The holiday

Now, this is where the story starts to get a little crazy. Ciara and I booked a safari around Southern Africa with Intrepid Travel (would very highly recommend, the trip and the company in whole) and I decided to run a marathon in every country on the trip - Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Unfortunately I only managed three out of four as we only had one night in Namibia and barely any free time.

We flew into Johannesburg and were slightly late to the first meeting with the rest of our c. 15 people group. We enjoyed our nice hotel nights sleep as we wouldn't enjoy similar luxury until we were back here after two weeks in a tent. The next morning, we had a very early start. Heading down to the lobby to jump in the bus for the first time, the room key fell out of my pocket, I couldn't press any buttons in the lift, not even the open doors button after I realised what had happened and we stood there for a moment trying to figure out how not to miss the bus. The alarm button didn't do much, but luckily the driver was a minute or two behind us and opened the doors to come down with us.

Most of the days on this trip involved several hours of driving, either on safari or to get to the next safari location. The first day was about 8 hours on the road to Khama Rhino sanctuary. This campsite was one of the worst on the whole trip with no fence and limited facilities. The toilet block was a few hundred yards down a sandy path from where we set up camp. At midnight, on her first ever night in a tent, Ciara woke me up saying that she needed the toilet so I got the torch out. I checked out the front of the tent, couldn't see any eye. Checked behind, similar darkness. So we got out and started walking past the other tents towards the toilets. As we came up to our bus, I head a noise so we stopped. I couldn't hear anything for five or twen seconds so we started moving again. Then, no more than twenty yards in front of us, a leopard walked out from behind the bus directly in front of us. The light reflected in its eyes and we did exactly what you're not supposed to, turned and ran.

It was probably a ten second run back to the tent but it felt like a lifetime. Especially when you have to be a man and not leave your girlfriend behind... I don't think there was a single moment of greater tension in my life than when I began to turn my body about halfway through the run to see if the leopard decided to chase us. As I have been able to write this, you can probably guess that the answer was no. Still, we sprinted back as losing sight of it doesn't mean that it isn't going to decide to come after you or it's not coming from a different angle. I unzipped the tent and Ciara jumped in like a pro. After one last check for a predator, I followed her in and zipped it up. Safe to say we both needed the toilet after that one.

I don't think I got much sleep after that as I spent a few hours listening out for other tent zips to tell anyone else in the group not to head out. Even though the leopard was probably long gone by 3am, I wouldn't have been able to live with it if someone else had come face to face and not been as lucky. The next day, we had another long drive with 10 hours in the bus. I spent a lot of this time trying to figure out how I was going to run at all with all the wildlife around. When we did eventually pull up to the campsite and I saw that it was fenced (presumably the whole way round) I decided I had to tick off Botswana now or it may be never.

The run

With one practice run under my belt, I whipped the tent up at record pace. It was already solidly into the evening by the time we got off the bus. Once the tent was up, I jumped in quickly and got changed, put my trainers on and located my different types of torches. The sun was still just about up but that wasn't going to last long. I hadn't mentioned the marathon in every country idea yet so quickly went to the tour guide and tried to give as quick an explanation as I could. He didn't quite get it (and I still don't think he fully understood by the third one in South Africa) but I just got running and hoped for the best.

Given that my marathon experience up to this point was a good few road races and only one solo run along the roads of Niagara Falls, I was in for a very different run this time. 'In at the deep end' really describes these first two days well. The campsite was all sand. I've run on beeches before and am familiar with the extra effort required for propultion on sand. I was now going to have to fight against the surface for 26 miles, after spending 1o hours sat still, as the sky turns black, terrified that the fence that I haven't checked has a hole in it.

The layout from the perspective of our section of the camp site was a bar with outdoor benches to the left, then the main gate we came through at about 10 o'clock, a dozen or so other tents and pickup trucks ahead down the main path and then a spur path half way down on the right which unfortunately didn't lead anywhere, but did provide about 50 yards of extra variety.

I took my first steps down the main path until I came to the other end. So, I turned around and explored the spur for the first time. Disappointed, I turned around again after a few seconds and went to the end of our tents, then turned around again. This whole lap came to about 0.3 miles. With some very simple maths, it looked like I'd be doing this exact same thing about 75 more times. How fun. As a few others finished up with their tents and took their seats around the fire. After a few miles I stopped to chat as I knew there would be questions. The first few were similarly confused like the guide, but showed more enthusiasm and support. Thankfully, nobody thought I was mental (or at least didn't say it straight away).

