called Hami. Right from the moment I arrived at the station in Urumqi, I knew I was in for a journey that would test my patience.

I’d never seen such security at a train station. There were military vehicles everywhere, temporary metal roadblocks funnelling pedestrians and traffic past armed guards. I’d been told to allow myself two hours to get on the train, but as I stared at the great tide of people ahead of me, I wondered whether it was going to be enough. If the previous day’s taxi ride had taught me anything, it’s that if I missed my train, I wasn’t sure I could overcome the language barrier and re-book another ticket. And if I didn’t get to the race meeting point that day, who knew if I would even make the start?

Panic wasn’t going to help me get anywhere. I took control of my breathing, told myself to get a grip, and shuffled my way through the first security check. By the time I cleared it and worked out where I needed to go to collect my ticket, I discovered I was in the wrong queue. I joined the right one, and by then I was way down on my time. If this was a race, I thought, I’d be at the back. I never ran at the back.

Once I had my ticket, I had less than forty minutes to clear another security check, have my passport stared at in forensic detail by an over-eager policeman, force my way to the front of a line of fifty people waiting to check in, and stand, open-mouthed, panting and staring frantically at signs and display boards I couldn’t read, wondering where the heck I had to go to find the right platform.

Thankfully, I wasn’t entirely invisible, and a Chinese guy who’d studied in England tapped me on the shoulder.

“You need some help?” he said.

I could have hugged him.

I just had time to sit down at the departure point when everyone around me turned and watched as the train crew swept past us. It was like a scene out of a 1950s airport, the drivers with their immaculate uniforms, white gloves, and air of complete control, the stewardesses looking poised and perfect.

I followed them onto the train and sank, exhausted, into my seat. Almost thirty-six hours had slipped by since I left home in Edinburgh, and I tried to empty my mind and body of the tension that had built up so far. I looked out the window for something to interest me, but for hours on end the train just sliced through a bland-looking landscape that wasn’t cultivated enough to be farmland and wasn’t vacant enough to be desert. It was just land, and it went on for hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Exhausted and stressed. This was not how I wanted to feel this close to the biggest race I’d faced so far in my short running career.

I’d taken part in more prestigious events, such as the world-famous Marathon des Sables in Morocco, universally agreed to be the toughest footrace on earth. Twice I’d lined up alongside the thirteen hundred other runners and raced across the Sahara Desert as the temperature topped 125 degrees in the day and sank to 40 at night. I’d even finished a respectable thirty-second the second time I ran it. But fifteen months had passed since then, and a lot had changed.

I had started taking note of the changes during another 155-mile race across the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. I’d pushed myself hard—too hard—to finish second overall, my “first-ever podium finish” in a multi-stage. I’d not kept myself hydrated enough, and, as a result, my urine was the color of Coke. Back home my doctor said I’d caused my kidneys to shrink due to the lack of liquid, and all that running had left them bruised and resulted in blood in my urine.

A few months later I’d started having heart palpitations during another race. I could feel my heart beating wildly, and I got hit by a double blow of queasiness and dizziness.

Both those problems flared up again almost as soon as I started the Marathon des Sables. Of course, I ignored the pain and forced myself through it, all the way to a top-fifty finish. Trouble was, I’d pushed myself so hard that as soon as I got home, my left hamstring went into violent and agonizing spasms every time I tried to walk, let alone run.

For the first few months I rested; then for the next few I was in and out of physiotherapists’ consultation rooms, all the time hearing the same-old same-old: I just needed to try whatever new combination of strength and conditioning exercises they were suggesting. I tried them all. Nothing helped me to run again.

It took the best part of a year to find a physiotherapist and a coach who both had running expertise and knew what was going on to discover the truth: part of my problem was that I wasn’t running correctly. I’m tall—well over six feet—and while my long, steady, loping stride felt easy and natural, I wasn’t firing up all the muscles I should have been using, so I had sharp, painful spasms in my legs every time I ran.

The race in China was my first chance in a tough competition to try out my new, faster, shorter stride. In many ways I was feeling great. I had been able to run for hours on end at home without pain, and I’d followed my usual pre-race diet better than I ever had before. For the previous three months, I’d avoided all alcohol and junk food, eating not much more than chicken and vegetables. I’d even cut out coffee, hoping that would put an end to the heart palpitations.

If it all paid off, and I ran as well as I thought I could do in China, I’d tackle the prestigious race that the organizers were putting on later in the year—across the Atacama salt plains in Chile. If I won there, I’d be in the perfect shape to get back to the Marathon des Sables the following year and make a real name for myself.

I was the first passenger off when we pulled into Hami and at the head of the pack as we surged towards the exit. This is more like it, I thought.

The guard manning the security checkpoint put a quick end to my joy.

“What you do here?”

I could see a long line of taxis outside the door, all waiting beside a vacant pavement for my fellow passengers to lay claim to them. I tried to explain about the race and say that I wanted to go and get a cab, but I knew it was no use. He looked quizzically back and forth between me and my passport, then motioned me to follow him into a trailer that doubled as an office.

It took half an hour to explain what all the packets of energy gels and dried foods were for, and even then I wasn’t convinced he believed me. Mostly I think he let me go because he was bored.

By the time I got out and approached the pavement, the crowds had all gone. And so had the taxis.

Great.

I stood alone and waited. I was fatigued and wanting this ridiculous journey to be over.

Thirty minutes later a taxi pulled up. I’d made sure to print off the address of my hotel in Chinese script before I’d left Urumqi, and as I showed it to the driver, I was pleased to see that she seemed to recognize it. I climbed in the back, squashed my knees up against the metal grille, and closed my eyes as we pulled out.

We’d only got a few hundred feet when the car stopped. My driver was taking on another passenger. Just go with the flow, Dion. I didn’t see any point in complaining. At least, I didn’t until she turned to me, pointed to the door, and made it perfectly clear that the other passenger was a far better customer, and I was no longer welcome in the cab.

I walked back, spent another twenty minutes getting through the inevitable security checks, and lined up once more, alone, at the deserted taxi stand.

Another taxi came, eventually. The driver was happy and polite and knew exactly where to go. In fact, he was so confident that when he pulled up in front of a large, grey building ten minutes later, I didn’t think to check that I was at the right hotel. I just handed over my money, pulled my bag out after me, and listened to him drive away.

It was only when I walked into the entrance that I realized I was in the wrong place entirely. It was not a hotel but an office block. An office block in which nobody spoke any English.

For forty minutes I tried to communicate with the office workers, they tried to communicate with me, and the phone calls to I-didn’t-know-who failed to get us any closer. It was only when I saw a taxi drive slowly past the front of the building that I grabbed my bag, ran out, and begged the driver to take me where I needed to go.

Thirty minutes later, as I stood and stared at the empty bed in the budget hotel the race organizers had booked, I said out loud my solemn vow.

“I am never, ever coming back to China.”

It wasn’t the frustration of not being able to communicate properly or even the muscle aches and serious fatigue that were bothering me. All day I’d fought hard against the urge to worry, but as one thing went wrong after another, I ended up getting nervous. It wasn’t logical, and it didn’t make sense. I’d reminded myself again and again that I had allowed plenty of time to get from Beijing to the race start, and I figured that even if I’d missed my train, I could have found a way to put things right. And I knew, deep down, that any aches I’d picked up from the previous couple of days would soon shake themselves out once I started running.

Even so, by the time I arrived at the hotel near the race headquarters, I was more anxious than I’d ever been before any race I’d ever run. The source of my nerves wasn’t the journey, and it wasn’t the knowledge of the physical challenges that lay ahead of me. It was something far, far deeper than that.

It was the worry that this might be my last race ever and the fear that maybe I was never going to win a race—winning had been the only thing that motivated me to run competitively in the first place.

