Finding Gobi. Dion Leonard

get the best of them, and two or three hours before the start, the camp is buzzing with people packing and repacking their bags, eating their food, talking, and worrying about whether they’ve packed their bags right and eaten the right amount of breakfast at just the right time.

      I get it. I’ve been there myself. But that’s not how I operate anymore. I have a routine that’s tried and tested.

      Start minus ninety minutes—wake up, get dressed, visit toilets.

      Start minus sixty minutes—keep warm in tent, eat high-calorie breakfast.

      Start minus fifteen minutes—pack up sleeping bag and inflatable mattress, leave tent, and join start line.

      To anyone watching, however, the last hour of my routine looks a little weird. I stay in my sleeping bag right up until it’s time to leave, even when I’m eating my can of All Day Breakfast. While everyone else is hopping up and down outside, having eaten their dehydrated meals, I’m curled up in my bag, beanie hat pulled tight over my head, tucking into a cold can of beans, sausage, bacon, and mushrooms. I get a few looks because no multi-stage runner in their right mind would ever carry canned food; it’s just not worth the weight. But I take just one can that I eat before the race starts, and the 450 calories are more than worth the bemused stares as people wonder what kind of amateur I am.

      It tastes especially good knowing that for the next six days I’m going to be eating nothing but cold, rehydrated meals that taste like salmon or Bolognese-flavoured pasta, the occasional strip of biltong—dried and cured meat from South Africa—a few nuts, and dozens of energy gels. I’ll be sick of this food before the end of the week, but it’s lightweight nutrition that keeps my bag weight down.

      I savoured every cold mouthful. I couldn’t see the three Macau boys anywhere, but I could tell that the rest of my tent mates—two Brits and one American—were staring at me like I was a fool who was way out of his depth. Nobody said anything, and once I’d eaten, I lay back down and curled up as tight as I possibly could in my bag. I guessed they were probably still staring.

      With a quarter hour left, I climbed out of the sleeping bag, packed my things away in my rucksack, and headed for the line. People stared as I knew they would. They always do when they see me coming on the first day. My skin-tight running top is bright yellow and covered in my sponsor’s logo. And because I’m tall and skinny, I look like a banana. While confident in my pre-race preparation and training, I always start to question myself, seeing the start line. As much as I try to avoid it, I end up thinking the other runners look better than I do. They all seem to be fitter, stronger, and look more like endurance athletes while I suddenly feel like an amateur again. The only way through it is to clench my jaw, hide behind my sunglasses, and tell myself it’s time to get down to business.

      For a lot of runners, the act of lacing up their shoes, heading out the door, and letting their lungs and their legs find their perfect rhythm as they run through nature is a beautiful thing. It’s about freedom, peace, and the moment when all time seems to stop and the stresses of daily life fade.

      I’m not one of those runners. My wife is. Lucja runs because she loves running. She races because she loves the camaraderie and the sense of community. Not me. I don’t love running. I don’t really like it either. But I do love racing. I love competing.

      It took me thirty-seven years to realize that racing was for me. For most of my teens and twenties, I played competitive cricket and hockey. Right from the start I loved the action of a well-bowled ball, a perfectly struck cover drive, and a rocket of a shot that sails into the top right corner of the goal. To me, both of those sports have the potential to fill me with the kind of peace and happiness that Lucja describes when she runs. But even though I could master the technical aspects of hitting and bowling, I never could deal with the dynamics of playing as part of a team. I’ve watched myself fly off into a rage at my underperforming teammates so many times during matches that I know I’m more of a solo sport kind of guy.

      I played golf for a while and got pretty good too—good enough to hustle the weekend players on courses throughout the western suburbs of Sydney and come back home with enough money so Lucja and I could eat for the rest of the week. But there was something about the pressure and the need to fit in with all those etiquette rules that riled me. After I threw one too many tantrums and broke one too many putters, I finally decided that golf was not for me either.

      When it came to running, I discovered, quite by accident, that my competitive side returned. We had moved out of London and were living in Manchester at the time. It was New Year’s Eve, and I was listening to a friend from cricket go on and on about how he was going to take part in a half marathon in the spring. Dan was talking about bringing down his personal best of 1 hour 45 minutes. Thanks to Lucja, I knew enough about running to know that was an okay time, not amazing but better than a lot of people could run. Dan was quite fit as well, so I reckoned he was probably right in feeling confident about becoming a bit faster.

      But he was just so cocky about it all. So I put down my beer and spoke up.

      “I reckon I could beat you.”

      Dan laughed. The music was loud, and he had to lean in to make sure he’d heard correctly. “You what?”

      “I could take you. Easy.”

      “You’re not a runner, Dion. No way.”

      “Dan, I’m so confident I’ll even give you five minutes.”

      The conversation got a bit wild after that. People were laughing and shouting, and pretty soon the deal was done. If I didn’t beat Dan by five minutes, I’d take him, his wife, and Lucja out for dinner. If I won, he’d be the one paying.

      Lucja gave me the kind of look that said, Here we go again. I just smiled back and held up my hands. As far as I was concerned, I’d just won a free sumptuous meal for the two of us.

      The race was at the end of March, and I knew I had a double mountain to climb. I’d been running for a year or two, but never farther than two or three miles at a time; any more than that and I’d just get bored and fed up. I’ve always hated running when it’s cold or wet—and Manchester in January and February serves up nothing but cold and wet. So a few weeks went by, and my training had barely begun.

      Dan is one of those runners who can’t resist coming back from a run and posting his times on Twitter. It wasn’t long before his overconfidence began to show, and when I started to read how far he was running and how fast he was getting there, I had all the motivation I needed to get off the sofa and hit the streets. I knew that as long as I pushed myself to run farther and faster than the times Dan was posting, I’d be able to beat him.

      I lined up alongside Dan and Lucja at the start line. Dan was looking fit and up for it. Lucja was loving the pre-race-hype and crowd-warm-up routine from the announcer whose job it was to get everyone pumped for the race start. I was feeling out of place among the thousands of other runners who all had what looked like better sports equipment than I had.

      “You know I have very expensive taste in wine, Dion,” Dan said. “You’re going to need a second mortgage to pay for the meal tonight.”

      I didn’t say anything. Just smiled.

      “Seriously, mate,” he said, looking genuinely concerned. “Are you all right for this? It feels hot already. Don’t push yourself harder than you should.”

      I was feeling nervous. My mouth was dry, and it was all I could do to suck as much air as I possibly could into my lungs.

      The gun was fired, and we were off. Dan was at my side, and we were going at a fair pace already. Lucja dropped back, and the two of us carried on together. He seemed strong and in control. I felt fine about keeping pace with him, happy that we were finally under way.

      When we passed the first mile marker, it hit me that I had only twelve more in which to gain five minutes on Dan. So I did the only thing I could think of. I decided to give it everything I had, running as hard and as fast as I could. Pretty soon my lungs were in agony, and I felt as if there wasn’t enough air in the sky to keep me going. I wanted to