Saturday 5 April 2008

Beetle the size of a house

There are two things you can feel in Namibia. Space and heat. Lots of space and lots and lots of heat. We have just arrived.
Touchdown at Windhoek Airport and are now on the bus. A five hour transfer into the desert. The heat is evident even in the early morning as we get off the plane. As the hours pass it envelops you.
The space just yawns around you. The roads are everlastingly long, straight, rugged highways, with endless views of the Namibian bush.
Even the streets of the quaint capital city of Windhoek have an old-fashioned emptiness about them, though their names “Robert Mugabe/Fidel Castro/Jan Jonkers remind you of more modern realities.
Space like this is a new experience, even for someone from the south west. Everything feels bigger, and you feel a hell of a lot smaller. At the airport today we saw a beetle the size of a house.
Around us now the bush is green. It seems too green for what lies ahead of us, but then we still have a long way to go. On the bus around me the rest of the competitors are sleeping.
They are a refreshingly normal crowd; friendly, energetic, all with the look in their eyes of eager anticipation, nerves and adrenaline that I can feel in my own. I am not sure of all their names yet.
We have shaken hands, introduced ourselves and compared training routines and former race experience.
On the journey to Gatwick Pete and I had joked that the other competitors would all be stick thin, wild-eyed crazies who feasted only on nuts and would never be seen without clutching the obligatory bottle of water. They seem quite the opposite. They are fit, no doubt, but grounded guys up for a challenge.
We have a banker and solicitor from London, an ultra marathon expert who sells cars for a living, me and pete, and three guys from Ireland. Or three guys with Irish accents! Two of them came to run a marathon but think they might do the ultra because everyone else is, and the other one is a smoker. Hallelujah!!
We have just turned off the tarmac road. The dust of the track we are on trails high behind us, and you just begin to get a feel for the type of terrain we are heading for.
This afternoon we have time to chill out at the camp. It will be a chance to unpack our rucksacks and find out what we have left behind. Nearly all my worst dreams about this ultra marathon challenge have involved not having crucial equipment, or not knowing how to use my GPS (Global Positioning System).
Time in the camp is crucial, though I now feel a compulsion to start this thing and get it done. The Skeleton Coast beckons.

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