Tuesday, 3 January, 1984. The day after my ninth birthday. That was when I first understood how quickly life can change. The day had been a great one, soaked in beautiful Australian summer sunshine. In the morning I’d ridden my bike over some jumps I’d put together while Mum and Dad read the papers and my three-year-old sister played out in the yard near Nan’s downstairs flat at the far end of the house. I’d finally managed to perfect my somersault on the trampoline, and after lunch Dad and I went out with our cricket bats and a few old balls. He was just recovering from a chest infection, and it was the first time in ages that he’d joined me for a bit of sport outside. He taught me how to hold the bat in just the right way to hit a ball so hard and high that it sailed way out over the scrubby grass and beyond the far boundary of our property.

When I finally came inside in the late afternoon, I found the house to be full of the smells of Mum’s cooking. She steamed her chocolate pudding for hours and made Bolognese so rich that I would hold my head over the pot and inhale the aroma for as long as I could before the heat got to be too much.

It was a perfect day.

Like any nine-year-old, I denied I was tired when it came time to go to bed, but soon enough I was drifting off to sleep, vaguely aware of Mum leaving for her Tuesday night aerobics class while Dad watched cricket on TV with the sound turned down low.

“Dion!”

I didn’t want to wake up. It was dark and my head was still half-stuck in its curious dream world.

“Dion!” I heard Dad’s voice again. There was no other noise in the house, no TV, and no sound of Mum anywhere.

I didn’t know why he’d be calling me like this, and I let myself drift back to sleep.

I couldn’t tell you how much longer Dad went on calling my name, but at some point I knew I had to get up and go and see what he wanted.

He was lying on his bed, under a sheet. He didn’t look at me when I came in, and I didn’t want to go too far into the room. His breathing sounded all wrong, as if he was having to use all the strength he possessed to drag even the smallest lungful of air in. Something told me he was really sick.

“Go and get your grandmother straightaway, Dion.”

I ran downstairs and knocked on Nan’s front door.

“Nan, you’ve got to come,” I said. “Dad needs you. Something’s wrong.”

She came right out, and I followed her back upstairs. I remember thinking that because she used to be a nurse, Dad would be okay. Whenever my little sister, Christie, or I was hurt, Nan would always make us laugh as she tended to our wounds, telling us stories from when she worked in a war repatriation hospital as a head nurse in charge of the others. She was a tough woman, a fighter who I believed held within her hands the power to make any illness or pain disappear.

As soon as she saw Dad, she left to call an ambulance. I stayed with him while she made the call, but as soon as she came back, she told me to leave the room.

Christie was asleep in the next room. I stood and watched her, listening to my dad’s breathing grow worse and Nan talk in a voice I’d never heard her use. “Garry,” she said, a little louder than normal. “The ambulance is coming. You’re having an asthma attack. Keep calm, Garry. Stay with me.”

Christie woke up from the noise and started crying. “Dad doesn’t feel well, Christie,” I said, trying to sound strong like Nan. “But people are coming to help.”

I raced across the hallway to open the door as soon as I heard the ambulance pull up outside. I watched as the paramedics carried a stretcher and breathing apparatus up the set of stairs. And I looked on in silence as Mum rushed into the house a few minutes later. I listened to the sound of Mum’s sobbing coming from the bedroom, not understanding what it meant. When they wheeled Dad out a while later, I didn’t want to look at him. He was still struggling to breathe, and his head was shaking. I could hear the noise of one of the wheels under the stretcher as it squeaked along.

I followed everyone outside, where the streetlights and headlights and blinking hazard lights all made the night look out of time. As the medics were loading Dad into the back of the ambulance, he told Mum he loved her. I stood by Nan’s side, the grass cold against my bare feet. “Things will be okay,” said Nan. I didn’t know who she was speaking to.

Christie, Nan, and I stayed back while Mum went off with Dad in the ambulance. I don’t know how long we were alone, or even what we did. But I remember that it was around midnight when the front door finally opened. Mum came in with a doctor beside her. Neither of them had to say anything at all. Nan and I both knew what had happened. Soon Mum, Nan, and I were crying. Not long after, the phone started ringing. Nan answered, her voice low, the calls never lasting more than a few minutes. When the doorbell rang and the first neighbours arrived and hugged Mum tight, I disappeared to my room.

On the day of the funeral, I watched as Dad’s coffin was wheeled toward the hearse. I broke free from Mum’s hand on my shoulder and ran out to stop it. I draped as much of myself as I could around the timber box, but it was no use. My arms couldn’t reach all the way around. When my sobbing got so hard that it hurt my chest, someone peeled me away.

2

Soon after Dad’s death, Mum moved downstairs, where Nan took care of her and Christie and me. It was as if Mum became a child again, and in doing so she couldn’t be a mum to us anymore.

I may have been just a nine-year-old kid, but any fool could have spotted the signs. The day I walked in on her in her bedroom, tears barely dry on her cheeks, confirmed the fact that she wasn’t coping.

That was a few weeks after Dad’s death. It took a few months for me to find out that her troubles were not just caused by grief. She and I were in the kitchen one evening. She was cleaning—a new obsession that had started recently—and I was sitting at the table reading.

“Dion,” she said, “Garry wasn’t your dad.”

I don’t remember crying or running off to hide. I don’t remember shouting or screaming or asking my mum to explain further. I have no memory of what I said next. I have no recall of how I felt. A blank void exists where so many memories should be. I can only imagine how painful that news must have been for me to wipe all trace of it from my mind.

But what I know for sure is that the wound that had been inflicted on me by my dad’s—Garry’s—death became so deep that it changed everything about me.

Even today my mum will cry when she and I talk about Garry’s death. She’ll say it took only a twenty-minute ambulance ride for everything in our lives to change. She’s right, but she’s also wrong: it might have taken minutes for life to be thrown into chaos, but it took only four words for my grieving heart to be ripped completely apart.

I held tight to my secret. Within a year or two of finding out the truth about myself, I was ashamed of my past: not only was I the kid without a dad at home, but I was the only one I knew who also had a single parent. The regular stream of visitors that poured in after the funeral had long since stopped, and our dwindling finances forced Mum to go out and find work. Whenever she was at home, she spent hours repeatedly cleaning the house and listening to Lionel Richie songs played loudly on the stereo in the pristine dining room.

In my mind, it seemed like all my friends came from perfect families, and because they all went to church, I’d take myself on Sundays as well. I wanted to feel as though I belonged, and I also liked the fact that I could help myself to a handful of small cakes after the service. I didn’t mind the sermons so much—sometimes they even made me feel better about myself. But the way people responded to me, as I hovered near the tea table at the end of the service, made it clear to me that they saw me differently from everyone else. I could hear them whispering behind my back. As soon as I turned around, the awkward silence and fake smiles would come out.

Mum started getting phone calls as well. I’d try to creep out into the hallway and watch as she stood, her face turned to the wall, shoulders hunched. Her words were clipped and the calls short, and sometimes when they were over, she’d turn around and see me watching and tell me about the latest gossip people were spreading about us in the town.

Soon enough I encountered the ostracism myself. When I went to a friend’s house to visit one Saturday afternoon, I could see his bike on the grass out front, so I knew he was in. His mum, however, said he couldn’t come out to play.

“You can’t see Dan,” she said, pulling the screen door closed between us.

“Why not, Mrs. Carruthers?”

“You’re a bad influence, Dion. We don’t want you coming around.”

I walked away devastated. I didn’t drink, swear, act up at school, or get into trouble with the police. Okay, so I was a little greedy with the small cakes at church, but other than that I was always polite and tried to be kind.

She could only have been referring to one thing.

I didn’t have a name for it at the time, but I quickly developed a strong dislike for being made to feel I was being excluded. By the time I was fourteen, I was well aware of precisely where I belonged in life: on the outside.

