A 250 km or 156-mile self sufficient run

Back in 2014 I did an amazing race in Jordan which I wrote about earlier. The race will be held again this year, for the first time since 2014. As I really loved the race, the comradery of the runners, the course and the finish in the old city of Petra, it didn’t take me long to register for the race again. The race will be held in the first week of November and is a 6-day event whereby we run about 6 marathons, through the sand, covering all the Wadi’s, including Wai Rum where the movie ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ was filmed, carrying a backpack with supplies such as food, medical supplies, cloths, sleeping bag, navigation items etc. The average bag weighs about 20-25 lbs and you can imagine that this is tough to run with that amount of weight on your bag. Not to forget that there is no shower or toilet. It’s you and nature, together with a bunch of other runners who are equally smelling at the end of the week. a lot of you are thinking ‘why the hell would you do that’ which we, ultra runners, can totally understand. Unfortunately we don’t have the answer….it is what it is, we like it, we love it, we like the rugged environment, we like the pain, the exhaustion but more so the satisfied feeling after completing such an event. Over the next two months I will update this article with several interesting facts, videos, and training results.

The race itself

The race takes place in Jordan and goes from Wadi Rum to the old city of Petra where the finish is.

The race, like I mentioned, is divided into several stages and every day you run from one camp to the next camp, where your finish time is recorded. At the end of the week, your overall time is what matters.

An overview of the course

There are 5 competitive stages and one stage (stage 6) where we run from the final camp into the city of Petra. This last run (Stage 6) is a non-competitive run and thus for now I will talk about the actual competitive stages.

Just to give you an idea of the distances and the elevation, here is an overview of all the stages

The big event, stage 5, is a tough cookie, as we run a double marathon, carrying 20 lbs of weight, running for a greater part of the course uphill to cover 2074 meters (6803 ft) in elevation. This part, the uphill part is a non stop climb over the old Turkish road, which is a dirt road of approximately 40 km (25 miles)

As you can see in the above overview from stage 5, the climb starts at kilometer point 181 (mile mark 112) and ends at kilometer point 220 (mile mark 139).

Halfway this stage there is a resting point or ‘overnight camp’ where most runners take a break for several hours, some will even pull out their sleeping bag to sleep. Some don’t; the fast runners, we call them the elite runners, will pass this checkpoint without taking a break and continue as they hope to finish this stage before darkness kicks in. This is only a very small group; the rest of the runners will take a break after which they will continue their second marathon in the dark. After sunset, the desert gets really dark. Imagine how it feels to just finish a marathon, carrying all that weight on your back. You are tired and take a break, than you have to get up, and start running the next marathon, in the dark, in the desert. Not a great sales pitch for the average person….and since most of the runners keep their own pace, they will cover this second marathon in the dark by themselves, thinking ‘why the heck did I sign up for this crap’ ‘why did I pay for this shit and have pain, bloody blisters, tiredness and hunger’…I had the same thoughts back in 2014…but once you reach your goal, all those dark thoughts disappear in a split second as soon as the old city of Petra comes in sight. Just sayin’….the suffering comes to an end and once you receive this amazing medal at the end, most of the pain vanishes in thin air..only the blisters remain 🙂

The stages are describes as follows

• Stage 1 – Lawrence’s Playground will take competitors through Wadi Rum with alternating soft sand with amazing rock formations.
• Stage 2 – Wadi Rum Rock Formations ensures a true desert and Lawrence of Arabia experience with the ancient Wadi Rum desert, an incredible rock arch high above the desert sand and narrow canyon.
• Stage 3 – Camel Racing in Twaissah takes competitors through a narrow canyon from the Wadi Rum Desert to the Kharaza Desert. Along the way, you’ll have the opportunity to possibly catch a camel race in Twaissah.
• Stage 4 – The Rock Bridge will take competitors past a rock arch and through a tunnel before existing the Kharaza Desert and entering the Humaima Desert towards an area called Wadi Araba.
• Stage 5 – The Long March will take competitors down into the Wadi Ahaimer canyon for 20 kilometers before entering the Wadi Gharandal Canyon.  This begins the climb up an ancient Turkish road to finish just above the ancient city of Petra.
• Stage 6 – The Final Footsteps into the Ancient Village of Petra 

Over the next two months I will increase my trainings and my weekly mileage, whereby I also will do runs with my actual backpack, just to get used to the weight on my shoulder, and to get myself familiar with my gear: where does the straps hurt on my shoulders when I run with all that weight, where do I need to adjust my pack, or my actual equipment, where can I shave off some of the weight etc. That’s it for now, more to come in the next weeks….

