Running Tunisia Day 2

Hey everyone! Some updates from the team

Day 1

From Ray:

Today was our first full day running in the Sahara. After a long drive of about 2.5 hours, we began running in the hopes of reaching our goal of 42.2 km by the end of the day – a distance that neither Jill, Kajsa, nor Connor had ever ran in a single day before. The first 20 km was… muddy. The unbelievable lightning/rain storm the previous night had altered the land to such a degree that Jill was skating across the desert. We continued to move forward in the search of lunch – something that the youth ambassadors had been fixated on from km 15 – 20. When we finally crested the hill, we looked down upon the land cruisers and an outstretched blanket covered with sandwiches, oranges, dates, tea… and Mohammed. After our lunch break, we began on the second part of our day; however, during the hottest, most uncomfortable part of the day, we almost immediately experienced problems. Jill was experiencing dehydration as well as nutrition issues. She created a masterpiece on the side of the trail consisting of everything consumed in the past 12 hours as well as sound effects we had never heard before. We made a collective decision to take an easier pace, as it was stiflingly hot at about 33 degrees Celsius. Things were looking up, but at about 33 km, Jill decided to not only hit the wall, but take it out and allow it to fall on top of her. The day finished with a positive attitude, as we were treated to authentic Arabic music complete with sing-a-long in the land cruiser as we jostled down the road back to camp. Jill’s experience today with dehydration really helped us to appreciate the importance of drinking enough water, which has implications not only for completing the trek but makes us realize that people who do not have access to clean drinking water are at a severe disadvantage.






House from Star Wars


Sunset

Also check out this video from the team and this feature on CNN

Day 2

From the Youth Ambassadors:

The day started out with a 1.5 hour drive with rockin’ Arabic/French music in Nardeen’s car to start where we finished yesterday. After a tough day yesterday, we made a collective decision to run 20 minutes, then do a fast walk for 2 minutes. Our goal was to make it back to camp, about 36 km, and everyone was feeling pretty good around lunch time, however, the heat of the day was beginning and we still had about 16 km to go. After lunch, we came across a herd of dromedaries (one-humped camels) and watched as Andy chased them around the desert in his attempt to ride one! As the heat pressed down on us, we tried to focus on hydrating properly and keeping a consistent pace while out on our own. Throughout the first two days, Kathy (Ray’s wife) had been running alongside with us and helping with pacing, but today, she deemed us ready to go out on our own and make our own decisions on proper speed for running a multi-day expedition. The heat was very hard to take the last 10 km, but we worked together to keep everyone motivated and could not have been happier when we crested the hill to overlook the camp in front of us. Back at camp, we had an interesting educational discussion with Doc Affleck about a variety of water issues as well as facts and interesting history about the theories of the origins of water. Ray had us do an experiment where we carried 12 litres of water around camp to get a feel for what it is like for children to carry water for miles on end that is necessary for their everyday life.