I sat, as I always did, alone and away from everyone else as the race staff welcomed the runners and started the safety briefing. The race was organized by a group I’d not run with before, but I’d been in enough of these meetings to know what was coming.

The biggest danger for anyone running a multi-stage ultra in desert heat is when heat exhaustion—your standard case of dehydration, cramps, dizziness, and a racing pulse—tips over into heatstroke. That’s when more drastic symptoms arrive, including confusion, disorientation, and seizures. You won’t know it’s happening; you won’t pick up the signs yourself. That’s when you end up curling up in a ditch or making wrong decisions at precisely the time when you need to be getting out of the heat, replacing salts and liquid, and drastically reducing your core temperature. If you don’t, you can slip into a coma and end up dead.

The race organizers said that anyone they suspected of being on the edge of heat exhaustion would be pulled from the race immediately. What they didn’t say was that six years previously, one of their competitors in the same race had died from heatstroke.

The microphone was passed to an American woman. I recognized her as the founder of the race. “This year we’ve got some great runners competing,” she said, “including the one and only Tommy Chen.” There was a round of applause from the hundred runners in the room, who all shifted focus to a young Taiwanese guy who had his own personal film crew standing beside him, capturing the moment. We then listened to a whole load of stuff about how Tommy was going for the win, how he already had some great results behind him.

When I was back home, I had researched the runners I thought were the main contenders, so I knew Tommy was one of the best around. I knew he was a genuine multi-stage superstar and would be tough to beat.

Before I’d left Scotland, I’d read an e-mail from the organizers listing the top-ten runners they expected to do well. I wasn’t mentioned at all, despite having beaten a few of them in the past. A bit of me was still annoyed about it but not because my ego was bruised. There was no reason why they would have expected me to do well. Having not raced since a 132-miler in Cambodia eight months before, I felt I had become a forgotten nobody, and I didn’t blame them for passing me over.

I was annoyed with myself. I’d started running only three years earlier but already had enjoyed a few podium results. Coming to the sport so late, I knew I had only a tiny window in which to prove myself, and taking eight months off to recover had felt like a waste of precious time.

Before the briefing we had a kit check to make sure we each had the mandatory equipment required for the race. Even though we carry all the food, bedding, and clothes we will need for the entire six-stage, seven-day race, the aim is to keep our bag weights to a minimum. For me, that means no change of clothes, no sleeping mat, and no books or smartphone to keep me entertained at the end of the race. All I bring is a sleeping bag, a single set of clothes, and the absolute minimum amount of food I can get away with. I bank on 2,000 calories a day, even though I know I’ll burn closer to 5,000. I return home looking like death, but the lighter bag is worth it.

Later that day we were boarded onto buses and taken to the site where the race would begin, a couple of hours outside of Hami. I made small talk with a guy next to me, but mainly I kept quiet and tried to block out the noise of the three guys who had come from Macau behind me who were laughing and talking loudly the whole way. I turned around and half-smiled at them a few times, hoping that they’d pick up on my subtle hint for them to shut up. They just grinned back and carried on with their party. By the time we stopped, I was pretty fed up and hoping to get off and find some peace and quiet to start mentally preparing for the race ahead.

The locals put on a beautiful exhibition of regional dancing and horse riding, including a game that looked like polo but was being played with a dead sheep. I snuck off to find the tent I’d be staying in to claim my spot. On most multi-stage ultras, runners get assigned tent mates to camp with throughout the race. You never know who you’re going to get, but you can at least make sure you don’t get stuck with a terrible sleeping spot.

I stood in the old army surplus tent and wondered where to put myself. I never liked being near the door because of the draft, and the back of the tent often got a little cold too. I decided to chance it and take a spot in the middle, hoping that my fellow campers wouldn’t keep me awake by snoring or making a fuss.

I gave my kit a final check as the first three tent mates arrived. They looked sound enough and didn’t cause a ruckus as they chose their spots.

My heart sank when I heard the sound of laughter, looked up, and saw the three guys from Macau walking in.

Even though it was summer, the temperature was noticeably colder when the sun started to set. The local mayor gave a speech that I couldn’t understand, but the display of Mongolian dancing and high-speed horse riding was enough to keep me occupied for a while. Some of the runners were sitting around, eating their evening meals, but I wandered around. I got sidetracked looking at Tommy Chen’s film crew, but soon enough I was thinking about getting back to the tent. When people started asking one another what type of shoes they were running in, how much their bags weighed, or whether they’d brought any extra supplies, it was definitely my cue to leave. Getting involved in those kinds of conversations on the day before a race starts is never a good idea. The minute you encounter someone who is doing something different, you’ll end up doubting yourself.

I checked my watch—six thirty. Time to eat. Even though waiting can be hard when I’m nervous and it’s dark already, I always make sure I eat at the right time the night before each day’s race. You don’t want to eat too early and have your body consuming the calories before you’re actually running.

I got my food, climbed into my sleeping bag, and ate in silence in the tent.

I made sure I was asleep before anyone else came back.

3

People always get up way too early on the first day of these races. Their nerves get the best of them, and two or three hours before the start, the camp is buzzing with people packing and repacking their bags, eating their food, talking, and worrying about whether they’ve packed their bags right and eaten the right amount of breakfast at just the right time.

I get it. I’ve been there myself. But that’s not how I operate anymore. I have a routine that’s tried and tested.

Start minus ninety minutes—wake up, get dressed, visit toilets.

Start minus sixty minutes—keep warm in tent, eat high-calorie breakfast.

Start minus fifteen minutes—pack up sleeping bag and inflatable mattress, leave tent, and join start line.

To anyone watching, however, the last hour of my routine looks a little weird. I stay in my sleeping bag right up until it’s time to leave, even when I’m eating my can of All Day Breakfast. While everyone else is hopping up and down outside, having eaten their dehydrated meals, I’m curled up in my bag, beanie hat pulled tight over my head, tucking into a cold can of beans, sausage, bacon, and mushrooms. I get a few looks because no multi-stage runner in their right mind would ever carry canned food; it’s just not worth the weight. But I take just one can that I eat before the race starts, and the 450 calories are more than worth the bemused stares as people wonder what kind of amateur I am.

It tastes especially good knowing that for the next six days I’m going to be eating nothing but cold, rehydrated meals that taste like salmon or Bolognese-flavoured pasta, the occasional strip of biltong—dried and cured meat from South Africa—a few nuts, and dozens of energy gels. I’ll be sick of this food before the end of the week, but it’s lightweight nutrition that keeps my bag weight down.

I savoured every cold mouthful. I couldn’t see the three Macau boys anywhere, but I could tell that the rest of my tent mates—two Brits and one American—were staring at me like I was a fool who was way out of his depth. Nobody said anything, and once I’d eaten, I lay back down and curled up as tight as I possibly could in my bag. I guessed they were probably still staring.

With a quarter hour left, I climbed out of the sleeping bag, packed my things away in my rucksack, and headed for the line. People stared as I knew they would. They always do when they see me coming on the first day. My skin-tight running top is bright yellow and covered in my sponsor’s logo. And because I’m tall and skinny, I look like a banana. While confident in my pre-race preparation and training, I always start to question myself, seeing the start line. As much as I try to avoid it, I end up thinking the other runners look better than I do. They all seem to be fitter, stronger, and look more like endurance athletes while I suddenly feel like an amateur again. The only way through it is to clench my jaw, hide behind my sunglasses, and tell myself it’s time to get down to business.

For a lot of runners, the act of lacing up their shoes, heading out the door, and letting their lungs and their legs find their perfect rhythm as they run through nature is a beautiful thing. It’s about freedom, peace, and the moment when all time seems to stop and the stresses of daily life fade.

I’m not one of those runners. My wife is. Lucja runs because she loves running. She races because she loves the camaraderie and the sense of community. Not me. I don’t love running. I don’t really like it either. But I do love racing. I love competing.

