The Earthfireice campaign rumbles on…and gathers pace once more. We spent an incredibly wet, windy, cold and very fun (seriously!) day doing interviews for our upcoming documentary with ordinary people on the street, ourselves (it wasn’t pretty - according to Ed i looked like the wild man of borneo with my long hair in total disarray thanks to the gales), and with Saleemul Huq, Group Head for Climate Change at the IIED.org here in London. What a fantastic, interesting guy. Apart from the fact that he was willing to sacrifice part of his bank holiday to come and talk to us (in the rain by the Southbank - cold!!), he just made such lucid succinct points about the whole climate change area. In particular, individuals , governments or business….who should act? His answer: two ways to look at it - either you say the US and China are the biggest emmiters by far, they have to take action, an argument which has some merit; or you can look at it as a collective responsibility issue…every single person on this planet has a carbon footprint, large or small…and so every person has a responsibility for reducing their own footprint in their own way….and if everyone does a bit to reduce, that will bring down china and the US’ naturally anyway. Amen to that.

Starting to get organised again… although its taking time to adjust to the mania of London life. Race day pictures below… feels like an age ago!

Sahara marathon 2007 - the starting line…

Seanyboy at 10km - before the suffering…

Kwagga at 10km - looks like I’m suffering already…

It’s strange being back in London. You’d think that after a week spent living in a refugee camp, one would be happy to be back with creature comforts. But far from it, the noise, bustle and cold of london have me left me strangely missing Samara and life there, not to mention the wonderful people. It’s hard to focus on the North Pole and the campaign tasks ahead with the warm memories of the last week still lingering. I have not yet started training again, the legs are willing and raring but the body feels a little run down. Hmmm…. -30C…..i think i prefer +42C….

Sean and I touched down in Heathrow at 1 pm today. Feels like a bit of an anticlimax being back - what should I do? Guess its back to the grindstone - website, emails, london underground and chaos in general. The peace and calm of the desert is fading fast and I’m missing it already. I miss hanging out with the children especially… playing football in the dust, drawing pictures, drinking tea, talking random nonsense… them in spanish and me in english.

Moulai my main man… ,

Breki my main man…

and Megaman…

Thanks for all the laughter and all the fun! Seanyboy and kwagga say adios and hope we’ll see you again soon. In fact kwagga is already tinkering with the idea of a 2008 visit…

Can´t say it better than Sean… At first when all the teams started packing it in and jumping on buses out of here it felt strange… I wanted to get out of here too. Right now I´m less sure - it feels like a million miles from London. I know we´re going to miss the pace of life as soon as we touch down in Heathrow. Always slow and barely moving in the midday heat. When last in London did I have nothing to do but read a book, or chill out for 3 hours drinking tea… This morning was spent showing the kids how to make videos on the sony handycam. Yesterday it was tea, more tea, books and an evening trip out to the dunes for sunset - another of the perfect moments of this trip. Perfect tranquility, perfect calm and a perfect view - the “Sahara” view…

It feels like Ed and I are the only two dogs left in the camp. The marathon and hoopla has ended, the various Italian, German and Spanish contingents have either gone home or moved on to other camps or locations (and we havent thanks to our (dis)organisation), and the camp of Samara has pretty much reverted back to its normal life…which is not much at all. The locals, with their colour, life and laughs have retreated back to the relative coolness of their mud dwellings. So yesterday we wandered around a pretty deserted camp looking for inspiration, or entertainment or even just a bottle of water but found nothing. At one point after a fruitless search for somewhere that sold water, we just sat on a stone in the scorching midday heat, with just half a pack of smokes and a bottle of coke to last us through the day. (We’ve lost count of the number of times we have said ‘if only we had a cooler full of beer…’ - obviously with alcohol being unavailable here and us not having the foresight to bring any with, we’ve been left with taking up smoking as the only form of bodily relaxation/abuse we could think of. post-marathon); It was a strange experience. It brought home that this was the reality of life in the camps, not the amped up version we had experienced in previous days. So we hung out, which in itself was novel and enjoyable. We drank tea, and then more tea, with our host family, played and laughed with the two boys of the family, and slowed our rhythms down to those of the locals….chicken soup for the soul.

