27th Jan 08

Date: 27th Jan 08
Location: Marrakech
Weather: Clear blue skies and sunshine, 27°c
Status: Ben – Overjoyed to have finished the marathon, Luke – All good, Colonel –
parked up

So that’s it then, the Marrakech marathon out of the way – probably the least prepared I ever want to be for one of the challenges ever, but I managed to drag my sorry-ass around the 42kms course (god it sounds further in KM’s!) and set a pretty damn fine time of 4hrs 6mins which amazingly is 3 mins quicker than the last one I did in Wales, and only 6 mins slower than this years London time which I trained for weeks for!

Was an excellent experience and very different from the UK races I’ve been involved with, no toilets, mostly French runners and for some frustrating reason 3 different finishing banners all of which I thought were the final few metres and the finish!

Sitting in the internet café typing this out with the intention of finding some beer in this city and drinking it somewhere out of harms view as its still frowned on here and I don’t want to offend and end up in jail like that stupid women who named her teddy bear Mohammed!

Clothes are being washed, dinner is taken care of and we intend hitting the road sometime in the next 48hrs to go south and start the adventure proper.

Luke is a massively valued part of this whole thing now and I’m so glad to have him on board until Ghana, if your looking for a ride down the west coast of Africa leaving Ghana sometime in March then get in touch! Navigation skills would be a bonus…

Have a great day in the UK, I’m off to lubricate my insides with the good stuff.

End of day location: Marrakech
Distance covered: 0kms, apart from the 42kms I ran!