It took me thirty-seven years to realize that racing was for me. For most of my teens and twenties, I played competitive cricket and hockey. Right from the start I loved the action of a well-bowled ball, a perfectly struck cover drive, and a rocket of a shot that sails into the top right corner of the goal. To me, both of those sports have the potential to fill me with the kind of peace and happiness that Lucja describes when she runs. But even though I could master the technical aspects of hitting and bowling, I never could deal with the dynamics of playing as part of a team. I’ve watched myself fly off into a rage at my underperforming teammates so many times during matches that I know I’m more of a solo sport kind of guy.

I played golf for a while and got pretty good too—good enough to hustle the weekend players on courses throughout the western suburbs of Sydney and come back home with enough money so Lucja and I could eat for the rest of the week. But there was something about the pressure and the need to fit in with all those etiquette rules that riled me. After I threw one too many tantrums and broke one too many putters, I finally decided that golf was not for me either.

When it came to running, I discovered, quite by accident, that my competitive side returned. We had moved out of London and were living in Manchester at the time. It was New Year’s Eve, and I was listening to a friend from cricket go on and on about how he was going to take part in a half marathon in the spring. Dan was talking about bringing down his personal best of 1 hour 45 minutes. Thanks to Lucja, I knew enough about running to know that was an okay time, not amazing but better than a lot of people could run. Dan was quite fit as well, so I reckoned he was probably right in feeling confident about becoming a bit faster.

But he was just so cocky about it all. So I put down my beer and spoke up.

“I reckon I could beat you.”

Dan laughed. The music was loud, and he had to lean in to make sure he’d heard correctly. “You what?”

“I could take you. Easy.”

“You’re not a runner, Dion. No way.”

“Dan, I’m so confident I’ll even give you five minutes.”

The conversation got a bit wild after that. People were laughing and shouting, and pretty soon the deal was done. If I didn’t beat Dan by five minutes, I’d take him, his wife, and Lucja out for dinner. If I won, he’d be the one paying.

Lucja gave me the kind of look that said, Here we go again. I just smiled back and held up my hands. As far as I was concerned, I’d just won a free sumptuous meal for the two of us.

The race was at the end of March, and I knew I had a double mountain to climb. I’d been running for a year or two, but never farther than two or three miles at a time; any more than that and I’d just get bored and fed up. I’ve always hated running when it’s cold or wet—and Manchester in January and February serves up nothing but cold and wet. So a few weeks went by, and my training had barely begun.

Dan is one of those runners who can’t resist coming back from a run and posting his times on Twitter. It wasn’t long before his overconfidence began to show, and when I started to read how far he was running and how fast he was getting there, I had all the motivation I needed to get off the sofa and hit the streets. I knew that as long as I pushed myself to run farther and faster than the times Dan was posting, I’d be able to beat him.

I lined up alongside Dan and Lucja at the start line. Dan was looking fit and up for it. Lucja was loving the pre-race-hype and crowd-warm-up routine from the announcer whose job it was to get everyone pumped for the race start. I was feeling out of place among the thousands of other runners who all had what looked like better sports equipment than I had.

“You know I have very expensive taste in wine, Dion,” Dan said. “You’re going to need a second mortgage to pay for the meal tonight.”

I didn’t say anything. Just smiled.

“Seriously, mate,” he said, looking genuinely concerned. “Are you all right for this? It feels hot already. Don’t push yourself harder than you should.”

I was feeling nervous. My mouth was dry, and it was all I could do to suck as much air as I possibly could into my lungs.

The gun was fired, and we were off. Dan was at my side, and we were going at a fair pace already. Lucja dropped back, and the two of us carried on together. He seemed strong and in control. I felt fine about keeping pace with him, happy that we were finally under way.

When we passed the first mile marker, it hit me that I had only twelve more in which to gain five minutes on Dan. So I did the only thing I could think of. I decided to give it everything I had, running as hard and as fast as I could. Pretty soon my lungs were in agony, and I felt as if there wasn’t enough air in the sky to keep me going. I wanted to slow down just a little and recover, but I forced myself to keep up the pace. Those five minutes were going to come my way only if I kept pulling away from Dan.

Never once did I look back. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t help. If I saw him close, I’d probably panic, and if he was too far back already, I might end up slowing down. I knew that the race was going to be won or lost in my head. If I kept focus and pushed on, I’d avoid distraction.

Dan was right about it being a hot day. I’d never experienced heat like it at that time of year in Manchester before, and all through the morning the noise of the crowd was broken up by the sound of ambulance sirens as they raced to help exhausted runners.

For me, though, the heat wasn’t a threat. It was like a welcome friend. It reminded me of my childhood in Australia. I’d spend hours on summer days playing cricket or riding my bike in temperatures pushing up to 110 and 120 degrees. It wasn’t anywhere near that hot during the race, but all the same I found myself getting stronger as the heat increased and the miles passed by.

At least I did until mile eleven. That’s when I started to feel myself slowing down. My legs were numb and weak, as if someone had stripped half the muscles from them. But I kept running, pushing hard and reminding myself what was at stake: my pride.

I crossed the line in 1:34, a respectable time for a first-ever half marathon, and nine minutes faster than Dan’s previous personal best. Was it going to be enough? He’d set off pretty fast, and his training had put him in line to beat it. All I could do was crouch at the finish, feel my lungs begin to recover, and watch the clock tick by and hope not to see him.

It was Lucja who crossed a little more than five minutes after me. We high-fived each other and smiled as we waited the best part of another ten minutes for Dan to finally come home.

“What happened?” he said once he had recovered a little. “You just sped off. You must have done more training than you let on.”

I smiled and gave him a pat on the back. “You need to get off Twitter, mate.”

The start line at the race was much like any other start line at any other race around the world; everyone doing their own thing to cope with the nerves. I was at the side, second or third row back from the front, trying to distract myself by looking at the others around me. Tommy Chen was there, looking focused and pretty damn good. He had his camera crew to the side and plenty of fans among the pack. “Good luck, Tommy,” someone called out. “Hope you smash it!”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, shifting his feet back and forth. I watched as the smile fell quickly from his face. He was just as nervous as the rest of us. Maybe more so. I knew he was one of the up-and-coming stars of multi-stage ultras, but he’d come in second in the first of the five races the organizers hosted that year. The pressure was on him to deliver.

To keep myself busy for another minute or so, I did one more final check of my kit, making sure the straps were tight enough across my chest, the food I needed during the stage was in the correct pockets, and my bright yellow gaiters were covering my shoes properly. I knew we’d be running up a sand dune pretty soon in the day, and the last thing I wanted was to spend the four or five hours that followed with pieces of grit irritating my feet, which could possibly lead to blisters and other foot issues.

The start horn sounded, and what little noise there was from the small crowd disappeared from my world. The race began on a wide stretch of grass, and as we got under way, the usual crush of people was surging down the middle. You get all sorts wanting to take the lead on that first day, and I don’t mind so much. That’s the beauty of these races—even though world-class athletes are lining up alongside happy amateurs, there is no sense of hierarchy or rank. If you want to run at the front and can keep up the pace, then be my guest.

I had guessed that the start would be a little bit tricky, with the runners bunching up as they usually did, so I’d put myself far out wide of everyone else. I didn’t want to be tripped off the line, and if I went off fast enough, I could get ahead of the slower runners before the course narrowed and dropped down into a rocky canyon.

My plan worked as I soon fell in closely behind Tommy after the first 100 meters. It hadn’t been raining in the night, but the rocks were slippery from the morning dew. I struggled to keep my footing and felt a bit uneasy and took it steady, just like Tommy. I guess we both knew that if we put a foot down wrong and twisted an ankle, we’d have no choice but to put up with a whole lot of pain for another 150 miles or, worse yet, a Did Not Finish.

