How to meet the cut-off times on the Marathon des Sables
My experience on the Marathon des Sables taught us there are two approaches to successfully tackle the race: the Turtle approach vs the hare approach.
The cut-off for each day is pretty simple: stay ahead of the camels! But this is more challenging than it sounds when prior acclimatisation is difficult, you’re sharing a tent with other adventurous people, you’re excited about doing something you’ve been building up to for months, and you’re getting messages from your friends at home wishing you good luck.
The Turtle approach
Benefits: You have a steady heart rate; you can eat food and drink water whilst still maintaining a good pace; Things don’t rattle or fall off you; and you can maintain a conversation or daydream / plan your life. Additionally, we listened to audio books (a tactic we learned from rowing across the Atlantic Ocean a few years prior).
Downsides: By being slower; it feels mentally more challenging when you see people overtaking you. We think it’d be a difficult strategy to take for the super competitive types who want to be out front leading the pack. Slower finisher times in the earlier stages, however you’ll overtake hares in the later days when they start to feel the effects of running above zone 3 heart rate in the hot temperatures.
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The Hare approach
Benefits: Quicker finisher time in the early stages. Morale boosts seeing your name higher up the leaderboard in the early stages.
Downsides: You might be running with your heart rate in anaerobic respiration zone more often - meaning you might need longer to recover at stops and checkpoints. Burning glucose as the main source of energy means you’ll produce more lactic acid, making recovery hard and slower – not a good place to start the long day, where you’ll wish you were more rested!
For our future ultradistance races, maybe I’ll adopt a combined strategy to push harder in the early days and then slow it down.
The wear and tear the desert takes on your body - blister management is a big part of the MdS!