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Update August 30

I started my weight training for the Jordan ultra race.

As I will carry approximately 22lbs of weight during the race, I will do several runs with my backpack just to get used to the weight. This was my first run with 22 lbs (10 kg) and although this isn’t easy, it’s better to get used to this extra weight

MANDATORY EQUIPMENT

Just to give you an idea of the amount of items we need to bring, here is the mandatory equipment list

Update September 24

The training has been going well; I was able to run 5 marathons, 1 ultra and 4 half marathons over over the last three weeks. Over the next few weeks I will be running with my full backpack in order to get used to the weight of the pack, but also to figure out where I need to make adjustments in my pack. I didn’t do that well enough during my previous race and came to find out that I should have made some adjustments on my backpack such as adding extra securing straps and extra padding in the shoulder part of the pack.

At this moment I have received all the items that I still needed to order such as my high-calory meals, bivvy bag (one of those emergency foil bags), poncho and some other items so I can now finally try out the if everything fits in the bag. I have two bags to choose from so I will try out both to figure out which one fits best and which one is the most comfortable pack to run with.

One of the most important parts is to figure out where I can save weight. I didn’t do that part very well last time and learned my lesson. Now I am really looking at every gram. I take every item and figure out what I can do to reduce weight. For example; I have a few rapid covid tests as part of the mandatory equipment. This comes with an enormous piece of paper with all kinds of info I don’t need. I only need the part with the instructions and so I cut all the info off that I don’t want. It saved me 3 grams and yes that doesn’t sound a lot, but doing this with every item, you can easily save yourself a lot of weight.

I have several headlamps and thus I need to weigh which one is the lightest; I got two options for wet wipes – both contain 20 wipes but one packages is 103 grams while the lighter one is 87 and thus I saved 16 grams.

I also have to bring a pocket knife and found the lightest and smallest solution; a credit card size fold-out knife that only weighs 14 grams….

toilet paper: instead of bringing a standard roll, I go for the compressed version. It doesn’t only save me weight but also a lot of space; same amount of paper but much less volume and weight.

After I figured out the weight of the items, the only project left is the food. Food for 6 days takes most of the weight and volume and thus also here, I need to get it down to a science and reduce volume, not weight; I can’t nor I want to cut down on food, as this is the most important item during the race. Without sufficient fuel, changes are slim to successfully complete a race of this magnitude. Besides that, there is a requirement for the amount of calories you need to bring; 14,000. This will be checked during race check-in and what most runners do, myself included, is to make a spreadsheet of all food-related items and their calories . This gives me the correct indication if I am in compliance and it is much easier for the folks who are checking the mandatory items.

To make it easy for myself, I make bags of food/gels per day and label it as such. This way I don’t need to empty my pack several times a day to find my stuff. Prior to th run I take the bag I need which includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, electrolytes, energy gels, energy drink powder and put it on the top of everything else so it is easy to find without having to empty your pack.

The lunch and dinner meals are so called freeze-dried food which means you need to add hot water and let it sit for 5 minutes. The meals come in a sealed back and these bags are pretty heavy (heavy as in 50 grams x 2 meals a day x 6 days is 600 gram in unnecessary packing material – like last time, I will remove the meals from the original package after which I will throw it in a blender to break down the big chunks in order to reduce volume

Once everything is blended, I will pack it in small plastic bags. I do this for all lunch en dinner meals. For breakfast I will take 55 grams of oatmeal with 15 grams of sugar. In the camps there is hot water but my experience from previous events is that adding hot water to oatmeal is just not doing it. The hot water cools off fast and your oats will stay too hard to my liking. It stays too hard and I believe it takes too long to break down in my stomach before it starts to release the required energy. I found a way that works for me; I also blend the oats to fine powder and after an hour of weighing and blending, my meal packs are ready.

The only thing left is to put the meals day by day, including the energy gels and this way, I only have to look in my backpack and grab a bag with all the food I need for a specific day and this is the end result.

so, 5 days of running and 7 packs of food as you see in the below photo

This is because day 5 is a day that we have to run 53 miles (85 km) and this means that I need to bring one extra pack of energy gels, 18 pieces, as I will be running for at least 10 hours which includes a climb of 1800 meter (5,400 ft). After that long run, there will be an extra day in camp, as we are waiting for the last runners, as some will take a few hours sleep on the course which means that the last person arrives in camp after 26 hours.

The next update will be next week, as I need a week to play with my backpacks in order to decide which pack to bring…till then my friends.