Run and remember

Food reserve (3400 grams)

It’s even hard to call it food during the race. The main thing in the diet during the competition is not the taste, but the ratio of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and weight. Organizers regulate the number of kilocalories – 14,000 per race. Not less. More is allowed.

It’s strange: only 2,000 calories a day. We burn 4,000 kcal per day during an ultramarathon. And what about the heat?

The sand? The backpack? If my experienced comrades hadn’t given me good advice, I would have taken a minimum of 4,000 for a day. But experienced people say that 2,000 is usually enough.

Six months before the competition, I began experimenting with sublimated[17 - food subjected to vacuum drying. Takes up little space, great for a hike, sometimes even tasty.]food containing no moisture. Dry powder. Dust. But if you add water – mmmm… It turns out delicious. In the world there are many manufacturers of sublimates, so I tasted five options and stopped at MX3 – the food is quality, sometimes even tasty.

The price is about 6 Euros per serving. I bought 20 different dishes, tasted them, chose the best ones during the Rubicon, and ordered them again.

As one member of the MDS said:

“The main thing in the diet at the race is diversity.”

Dmitry Erokhin, participant of the MDS

So I’ll have two new dishes every day. I decided to fill the intervals between breakfast and dinner with nuts and dried fruits: they are high in calories and don’t take up much space. Moreover, every day, I’ll take 50 grams of pure carbohydrates for a quick recovery after running. Plus, tea with sugar to while away long evenings.

In short, I decided to take a risk and took food containing precisely 14,000 kilocalories for seven days of competition. If it’s not enough, I’ll have to eat sand and speak well of my experienced comrades.

While packing my things at home, continuing to struggle with excess weight, my family and I poured the sublimates out from heavy foil packs into cellophane zip bags, then sorted and packaged dried fruits by weight.

The savings amounted to 250 grams. Reduced weight and volume – this is good, but the fact that I have to wash the saucepan every time is not good.

So, my whole food weighs 3,400 grams, in average 410 kilocalories per 100 grams. Not bad. My backpack without water weighs about seven kilograms, with water – eight and a half. Not very hard. But it is to the detriment of comfort. I hope I won’t envy my provident friends.

The acclimatization or a week in Morocco

Backpack is stuffed. I’ve gone through all the necessary trainings and studied all the info. Mental state is just fine. Feet are ready to go. I reassured my family of my safety and asked all my friends to cheer for me. Here comes the day of departure.

Morning in Chisinau. Alarm. Pants on. A banana. Bag on the shoulder. Lots of hugs and kisses. Padremobile to the airport. Then the plane: Rome, Casablanca, Marrakech.

Upon arrival I had to wait for an hour in a queue. Finally I left the airport and my lungs took in the hot air of the Morocco night. Half an hour later I was already snoring in my hotel.

My first morning in Marrakech was boiling hot. I crawled down for breakfast and met my future “roommates’ – Pafnutiy (= Pavel, Pasha, Pashka etc.) and Jurasic. They had already been here for 2 days fighting the heat off with juice[18 - liquid prepared by squeezing fruit or vegetable flesh.] mixed with local wine, and having massages and sunbathing. My new friends quickly gave me a fill-in as to local lifestyle so soon we were smoking a hookah enjoying the sunny sky and the cool swimming pool.

Pashka’s happy voice announced that his luggage (his backpack with all the stuff) never reached Marrakech and got lost somewhere in the Mediterranean region. He seemed quite positive about it but actually there’s nothing funny.

More experienced friends warned him: keep all the important stuff with you. Shame. At least Pafnutiy has good friends, so he immediately reached out to them and they sent him all new things from Moscow. While waiting for them to arrive he borrowed something from me or from the hotel (like slippers).

Marrakech is a big and vivid part of the Arabic world so we decided to start with a walk around the city.

The city is all minarets, markets, crowds, hustle, dirt, women covered in black and men in white… Altogether it feels quite oriental and ancient.

Over the day we managed to tick off the whole list of mandatory attractions: dined on delicious lamb at the market, taught the Berbers to dress meat correctly, hugged a couple of snakes, hypnotized a fakir, rode around in a donkey carriage, wandered through solitary streets. Having completed the list we returned to the hotel.

It could have gone quite well if I hadn’t forgotten my iPhone under the Morocco sun – it clearly wasn’t its best day ever.

The next day we went for a run to check out our equipment for the MDS and our abilities to sustain the heat. The main objective was to get an idea of how fast we could run under such conditions.

Our run took us to the airport where we met two more martyrs – I mean runners. They were Iya from Russia and Vlad from Ukraine. Also Pashka had finally gotten his luggage. Based on its looks I can suggest it visited at least Chile and Sydney.

To celebrate happy morning events (and to show affection to our feet) we went for a pedicure. If only those feet knew what they were about to sustain…

The following day I inspected my backpack and carefully repacked all my food checking every calorie out of those prepared for seven days. Again I came to the conclusion that I’d go with two meals a day, one bite of nuts, and two glasses of tea (from one teabag). Eventually it turned out I was right.

Left to right: carb shake[19 - useful supplement for quick recovery after intense physical exertion.] for quick recovery after running, breakfast-lunch, lunch-dinner, a bite (nuts and dried fruit), energy gels[20 - a synthetic derivative of glucose, created from chemical reagents for maintaining energy in super long-distance races.] for power charge during the run, teabags and sugar. X-day is some spare food for emergencies.

Then I packed together food for the first two days and stuffed my backpack. The digits on the scales were quite a nice surprise: 6.35 kg. Just the necessary minimum, within the range of sanity. Great!