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Why Am I Doing This?

David Campbell / 28.03.2005

Starting on April 8th, two British runners, David Campbell and Tom Bell, will set out on the Marathon Des Sables, a 150 mile footrace across the desert of Morocco. They would be the first to admit they are not elite athletes, and neither has has completed a challenge like this before. They will be writing exclusive diary reports for SleepMonsters, including daily updates during the race, and in this first report David describes how he found himself volunteering to run in 40 degree heat across the sand dunes of the Sahara ...

It all began in January 2004, when after having messed up a New Years resolution to give up smoking, I saw that the British Lung foundation had spaces for the London Marathon. It seemed like the perfect way to properly give up and as I’d always told myself that I would like to run a marathon there seemed to be a lot more reasons why I should do it than not, until I think I’d dared myself to run.

I asked Tom, my flat mate if he wanted to join me, but he was unsure because of the heavy sponsorship commitment and the lack of time before the run….bearing in mind that a 1.5 mile run at that point was a struggle that left us sore for days!

After 3 short months of training, sore shins, quite a bit of weight lost, I was ready (kind of) for the run. I set off at a good pace completing the first half and feeling good….the second half was quite a different story, and I really struggled….I was really struggling at 22 miles when another runner took me under his wing and metaphorically dragged me to the finish line (to my accompaniment of very ungainly grunting and wheezing noises).

Needless to say crossing the line was emotional, especially when the woman who gave me my medal thanked me for running for the British Lung foundation as they had helped her when she suffered from a collapsed lung in the previous year.

I think that Tom was quite gutted at not having taken me up on my challenge to do the marathon, so two days later (after more than a couple of drinks) a bigger gauntlet was thrown down….the Marathon des Sables. It was a race that I had never heard of before, and as the sheer stupidity of the event was relayed to me, a seed was planted. This was a run across the desert, for 150 miles, carrying all your stuff, in temperatures exceeding 40C ... it seemed like an extremely foolish idea, but nevertheless I had a nagging feeling that I probably would do it, even though I had no idea how either of us were going to get round something that most runners wouldn’t consider …and we’re not runners!

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