I did not enjoy the marathon. It was hell. Even though i now have very fond recollections of it, loved the whole build up and atmosphere around it, and would possibly even do it again, i know my mind is playing tricks. OK, so the start with the local men on camels as pace setters, dancing and singing women, kids running alongside, and a dozen or so jeeps from the red cross, assorted film crews and various others was all very exciting. And when we ran through a town at exactly the half point, and again we ran through a column of cheering people, that was pretty cool. The rest, forget it. I think once near the start i appreciated the beauty of the desert, but that was it. By mile 7 i was pretty tired, by mile 14, i was dead on my feet and ready to stop (in fact, we probably mis-paced it, given that i ran the first 13 miles in 1hr 50 mins), and…well, the rest, it was not pretty. 42C heat, sany/rocky ground, the up and down of dunes, the complete solitude (apart from one totally random camel at mile 20 or so) made for a miserable torid time. At certain points i was sure i would not make it, at others i bizarelly started thinking about the impossibility of having to do the north pole as well within the next month which was pretty stupid - it just resulted in making me even more down. In the end i stumbled home in 4hrs 45 mins, relieved rather than elated, and looking forward to a few days of doing sweet nothing apart from tending to sore limbs.

Monday 26 February… the big marathon day! Blisteringly hot… 42 degrees celcius in the sun. Not a breath of wind.

Sean and I started off strongly… toward the front of the pack. We clocked the first 10km in under 50 minutes and the second 10 at roughly the same or even faster speed. By the half way stage things were looking good - we had done 21km in under 2 hours and our spirits were high. The energy sachets seemed to be working.

In retrospect perhaps our fast start was a sign of our inexperience… we were never going to keep up the pace… especially as the midday sun set in. The temparatures shot to 42 degrees celcius. The terrain changed from flat to neverending uphill and downhill and frequently we had to run over soft sand which just destroyed whatever energy we thought we had left.

Somewhere around the 30km it became an absolute killer. Sean and I had parted company a few kilometres before… at this point it was all about finding one`s own pace and then just plodding along. Sometimes the only thing that kept me from slowing to a walk was a mini-ambition to make it to the next watering station or the regular appearance of the filming crew… I had to keep on running for the cameras but of course these guys wanted more - they wanted interviews, wise words of “earthfireice campaign” wisdom. Unlikely.

Reaching the 35km mark after 3h20mins was perhaps the first time I realised that I was going to make it. My urge to walk by this stage was overwhelming but I kept focusing on trying to run an extra 100 metres and then another extra 100 metres… somehow I managed to run all the way for a grand marathon time of 4 hours 7 minutes and 41 seconds. Elation, satisfaction and utter exhaustion!

Dont know how I made it and don´t know whether I´ll do it again. For the time being at least it ís sufficient to dwell on the pleasure of the moment. The North Pole marathon is still just over a month away after all…

a hastily written blog on an arabic keyboard to say that sean and i survived the sahara 2007 marathon yesterday. blistering heat… aching muscles but we are very pleased to have made it in one piece. we have a lot more to say but blogging is a challenge and this one has been written midway through an afternoon tour of a school which miraculously has internet access… we’ll add the complete diary of the last few days as soon as we have the chance - you’ll get it all - pain, triumph, stress, despair, perserverance, fun. what an experience!

A mercifully quiet day and night. Much lying around carbo-loading to the nines, got the Iridium satellite phone and data connection working, a short warm up run where we ended up with an enourage of local kids who also wanted to warm up and down ith us, and some formalities of registration and the pasta party. Weather forecast is for 30C in the shade (of which there is none) with the possbility of very strong winds and sand storms. Bring it on. I´m very excited now. I feel ready (hopefully that´s not just the carb sachets talking!) and raring to go, inspired by a couple of short videos we were shown today of last year´s run. The nerves have gone, i know i´ll do it, and now i just want to run.

