Desert Stormers: The Desert Cup, Wadi Rum Desert, Jordan

By Robin Postell

(First published in Penthouse Magazine)

The Middle East is a tinder box of violence and unrest, and Jordan, a country roughly the size of Indiana, is no exception. But less than two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Jordan hosted the third annual Desert Cup, a 105-mile nonstop ultrarun through the Wadi Rum Desert.

Competitors followed in the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia, through the Rift Plateau and down into the ruins of the ancient troglodyte city of Petra, with its 800 marvelous temples carved out of rock.

Cup organizer, Patrick Bauer, a silver-haired Frenchman, is best known for his yearly Marathon Des Sables, a week-long romp through the Moroccan Sahara. The fact that he did not pull the plug on this race is extraordinary to most; in the face of mounting terror all over the world, the run seems perhaps superfluous. Why not cancel?

American competitors, and all of the press (except me) who had planned all year to attend dropped out; they were scared to fly, much less fly to the Mideast.

But Bauer persisted.

Jordan’s Ministry of Tourism rallied behind him. They wanted the race. They needed the race.

“We will not give in to terror!” was the resounding sentiment.

Tourism had dropped 80 percent in a region dependent upon it. Petra, the remains of a city dating to 7,000 B.C.  was silent. The hotels around it were empty.

Only a fool would travel directly into the eye of the storm.

I was that fool, along with nearly 250 competitors – six Americans among them – from 20 countries.

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The race is set to begin at nine a.m. A truckload of Jordanian militia idles 200 yards from the starting point. The militiamen lean against machine guns positioned in the bed of a Toyota pickup. We are told that the guns are there only to provide a sense of security.

As soon as I raise my camera, the truck heads over to us in a fluff of dust. The militiamen jump out and rush over, smiling, holding out their hands.

“Hello,” they say, “how are you? Where are you from?”

“The United States,” I tell them, and they applaud.

“Welcome!” they cheer, adding, “We love America!”

In fact, everyone I meet seems to love Americans. I can’t help but wonder why we were getting attacked if everyone loves us so much. Are they secretly sneering behind my back?

In camp, set up in open-air tents at the base of a stark rock wall, 62-year-old Jan Richardson, a retired contractor from California, has been scrounging items from others. The airline lost his luggage. As such, he has no clothing or food, and none of the mandatory gear as outlined by Cup guidelines.

Race rules require each runner to be self-sufficient, save for the water provided at 13 checkpoints throughout the course.

Each racer must be armed with at least 2,000 calories per day (the cutoff for completion of the course is 62 hours), with an extra 2,000 calories in reserve for emergencies.

Richardson will have to rely on the goodwill of other racers to supplement him so he can compete. He’s managed to collect enough food to pass inspections, and has even borrowed an ill-fitting backpack, along with a few pieces of relatively warm clothing.

“Thank God I wore my running shoes on the plane,” he says as he heads for the start.  “I almost didn’t.”

Word travels quickly that an Iraqi, Hazem Azawi, is participating in the race. Nearly seven-feet-tall, he is hard to miss. I am introduced to him and he holds up an American flag next to the Iraqi flag pinned to his jersey. He smiles, poses for photos, shakes hands.

“I’m sorry…I…” I offer, dumbly, and he immediately brushes me off with a wave of his large hand.

“No, he says, it is just politics,” Azawi says to me. This counsel will remain in my thoughts throughout my life.

Tom Demerly, a bike-shop owner from Michigan and Desert Cup competitor, hugs me. We know each other from the Desert Cup’s Moroccan sister race, the Marathon Des Sables. I see many familiar faces from being on the adventure competition circuit, Demerly only one.

The Americans stand out, even as they try not to draw attention to themselves. You can smell the United States on each of them. Shiny and clean, they reek of the land of the free. There is a constant parade of competitors offering condolences, saying how sad they were on September 11, and how brave the Americans are for coming to the race in spite of it all.

By 1 p.m. that day, two racers have already dropped out. An hour later, driving along the course in an SUV, I spot runner No. 73 standing still in the middle of the sandy plain across which he has galloped 42 kilometers. The tall Frenchman leans over with hands braced on his knees, struggling to maintain his balance. Although the temperature is barely 80 degrees and there is a cool mountain breeze wafting across the desert, running so hard and fast has taken its toll.