I heard someone move up behind me and watched as a Romanian guy flew right past me. He was skipping over the rocks as if they were mini trampolines. Once Tommy knew he was behind him, both of them pulled away from me a little. Keep it steady, I told myself. No need to worry. I had put together a detailed stage-by-stage race plan with my coach before I’d left Scotland. We’d looked back at my other races and noticed that I’d been making the same mistake a lot of the time.

I tended to start slowly and then make up ground as the week went on, particularly on the long day, which had become one of my strengths, when the stage typically covered fifty miles or more. The truth is I’m just not a morning person, and the first morning always seems to hit me hard. I’ve often found myself twenty minutes down on the race leaders at the end of day one, which makes it close to impossible to make back up.

Even in training runs I struggle to get going, and for the first mile or two, I always question whether I want to keep going. I spend those first few minutes feeling like I’d rather be doing anything other than running. But if I push through it, I’m usually fine, and during the last half of a run, I’ll be flying.

I trusted that as long as I kept Tommy and this Romanian guy in my sights, I’d be all right. If I was close at the end of stage one, keeping pace but not overcooking, I’d be putting myself in the best possible position for the rest of the week.

Halfway through the day, when the Romanian started to tire and fell back so far behind us that I could no longer hear him, I looked up and saw a sand dune towering up ahead. It was steep and wide, easily three hundred feet high. I’d seen dunes like it in Morocco, but this one seemed different somehow. The sand on the side looked harder and more compact, but the path I had to run up was soft and offered almost no resistance at all.

There’s a key to running up a sand dune, and I learned it the hard way back when I first competed in the Marathon des Sables. I didn’t know that you have to keep your stride as short as you possibly can, ensuring a quick cadence to avoid the sand breaking underneath your feet and slowing you down. I didn’t know that sometimes the longer path is easier than the shorter one. As a result, I tanked and came in so late at the end of the first day that I was seriously considering dropping out altogether.

Tommy attacked the dune ahead of me, but after just a couple of strides it was obvious that sand in the Gobi Desert was not like the Saharan stuff. It must have rained in the area overnight, and the sand was darker, clumpier. It gave way with the slightest pressure, falling away like weak clay, and at times I had to use my hands to gain a little extra grip. We weren’t running up it; we were scrambling.

Once we were finally at the top, I could see the dune more clearly. The only option was to run along the narrow peak that stretched ahead for almost a mile. On both sides, the dune fell away, and if anyone put a foot wrong, he’d end up falling all the way down to the bottom. It would take ages to clamber back up, wasting precious time and precious energy.

Tommy was loving it. “Look at this view!” he shouted. “Isn’t it magnificent?”

I said nothing back. I’m scared of heights and was terrified that I’d fall. I moved ahead as cautiously as I could. More than once my foot slipped, and I threw my arms out in a desperate attempt to regain my balance. At that point I didn’t particularly care how much ground Tommy made on me. All I could do was stare at where my feet were heading and hope that the sand held.

As much as I hated being on top of the dune, when it came time to run down it, I was in heaven. I put a bit of power into my legs and sprinted down as fast as I could. By the time I hit bottom, I overtook Tommy. I felt his surprise and heard him keeping close behind me.

We ran side by side for a while until the Romanian caught up with us, and then the three of us traded the lead from time to time. The course took us through muddy fields and over bridges, alongside a giant reservoir. The vast sands and cruel heat of the Gobi Desert were a couple of days away, and we ran through remote villages that belonged in another century. Tumbledown buildings squatted on the land like an abandoned movie set. Occasionally we’d see locals, standing and staring impassively at us. They never said anything, but they didn’t seem bothered by us either. It wouldn’t have made any difference to me either way. I was flying by this time, full of hope that the race in the Gobi Desert might not be my last race after all.

4

I was born in Sydney, New South Wales, but grew up in an Australian outback town in Queensland called Warwick. It’s a place that barely anyone I meet has visited but one that contains the kind of people everyone can recognize. It’s farming country, with traditional values and a strong emphasis on family. These days it’s changed a lot and become a small, vibrant city, but when I was a teenager, Warwick was the kind of place that would fill up on a Friday night. The pubs would be crammed with hardworking men looking for a good night out involving a few too many beers, a couple of fights, and a trip to the petrol station—which any self-respecting Australian calls the ‘servo’—for a meat pie that had been kept in a warmer all day and was hard as a rock.

They were good people, but it was a cliquish town at the time, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. I knew I didn’t belong among them.

It wasn’t just the scandal of my abnormal childhood and family situation that prompted people to react badly. It was the way I behaved. It was who I had become. I went from being a polite, pleasant little kid to an awkward, pain-in-the-ass loudmouth. By the time I was fourteen, I was the class joker, riling the teachers with my crowd-pleasing comments, getting thrown out of class, and swaggering my way out of the school gates as I walked to the servo for an early afternoon pie while the other fools were still stuck in class.

And when my school year ended and the headmaster greeted each of us with a handshake and a friendly word about our futures at the final assembly, all he could say to me was, “I’ll be seeing you in prison.”

Of course, there was a reason for all this, and it wasn’t just the pain of losing my dad—not just once but twice over.

I was falling apart because everything at home seemed to me to be falling apart.

It seemed the loss of her husband hit my mum hard. Really hard. Her own father had returned from the Second World War traumatized, and like so many men, he turned to alcohol to numb the pain. Mum’s childhood taught her that when parents are struggling, home isn’t always the best place to be.

So when Mum became a widow in her early thirties with two young children, she coped the only way she knew how. She retreated. I remember days would go by and she’d be locked in the bedroom. I cooked meals of eggs on toast or spaghetti out of a can, or else we went to Nan’s, some other neighbour’s house, or, if it was Sunday, church.

From what I could see, Mum would go through phases where she became fixated with keeping the house immaculate. She cleaned relentlessly, and on the odd occasion that she did cook for herself, she’d clean the kitchen frantically for two hours. Neither I nor my little sister, Christie, could do anything right. Kids being kids, if we’d leave crumbs around the place, smear our finger marks on windows, or take showers that lasted longer than three minutes, it might upset her.

Ours was a half-acre, filled with trees and flower beds. While Mum and Dad used to love working in it together, after Dad’s death it was up to me to get out and keep it tidy. If I didn’t do my chores, I felt life wasn’t worth living.

When Mum would start nagging at me, pretty soon she’d be yelling at me and screaming. “You’re useless,” she’d say. I’d scream and yell back, and soon we both would be swearing at each other. Mum never apologized. Nor did I. But we both had said things we’d later regret.

We argued endlessly, every day and every night. I’d come home from school and feel like I had to walk on eggshells around the house. If I made any noise or disturbed her in any way, the whole fighting thing would start up again.

By the time I was fourteen, she’d had enough. “You’re out,” she said one day as, following yet another storm of mutually hurled insults, she pulled out cleaning supplies from the cupboard. “There’s too much arguing, and nothing you do is right. You’re moving downstairs.”

The house was a two-storey home, but everything that mattered was upstairs. Downstairs was the part of the house where nobody ever went. It was where Christie and I played when we were little, but since then the playroom had become a dumping ground. There was a toilet down there, but barely any natural light, and a big area that was still full of building supplies. Most important for my mum, there was a door at the base of the stairway that could be locked. Once I was down there, I felt trapped, stopped from being part of the family life above.

I didn’t argue with her. Part of me wanted to get away from her.

So I moved my mattress and my clothes and settled into my new life—a new life in which Mum would open the door when it was time for me to come up and get food or when I needed to go to school. Apart from that, if I was at home, I was confined to the basement.

The thing I hated most about it was not the fact that I felt like some kind of a prisoner. What I hated about it was the dark.

Soon after Garry’s death, I started sleepwalking. It got worse when I moved down, and I would wake up in the area where all the broken tiles were dumped. It’d be pitch black; I’d be terrified and unable to figure out which way to turn to switch on the lights. Everything became frightening, and my dreams would fill with nightmare images of Freddy Krueger waiting for me outside my room.