Its the day before the race. My emotions are all over the shop again… yesterday I was top of the world and very confident…today a little pessimistic and unsure that I can pull this off. Small worries keep plaguing my mind. The niggling shin ache seems like an insurmountable hurdle and I keep wondering how its going to react to 42 km of hard core running. The fact that this is my first marathon is doing little to build my confidence… So the only left that I can do is rest and carbo-load to the max. Sean has given me about 15 of those disgusting sachets and an abundance of powedery energy drinks… foul stuff.

Well enough about marathon worries. Hereçs a quick update on the trip so far. We´re in a refugee camp called Smara - in South West Algeria close to the town of Tindouf. Its a fascinating place… barren, dusty and perfect for photos. Its also ridculously easy to get lost in the maze of tents and mud huts here. We´ve been spending our time chilling out, drinking tea (the arabic kind - an art form on which i can write a separate blog) and exploring the town with the village kids.

Our film crew arrived today… after a nightmare mission at customs and having had some of their camera´s confiscated at at Algiers. A separate story which Sean has elaborated on… another set back for the team but not the end of the world and our worries are no firmly all about tomorrow´s marathon. The town is abuzz with excitement though. Our afternoon warm up was awesome. We had a stretching and jogging session with the local Saharawi children training alongside and shouting Maratoni! Maratoni!. A few minutes ago we completed a pre-marathon dinner of pasta with all the runners and now its off to bed for the big day! Hard to believe that at this time tomorrow it will all be over…

After the most relaxing and low-key day Ed and I have enjoyed for the last 8 weeks, disaster struck. We were walking back in from a dusty game of football with local kids when we got the message that the Grain Media boys, the crew who are accompanying us to both marathons, making a documentary, filming news footage and so forth, were stuck in Algiers customs where officials clamed they did not have the right papers for all their equipment which would as a result have to be left behind. Our world seemed to cave in. A frantic incredibly stressful 3 hours then ensued, with every organiser, Saharawi official and the embassy of the Saharawi in Algiers all involved…but to no avail. They had to leave the stuff behind. Thankfully they were quick of mind, had brought 4 cameras with them, and we were able to sneak through with two of their cameras. No huge loss, but a stressful night that an already exhausted Ed and myself could have done without!

The reality of a refugee camp hit us as soon as we woke up in the Samara camp after our 2am arrival. Dusty, brown mud huts, a quasi-permanent home for these last 25 years for the local people, the nearest water well 12 miles away, nothing sustaining life apart from human spirit. For all the hardships, the people are wonderfully warm and hospitable, and get on with life with little fuss. I guess they have no choice. Yet our EarthFireIce campaign sems a very long way away, climate change plays no part in the local list of priorities.

It’s chaos, pure chaos. Dont ever ask Ed or I for advice on how to get ready and prepapred for an extreme marathon, or a trip to the Sahara, frankly we’re useless. I think we expended all our energy on getting this far, and now trying to figure out what might actually be needed for a week of living in a refugee camp and running a marathon in the desert is simply too much. I give up. It’s all too much too think about, and i think i have short circuited my brain this week. And i’m actually supposed to be running a marathon on monday? Pfff. What i am ready for is a marathon of sleep and relaxation. Oh well, onwards and upwards. It’ll be good to finally get on that plane tomorrow and kno that my worrying can no longer solve anything. Here we go!

The Launch Event was a great success. Ed and i got cling filmed up to the nines, press photographers from the Indi, Standard, PA, Rex and a couple of other newswires showed up, Grain Media filmed up, commuters thought Starbucks had put something extra strong in their frapuucinos that morning, and generally we brought smiles and laughter to an otherwise very grey london morning. Wouldn’t recommend the cling film though, it’s pretty uncomfortable….