Alain Pageaux, 35, is no stranger to this kind of contest. He has participated in ultraruns the world over. But this one is getting the best of him.  With 126 kilometers to go, he’s not even halfway through the course. By the looks of it, the race is over for him.

I shoot photos of him out of the rolled-down window of our press-appointed SUV, while Olivier, a quixotic Frenchman now living in Spain, pulls the vehicle a few yards away, careful not to disorient the runner further by blasting him with our dust. Olivier gets out and rambles over to see how far gone Pageaux is. Carolyn Schaefer, a tall blond photographer riding in the back, grabs her camera, and we both hop out.

Delirious and exhausted, Pageaux tries to maintain his composure. Nearing collapse, he struggles to stay upright.  These runners have their pride. This isn’t just any marathon after all. You can almost believe you’re Superman when you finish one of these. That’s the point. Though it hurts to finish, it hurts even worse to quit.

You’re only human if you quit.

Pageaux’s mouth is dry. His tongue labors to shape words. Olivier coaxes him to sit against the back tire of our truck, and I squat next to him, touching his skin. He is clammy. Goose bumps dot his arms and legs. He begins to convulse, and Olivier grabs from the rear of the truck two heavy horse blankets we’ve been using during the nights at camp to keep warm in the frigid desert air.

We wrap one of them around Pageaux’s shoulders and the other around his chest. Still, he quakes, arms flopping. He is frightened, says this has never happened to him before. Heart palpitations began 20 kilometers ago.

His chin sinks almost to his chest. Dark shadows carve out hollows in his cheeks. We press him to drink, but, nauseas, he resists.

For half an hour we sit with him, trying to decide what to do. I wipe his face as flies dive and light on him, and the corners of his mouth turn up weakly.

Olivier radios for Doc Trotter, the name for a nomadic bunch of doctors who travel regularly with races like this.

Pageaux is dehydrated and so weak that he cannot hold up his own head. His arms hang rag-like at his sides. He shakes uncontrollably, seemingly blown to and fro by the winds. We grab a pillow from the back of the truck and put it behind his back.

Other runners pass, and we clap for them.  I feel sure that every time Pageaux hears the cheers he must wince, feeling weak, lost, forgotten, and sick. I stop clapping and cleave to this downed soldier, the man who soared ahead and then was cut down early and hard.

Doc Trotter arrives. In minutes the medics have rigged Pageaux’s arm with a needle and clamped a bottle of fluid to the side of the open truck door. Five bags of fluid feed through the thin sleeve of tubing into his arm. Because we are chasing the front-runners, we cannot linger. The docs move No. 73 to their truck so we can leave. I squeeze Pageaux’s hand one last time and again he smiles, however feebly; then we’re off.

By nearly 5 p.m., racer No. 1, 53-year-old Marco Olmo, is in the lead. He’s so eager to beat his winning record from the previous year, the SUV posse and I are actually going to have to hustle to beat him to the finish. If we tarry too long at the checkpoints, he will surely best us.

Day turns to night. Darkness falls early, along with the cold. More people pull out, injuries mount. IVs are a common sight, and not just at checkpoints, thanks to Doc Trotter. The night brings out the ghosts and demons. During this time, people either break or bend.

All along the course, competitors suffer.  Some wonder why the hell they did this, others cry as they think about past offenses. Guilt. Fear. Doubt. Strange things happen to a man in the desert when he is hungry, hurting, and cold.

There is benevolence among the racers as they put competition aside to help one another along the way. This exchange of strength and weakness is like fuel. Those who run along – unless they are in this solely to win and prefer the isolation, which helps them to focus – are more prone to lose hope, question themselves, and give into nagging doubts. They usually throw in the towel.

Andrew Watkins-Ball, a 22-year-old South African rugby player and investment banker, signed up for the Desert Cup because he hated running.

“I want to conquer what I hate most,” Watkins-Ball says.

Unlike most racers, he’s never even run a regular marathon, let alone any competition of this magnitude. Adding insult to injury he has torn ligaments. He stops at Checkpoint 4 and sleeps an hour, dumbstruck by pain and loneliness. He had been running solo all through the night.

He considers giving up, but some Americans he met before the race encourage him to continue. The group, including Tom Demerly, Blaise Supler (a Washington, D.C. defense attorney), Anita Allen (a pretty Floridian), and Rick Omelian (a merchant marine, also from Florida), have banded together to beat the monotony. They know one another from the sister race, Marathon Des Sables; they are avid marathoners and are knowledgeable about the dangers of solitude out here in the middle of nowhere.