Most nights, as I listened to the lock turn, I’d fall on my bed and sob into the stuffed Cookie Monster toy I’d had since I was a kid.

Normally I don’t take a mattress with me on a race, but I was worried my leg injury might flare up at some point crossing the Gobi Desert, so I’d packed one specially. I blew it up at the end of the first day and tried to rest up. I had a little iPod with me, but I didn’t bother putting it on. I was fine with just lying back and thinking about the day’s race. I was happy with third place, especially as there was only a minute or two between me, Tommy, and the Romanian, whose name I later found out was Julian.

Instead of an army surplus tent, we were in a yurt that night, and I was looking forward to it being good and warm as the temperature dropped. Meanwhile, though, I guessed I’d have to wait a while before any of my tent mates returned. I ate a little biltong and curled up in my sleeping bag.

It took an hour or so before the first two guys arrived back. I was dozing when I first became aware of them talking, and I heard one of my tent mates, an American named Richard, say, “Whoa! Dion’s back already!” I looked up, smiled, and said hi and congratulated them on finishing the first stage.

Richard went on to say he was planning on speaking with the three Macau guys as soon as they got in. I’d slept all through the first night, but according to Richard, they’d been up late messing with their bags and up early talking incessantly.

I wasn’t worried too much, and thinking about Lucja and how she’d got me into running in the first place, I drifted back to sleep.

I first tried running when we were living in New Zealand. Lucja was managing an eco-hotel, and I was working for a wine exporter. Life was good, and the days of having to hustle the golf courses for food money were behind us. Even better, both our jobs came with plenty of perks, such as free crates of wine and great meals out. Every night we’d put away a couple of bottles of wine, and on weekends we’d eat out. We’d take Curtly, our Saint Bernard (named after legendary West Indian cricketer Curtly Ambrose), out for a walk in the morning, stopping off at a café for sweet potato corn fritters or a full fry-up of eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, mushrooms, tomato, and toast. We might get a pastry on the way home, crack open a bottle of something at lunch, then head out in the evening for a three-course meal with more wine. Later we’d walk Curtly one more time and get an ice cream.

People would tell me I was a big lad, and they were right. I weighed 240 pounds and was heavier than I had ever been in my life. I didn’t do any exercise, was an off-again on-again smoker, and had created a dent in the sofa where I lay and watched sports on TV. I was twenty-six and eating myself to death.

The change came when Lucja made some new friends who loved running and fitness. She got onto her own health kick and started slimming down. She explained that she wanted to look good in a bikini, and I—like a typical guy from my part of the world—told her she was being ridiculous.

But I didn’t believe what I said. I knew she was made of strong stuff, that she was determined and was going to see this through.

Lucja quickly got into running and found that she was completing her three-mile loop faster and faster.

“You’re so unfit and unhealthy, Bubba,” she said, calling me by the name I was now beginning to dislike. “I could beat you.”

I was lying on the sofa at the time, watching cricket. “Don’t be stupid. I could beat you easily. You’ve only been at it for six weeks.”

In my mind, I was still a sportsman. I was the same kid who could spend all day playing cricket or running about with his friends. Besides, I had something that Lucja lacked—a killer competitive instinct. I’d competed so much as a teenager and won so many matches that I was convinced I could still beat her at any challenge she threw at me.

I found some shorts and tennis shoes, stepped over Curtly, who was sleeping on the front step, and joined Lucja on the street outside.

“You sure you’re ready for this, Bubba?”

I snorted in disbelief. “Are you kidding? There’s no way you’re winning.”

“All right then. Let’s go.”

We kept pace—for the first fifty feet. After that, Lucja started pulling away from me. My brain was demanding that I keep up, but it was impossible. I had nothing to give. I was like an old steamroller whose fire had gone out, gradually getting slower and slower.

By the time I’d covered another hundred feet, I stopped moving altogether. Up ahead, the road made a slight turn and went up a hill. The defeat felt heavy within me.

I stood bent over, hands on knees, retching, coughing, and gasping for breath. I looked up to see Lucja way ahead of me. She looked back at me for a second, then carried on running up the hill.

I was enraged. How could I get beaten? I turned around and walked back home. With each step, the anger was joined by something else. Panic.

The healthier she became and the more weight she lost, the greater my risk of losing her. On the day of the run, I knew she wouldn’t stop, that this wasn’t just a phase or a passing fad. She was determined, and I knew she’d keep going until she was happy. And when she reached that point, why would she stay with a fat bloke like me?

I woke up again but this time to the sound of the Macau boys coming back into the tent. They were all pumped up at having completed the first stage and were spreading out their kits, looking for their evening meals. That was when Richard pulled off his headphones and started talking to them in what sounded to me like perfect Mandarin.

Judging by their reaction, they understood every word he said, and they were taking it seriously. They looked like schoolboys being told off, not knowing where to look. As Richard was finishing, he pointed at me. They all stared in silence, grabbed their food from their bags, and slipped out of the tent.

“What did you say?” asked Allen, one of the British guys in the tent.

“I told them that tonight they had to be quiet and more organized. They’ve got to get their stuff organized before dinner, come back, and rest. That guy’s here to win.”

They all turned and looked at me.

“Is he right?” asked Allen. “Are you here to win?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I’m not here for fun, if that’s what you mean.”

Richard laughed. “We got that impression. You’re not exactly sociable, are you?”

I laughed too. I liked this guy.

“Yeah, some of that’s because I’m cold, and some of it’s just how I get through these races.” I paused. “But thanks for saying that to them.”

It was six thirty in the evening when I shuffled out of my sleeping bag and wandered outside the yurt carrying a bag of dehydrated whatever-it-was I was going to eat that night. While we have to carry all our own food, bedding, and clothes on a multi-stage ultra, at least our water is provided. I found the fire where water was being boiled and made up a chilli con carne–flavoured meal. It tasted pretty bland, just like it always did, but I reminded myself I wasn’t there for fun. It had the bare minimum calories I required to keep going, and I needed to eat every last bit of it.

Everyone was sitting around the fire and chatting. I liked the idea of resting in its glow and soaking up the heat for a while, but all the seats were taken, so I crouched down on an uncomfortable rock and ate. After scooping the very last traces of food from the corners of the bag, I headed back to the yurt. It had been a good day—a really good one, in fact—but I’d need a solid night’s sleep and an equally good day tomorrow to keep my number three slot. I’d started the day as an unknown. I guessed that from now on people would be a bit more aware of me in the race. And that could make things difficult.

It was when I got up that I saw a dog. It was maybe a foot tall and sandy coloured with great dark eyes and a funny-looking mustache and beard. It was walking around between the chairs, getting up on its hind legs and charming people into giving it bits of food. Getting runners to part with any of their food this early in the race was no mean feat.

Clever dog, I thought. There’s no way I’d feed it.

PART 2

5

The yurt had been so hot I’d barely been able to sleep all night, but as I walked out the next morning, the air was cold enough to make me shiver. The ground was wet, and the Tian Shan up ahead appeared to be covered in low dark clouds that were surely going to dump more rain on us.

With a few minutes to go before the eight o’clock start, I took my place on the start line at the front of the pack. After coming in third yesterday, I felt as though I belonged there.

People were a lot less nervous than before. I could even hear some of them laughing, though I tried my best to block out all distractions and focus on the challenge ahead. I knew we’d face mile after mile of ascent as we headed up into the mountains, followed by some dangerous descents. We were already at an altitude of seven thousand feet, and I guessed that some runners would already be struggling with the lack of oxygen. Today was going to make things harder by taking us up to more than nine thousand feet.

My concentration was broken by the sound of more laughter and a little cheering behind me.

“It’s the dog!”

“How cute!”