I turned around and kept going with my thrilling journey. Up down up down. I spent most of these earlier laps learning the terrain, finding shallow spots of sand that either had solid foundations below or where the sand had been compacted by tire tracks. I quite quickly felt like I could do this with my eyes closed. Good thing too as it was getting dark quick. At 8 miles the chef was finishing up with dinner and my empty stomach needed something. I joined the circle around the fire and explained to the rest of the crowd what I was doing. I threw down a massive portion of delicious spaghetti bolgnese which was a little heavier than the usual gels and tablets. I wanted to keep running but also wanted to make friends and unfortunately the rotation stated that I was part of the washing up crew on this night. I started scrubbing whatever was finished with as others finished their plates one by one. After I felt like I'd done my share, I gave into the polite orders of others to get running again.

It had now gone 9 o'clock and there was no light left in the sky. Luckily, the scttering of fires and torches from our camp and the others meant that some of the path was still partially lit. However, there was no light at all down the extra dead end path. I've never been that scared of the dark, but I was very scared of leopards, or whatver else, that night so I decided to shorted my route. Even with a torch, I just wasn't enjoying that section of the loop at all. I also took a tumble over a reasonably sized rock (big enough to trip me but not big enough to see) which added more caution to the coming miles.

The next few miles were more of the same but somehow the pitch black sky managed to continue getting darker. There were stars in the sky but they weren't putting up a very good fight on that night. The light reduction continued on the ground too as each of the other parties called it a night, put out their fires and turned off their torches. My group also slowly thinned until the last few people left the fire and headed towards the toilet block to get ready for another night in the tents. Ciara was also one of these people, I couldn't ask her to stay up all night as that would have been even more boring than my task. As the furthest tent / pickup packed up down the other end of the path, my route began to get shorter and shorter again. Eventually, the only people left awake were the handful of guys sat round a fire at the gate (not sure what their exact job descriptions would be but they were on the clock in one way or another). I was waiting for one of them to come over and ask me what I was doing but they never did, although I'm sure I must have ben a topic of conversation at some point.

As I came up to 16 miles I was near to admitting defeat on this route as it was simply so ridiculous running where and when I was running in near complete darkness, even with a headtorch. And then, I had another idea. The bar that was away to the left behind the toilet block, still had its exterior lights on. So my 0.3 mile route had dropped toa lower 0.3, then to 0.2 and was now to drop to even less. I did a few laps of the bar and benches watching my watch and it clocked in at 0.1 miles (0.09 to be specific as 11 laps made a mile).

I'd started facing 75 laps. I'd now run for about three hours and was facing 110 laps for my final ten miles. It felt like I was back at the start line. I didn't have a choice, I just had to do it. After the first mile, I had the amazing idea that I could turn around and run in the other direction. This helped physically, as 10 miles turning somewhat continously left in a rough circle would be tough on the joints, and mentally, as literally any form of change was exciting. I plodded on with the clock approaching and passing midnight.

One moment of increased heart rate did come soon however. Another set of cat eyes came into my torch light. This cat however, was more in line with what you see in a pet shop rather than on safari. I laughed at myself after a very over the top panic and carried on running. Apart from that, the only other excitement came around 24 miles when two of the others got out of their tent to use the bathrooms. I was so thankful to have someone to talk to briefly as I was very much in a surreal state of mind by this point. After they zipped their tent back up, I carried on with the final laps and eventually stopped my watch past 1 am, absolutely over the moon with it being done.

I unzipped my own tent (luckily I rememberred which one it was and avoided destroying the respect I'd built at the washing up station earlier) and grabbed my towel. I headed to the shower desperate that there would be some hot water as the temperature had dropped significantly. The walls for the bathrooms were simply corregated iron so I'd have preferred my odds against another leopard rather than an ice cold effectively outside shower with my body in a shattered state. I twisted the tap and was greater by steam (and a bunch of bugs but I did not care). After a few minutes of reflection and washing, I dried myself off and rushed back to the tent. I now only had a few hours to sleep before we were up and at 'em again. This really was a taste of the adventure that I was craving and a great example of proving to myself that I can step up to a tough challenge.