“I decided to tag along with them, break through the muscles,” Watkins-Ball says at another checkpoint, swallowing Excedrin. “Since then, it’s okay. I worked through the pain.” Safely under the wings of this new group, he might make it.

“Between checkpoints 4 ad 5 people began to really fall apart,” Watkins-Ball says. “Winds started blowing. The sand was soft. It beat the shit out of me. It was completely demoralizing. I will not run at night by myself again. You’ve already run 50 miles, you’re sore and cold, the sand is soft, so you go slow, uphill, with another 70 miles to go. It’s too much. You begin to think all these negative thoughts. They won’t stop, they’re too strong.”

The pain in Watkins-Ball’s countenance is difficult to witness, however vicarious.

“People are making an effort to cheer each other up,” he says. “Blaise wanted everyone to tell their life story, and it distracted us from the demons. I’ve got no experience to compare this to, but when you feel like shit, you have to distract yourself just to get through it.  When one of us felt good, we helped others pull through those who felt bad.”

Another American, Tim Mackey, who had run a regular marathon two weeks prior to the Desert Cup, is forced to pull out at Checkpoint 7. “I wasn’t there mentally,” he says. “If someone else had been there, maybe I could have kept going. But I was so alone. All I could think was, why keep going?”

Jan Richardson, no stranger to these contests, is cold and out of his borrowed food. He also pulls out.

At checkpoints some runners are collapsed, crying. Miraculously, many of them turn up later, ahead of those who had left them behind. “Those who push through,” Watkins-Ball says, “They are fundamentally strange. They have different mental parameters, the way they think about it.”

Watkins-Ball rants about the tenacity of the front runner, Marco Olmo of Italy. The 22-year-old cannot believe a man of 53 so far exceeds his own endurance. “There is something wrong with him,” Watkins-Ball declares.

Olmo, who ran his first marathon in 1997, is one of those “fundamentally strange” ones, though he’ll deny that and say he’s “just a normal guy.” But the way he has mastered this sandy terrain, headed arrow-like for the mountains that enclose the dusty ruins of Petra and the finish line, it is unlikely they’re going to get past Olmo – unless he falls down and breaks a limb.

As feared, we barely catch Olmo crossing the finish. The morning is dark and cold, and Olmo dashes across the line, having descended more than 500 steps into the ruins of Petra and through the quiet empty streets. He has beaten his own record of the previous year by nearly an hour, finishing in 20 hours, 19 minutes, and 38 seconds.

Watkins-Ball is right. He is by no means ordinary. His resting heart rate averages about 40.

Organizer Patrick Bauer – who seemingly never sleeps – drapes a medal around the unstoppable Italian’s neck. Olmo will receive 80,000 francs ($11,000 US) for his triumph.

As a way to relax after the 105-mile run, he takes a run.

The rest of the field has another two days to complete the course. Throughout the day, competitors will make their way into Petra, stumbling and miserable, hardly aware of the surroundings, dreaming only of the finish line, a hot plate of food, a beer, and a warm bed.

Of nearly 250 competitors, 193 complete the difficult course over the next day and a half.

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At the closing ceremony, where crutches and bandages are the jewelry of choice, competitors are smiling; they are delighted at having completed something so dreadful.

I wonder what happened to the downed Frenchman of many kilometers and hours ago. I have searched for him everywhere. Information is disseminated in a disorganized fashion, although this bothers no one. The Desert Cup is a quick race, and members of the press have to fend for themselves. I’ve asked around but no one seems to know much about race No. 73.

As I embrace and congratulate all the familiar faces I’ve seen throughout the past few days, someone taps me on the shoulder. Alain Pageaux kisses me on both cheeks and tells me shyly, in broken English, that he’d heard I was looking for him. He says that after the doctors worked on him he jumped up rejuvenated, and continued the race, finishing in 18th place.

The Americans around me shake their heads in awe.

There is idle talk among them about coming back next year. The team they’ll put together, how they’ll never run alone again…they know just who to bring. It will be a difference race next year, they muse.

Pageaux, proud but humble, squeezes my hand and wanders off into the crowd after getting my address to write me.

Everybody wants to be Superman.

Some of these guys really are.