I looked down and saw the same dog from last night. It was standing by my feet, staring at the bright yellow gaiters covering my shoes. It was transfixed for a while, its tail wagging constantly. Then it did the strangest thing. It looked up, its dark black eyes taking in my legs first, then my yellow-shirted torso, and finally my face. It looked right into my eyes, and I couldn’t look away.

“You’re cute,” I said under my breath, “but you’d better be fast if you’re not planning to get trodden by one hundred runners chasing after you.”

I looked about to see if anyone was going to come and claim the dog and get it out of the way before the runners took off. A few other runners caught my eye, smiled, and nodded at the dog, but none of the locals or the race staff seemed to notice.

“Does anyone know whose dog this is?” I asked, but nobody did. They were all too focused on the ten-second countdown to the race start.

“Nine … eight … seven …”

I looked down. The dog was still at my feet, only now it had stopped staring at me and was sniffing my gaiters.

“You’d better get away little doggie, or else you’re going to get squashed.”

“Five … four …”

“Go on,” I said, trying to get it to move. It was no use. It took a playful bite of the gaiter, then jumped back and crouched on the ground before diving in for another sniff and a chew.

The race began, and as I set off, the dog came with me. The gaiters game was even more fun now that the gaiters moved, and the dog danced around my feet as if it was the best fun ever.

It seemed to me that the cute moment could become annoying if it carried on for too long. The last thing I wanted was to trip over the little pooch and cause injury to it or myself. Then again, I knew there was a long stretch of single track coming up in which it would be hard to overtake a lot of the slower runners, so I wanted to keep up the pace and not lose my position with the front runner.

I was thankful when, after a quarter mile, I looked back down and saw that the dog wasn’t there. Probably gone back to its owner at the camp, I thought.

The track narrowed, and we entered a flat forest section that lasted a few miles. I was in second, a few feet behind a Chinese guy I’d not seen before. Every once in a while he’d miss a marker—a pink paper square about the size of a CD case attached to a thin metal spike in the ground. They were hard to miss, and in the forest sections there was one of them every ten or twenty feet.

“Hey!” I’d shout on the couple of occasions that he took a wrong turn and headed off into the forest. I’d wait for him to track back, then fall in again behind him. I guess I could have let him keep going or shouted my warning and then carried on running, but multi-stage runners have a certain way of doing things. If we’re going to beat someone, we want it to be because we’re faster and stronger, not because we’ve tricked them or refused to help when we could. After all, pushing our bodies as hard as we do, everyone makes mistakes from time to time. You never know when you’re going to need someone to help you out.

The forest fell away as the path started its climb into the mountains. I kept up the six-minute-mile pace, concentrating on keeping my stride short and my feet quick. My body remembered the hours I’d spent with my coach standing beside the treadmill, beating out the rapid cadence to which he wanted me to run. His shouts of “one-two-three-one-two-three” were like torture at first, but after a few sessions of spending a whole hour running like that, three minutes on then one minute off, my legs finally got the message. If I wanted to run fast and not feel the crippling pain anymore, I had no choice but to learn how to run this way.

I saw something move out of the corner of my eye and forced myself to look down for a fraction of a second. It was the dog again. It wasn’t interested in my gaiters this time but, instead, seemed happy just to trot along beside me.

Weird, I thought. What’s it doing here?

I pressed on and attacked the incline. Zeng, the Chinese guy who was leading, is an accomplished ultra-runner and had pulled away from me a little. I couldn’t hear anyone behind me. It was just me and the dog, side by side, tearing into the switchbacks. The path was interrupted by a man-made culvert. It was only three feet wide, and I didn’t think anything of it, leaping over the fast-flowing water without breaking stride.

I could tell the dog had stayed behind. It started barking, then making a strange whimpering sound. I didn’t turn back to look. I never do. Instead, I kept my head in the race and pushed on. As far as I knew, the dog belonged to someone back near the camp. The little thing had had a pretty good workout for the day, conned some runners out of some high-calorie food, and now it was time to head home.

I was fifteen when I told my mum I was leaving the dingy basement and moving in with a friend. She barely said anything. It seemed to me she didn’t care. I guess since I’d already been staying with friends whenever I could—and the fact that when I was around, Mum and I fought endlessly, trading insults like boxers at a weigh-in—it couldn’t have come as much of a surprise. In fact, it was probably a relief.

I moved in with a guy named Deon. “Dion and Deon?” said the woman who ran the hostel when Deon introduced me. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” said Deon. “Straight up.”

She snorted and turned away mumbling. “I’ve heard it all now.”

Deon was a year older than me, had left school already, and was an apprentice bricklayer. He’d had his own troubles at home.

Even though we were both finally free from the struggles at home, neither of us was too excited about life in the hostel. The walls were paper-thin, and everyone else living there was older and freaked us out. The hostel was filled with homeless people, travellers, and drunks. Food was always going missing from the communal areas, and barely a night went by without the whole hostel waking up to the sound of a fight breaking out.

While I was still at school, I also took a part-time job pumping petrol at the servo. It brought a little bit of money in but not enough, and I had to rely on Deon to help with the shortfall each week.

I only just managed to keep up with my schoolwork, but none of my teachers showed any sign of caring about where I was living or how I was coping with life away from home. In fact, I don’t think any of them knew about my new living arrangements, and I wanted to keep it that way. I was embarrassed to go back to the hostel and tried to hide the truth from my classmates with their perfect, loving family homes.

Deon was the kind of guy who could charm the birds from the trees. We’d sneak into the pub on a Friday or Saturday night, have a few beers, and try to chat up some girls. I’d let Deon do the talking, much like I’d let him do the dancing. Aussie blokes from towns like mine didn’t dance in those days, and it was almost inevitable that when he finally came off the dance floor, Deon would take a mouthful of abuse and a few thrown punches. He’d just laugh them off.

One Sunday afternoon as we lay on our bunks wasting time, we heard shouting in the corridor outside. Someone was calling Deon’s name, saying he was going to kill him for sleeping with his girlfriend.

The two of us froze. I stared at Deon, who looked for the first time ever genuinely scared for his life. We both tried to act tough when we were in the hostel, but we were just kids—who at that moment were terrified we were about to get our heads kicked in. Luckily the blokes didn’t know which room we were in, and they kept moving up and down the corridor until they eventually left. That was enough of a shock to get us to move out of the hostel as soon as possible.

The Grand Hotel was a step up from the hostel, but it wasn’t much of a hotel. It was just a pub with a few rented rooms at the top. Instead of addicts, drunks, and homeless blokes, the Grand was home to guys who worked on the railroad or in the local meatpacking plant. One was an ex-pro pool player who had once beaten the national champion but had drunk all his talent away. Another was a traveller who had run out of money and simply decided to make Warwick his home. I liked listening to him talk. “Any place can be all right,” he’d say, “as long as you accept what’s wrong with it.”

I felt much happier at the Grand than I did at the hostel. I liked being in the company of the kind of people who had chosen their lot and were happy with it, even if it meant not having the perfect wife, the perfect house, and the perfect family. I felt free living among them, and for the first time in years, it seemed to me that all the things my mum had said that made me feel worthless and unwanted, an unlovable screw-up and a disappointment, might not necessarily be true. Maybe I could learn to get by after all.

The barking and whimpering continued until I was twenty feet past the culvert. Then there was silence. I had a moment of hoping the dog hadn’t fallen into the water, but before I could think about it much more, there was a familiar flash of brown beside me. The dog was back by my side again.

You’re a determined little thing, aren’t you?

Soon the track became even steeper as the temperature dropped lower. The cold air had numbed my face and fingers, but I was sweating. The increase in altitude made my breathing tight and my head a little dizzy. If I was going to run without stopping all the way up the mountain, I knew I’d have to dig in even more than usual.

I hate mountain running. Even though I live in Edinburgh and am surrounded by the beauty of the Scottish Highlands, I avoid running outside and up hills whenever possible. Especially when it’s wet, cold, and windy. But give me a desert baked in 110-degree heat, and I’ll be as happy as any runner out there.

People often ask me why I like running in the heat so much. The answer is simple: I’ve always felt the most freedom when I’m running beneath a blazing sun.

It started when I was a kid. After Garry died, I turned to sport in the hope of finding refuge from the troubles at home. I’d spend hours outside playing cricket or hockey. Time would stop when I was outside, and the more I ran and pushed myself, the heavier my breathing became, and the louder my heart beat, the quieter the sadness and sorrow grew within me.

Maybe you could say that running in the heat was a form of escape. What I do know for sure is that as I ran in the Gobi Desert, I was no longer running to get away from my past. I was running towards my future. I was running with hope, not sorrow.

My pace slowed as every step became its own battle. There was snow all around, and at one point the track ran alongside a glacier. At other times the mountain would drop away at the side. I guessed there were some pretty dramatic views this high up, but I was thankful the cloud was so low that it was impossible to see anything more than a thick wall of grey mist. The experience was surreal, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

The checkpoint finally came into view, and I heard people call out the usual encouragement. Once they saw the dog, they shouted a little louder.

“There’s that dog again!”

I’d almost forgotten the little dog at my side. All the time that I’d been struggling up the hill, the dog had kept pace with me, skipping along as if running 2,500 feet up into the sky was the most natural thing in the world.

Once I was at the checkpoint, I faced the usual range of questions about how I was feeling and whether I had been drinking my water. Checkpoints are there to give runners an opportunity to refill their water bottles, but they’re also a chance for the race team to check us over and make sure we are fit to carry on.

This time, however, it was the dog who got far more attention than me. A couple of volunteers took some photos as the dog sniffed about the checkpoint tent. As soon as my bottles were full and I was ready to go, I moved out, half expecting this might be the point when the dog decided to leave me in favour of a better meal ticket.

But when I and my yellow gaiters started running out, the dog joined me straightaway.

If the climb to the top of the mountain had been tough, then the descent was its own unique sort of pain. For more than five miles the route took me straight down a path covered in rocks and loose stones. It was brutal on the joints, but like any runner, I knew that if I ran at anything less than 100 per cent, I’d get caught by whoever was behind me.

And that’s exactly what happened. I was feeling sluggish and struggled to hit anything close to my maximum pace on the descent, and soon enough Tommy glided past me, quickly followed by Julian.

I was annoyed with myself for giving too much on the ascent. I’d made a basic error, the kind I knew better not to make.

I checked myself. Getting annoyed could lead me to make another basic error. At times in the past, I’d let myself obsess about a mistake I’d made. Over the course of a few miles, the frustration would build and build until I’d lose all interest in the race and bail out.

I tried to distract myself by concentrating on the view. Coming down from the mountain at one point, I thought I saw a giant lake ahead of us, stretched out wide and dark beneath the grey skies. The closer I got, the more it became clear that it wasn’t a lake but a huge expanse of dark sand and gravel.

As the path flattened, I settled into a steady six-and-a-half-minute-per-mile pace, bursting through the final checkpoint, not bothering to stop for water. I saw Tommy, Zeng, and Julian up ahead and found they hadn’t opened up the gap as much as I had feared. They were racing one another hard, and with less than a mile to go, there was no way for me to catch them. But I didn’t mind so much. I felt good to be finishing strong without any hint of pain in my leg. I could hear the drums that played every time a runner crossed the finish line, and I knew that finishing a close fourth for the day would hopefully be enough to keep me in third overall.

Just as at each of the day’s checkpoints, the dog was the focus of attention at the finish. People were taking pictures and filming, cheering for the little brown mutt as it crossed the line. The dog seemed to like the attention, and I could swear it was playing to the crowd by wagging its tail even faster.

Tommy had got in a minute or two before me, and he joined in the applause. “That dog, man! It’s been following you all day!”

“Has it had any water?” asked one of the volunteers.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe it drank at some of the streams on the way.” I felt a little bad about it. I didn’t like the idea of it being thirsty or hungry.

Someone found a small bucket and gave the dog some water. It lapped it up, obviously thirsty.

I stepped back, wanting to leave the dog to it and get away from the crowds a little. Again I thought it might wander off and go find someone else to follow, but it didn’t. As soon as it finished drinking, it looked up, locked eyes on my yellow gaiters, and trotted over to my side, following me wherever I went.

It was hot in the camp, and I was glad we’d left all that horrible alpine cold up in the mountains. From now on the race was going to be about coping with the heat, not struggling through the cold. From tomorrow onward we’d be in the Gobi Desert. I couldn’t wait.

As soon as I sat down in the tent, the dog curled up next to me—and I started thinking about germs and diseases. It’s crucial during a weeklong race to keep as clean as possible because without any access to showers or wash basins, it’s easy to get sick from anything you touch. The dog was looking right into my eyes, just as it had earlier that morning. I had a few hours before my six-thirty meal, so I pulled out one of the packs of nuts and biltong. The dog’s stare was unbreakable.

With a piece of meat midway to my mouth, it struck me that I hadn’t seen the dog eat a thing all day. It had run the best part of a marathon, and still it wasn’t trying to beg or steal any of the food I had in front of me.

“Here you go,” I said, tossing half the meat down onto the tarpaulin in front of it, instinct telling me that feeding by hand wasn’t a risk I wanted to take. The dog chewed, swallowed, spun around a few times, and lay down. Within seconds it was snoring, then twitching, then whimpering as it drifted deeper and deeper into sleep.

I woke up to the sound of grown men cooing like school kids.

“Ah, how cute is that?”

“Isn’t that the dog from last night? Did you hear she followed him all day?”

She. The dog had run with me all day, and I’d never thought to check what sex it was.

I opened my eyes. The dog was staring right at me, looking deeper into my eyes than I would have thought possible. I checked. They were right. It wasn’t an it. It was a she.

“Yeah,” I said to Richard and the rest of the guys. “She stuck with me all day. She’s got a good little motor on her.”

Some of the guys fed her, and again she took whatever she was given, but gently. It was almost as though she knew she was getting a good deal here and she needed to be on her best behaviour.

I told the guys I’d been wondering where she came from and that I’d guessed she’d belonged to whoever owned the yurts we’d stayed in the previous night.

“I don’t think so,” said Richard. “I heard some of the other runners say she joined them out on the dune yesterday.”

That meant she had put in almost fifty miles in two days. I was staggered.

It also meant she didn’t belong to the people back at the previous camp or to one of the race organizers.

“You know what you’ve got to do now, don’t you?” said Richard.

“What?”

“You’ve got to give her a name.”

6

I stopped running less than a mile in and cursed my stupidity.

The last twenty-four hours had brought all kinds of weather our way, from the snow and rain of the mountains to the dry heat that greeted us as we came down to camp. All night high winds had been tearing at the sides of the tent, and when I got up, the temperature was the coldest for any start yet.

The cold bothered me. I’d been looking forward to the day, knowing it was going to be flatter and hotter, but, instead, I’d found myself shivering on the start line. While the other runners went through their pre-race routines, I’d thrown off my backpack, rummaged around inside, and pulled out my light jacket, completely upsetting my usual precise and carefully prepared race start.

And now I was taking it off again. After a few minutes the sun had come out, and the temperature had started to rise. I should have been happy about it, but I could feel myself start to overheat in my wet weather gear. With five hours of hard running ahead of me, I had no choice but to stop.

As I pulled at zippers and plastic clips and shoved the jacket away, I noticed Tommy, Julian, and two others run past and reclaim the lead.

Then one more runner approached, and I smiled.

“Hey, Gobi,” I said, using the name I’d given her the night before. “You changed your mind, did you?”

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