There seem to be three people on the other end of the line at Paragon Aviation Services at Windhoek International Airport in Namibia, their voices muffled. I’m sitting among a dozen other passengers in a minibus en route to Namibgrens Farm, part of a convoy racing 200km across the Namib Desert and the Skeleton Coast to the landlocked Eduard Bohlen shipwreck as part of Race to the Wreck 2024. “Has my luggage arrived?” I ask on a borrowed iPhone. The only response is the blare of an airport tannoy and the warble of inaudible background chat.

I repeat myself – some crackling. “I’m sorry, sir. Your luggage has not arrived,” says a man named Denzel. “Maybe it will come tomorrow.” After tomorrow, I’ll be deep in the desert and uncontactable, bereft of clean underwear. The missing duffel bag has been needling me for the past four days, since arriving in the country on a British Airways flight and discovering that the equipment that I meticulously packed and checked against an Excel spreadsheet has vanished like a fart into the wind.

A Welshman named Rhys Dowling swivels around in his chair. “What do you need, mate? I’m sure we can all pitch in to sort you out.” Boo Stone, a Rat Race crew member, assures me that I’ll be able to participate in the challenge with the essential kit that I’d brought in my carry-on: a legionnaire’s hat to keep the sun off the head and neck, running shoes equipped with sand gaiters, and a hydration vest. She says she can lend me her running poles. And then everyone offers to chip in. I’m bombarded with enough gels, electrolytes, painkillers and Vaseline to support a multi-day endurance orgy.

Cooling down at a pitstop

Cooling down at a pitstop

James Appleton

Partially reassured, I gaze out at the scenery through a dirt-streaked window. Nappe belts relax into broad blonde plains stippled with hardy acacia trees. The silhouettes of plateaux ripple along the horizon like watercolours – richer and more vivid in the foreground, fainter and pallid as they recede into the distance. Ghostly abandoned settlements cast long shadows as the sun infuses the dust blood-orange and spreads its last light across the desert.

Namibia is one of the most sparsely populated countries on the planet. It’s the world’s 35th largest country, bigger than Germany and France combined, with a population of just under three million people, outnumbered by the animals that roam its wild expanses. Wind rattles the glass and scours the land, redolent of sun-scorched earth, as a nimbus of dust forms inside the minibus. Somewhere out beyond the horizon, half-buried in the Skeleton Coast, lies the rusting carcass of the Eduard Bohlen. In a few days, I hope to reach the shipwreck and bring back a handful of sand for my daughter. But first, I’ll have to run.

Namibgrens Farm

Four hours later, the transport pulls up to Namibgrens Farm, set south of knuckle-like knolls that look as if they could have been borrowed from an Iron Maiden album sleeve. A woman has Mongol 100 – another Rat Race event, where participants race across 100 miles of a frozen lake in Mongolia – tattooed on her calf. Most of the group has participated in a few Rat Race events, some dozens. There’s an almost cultish tone of reverence in how the participants speak of the adventure challenge company, peppering the 20 staff members with questions about upcoming events. After a late dinner, most of us collapse in our tents. Others drink into the night underneath the Southern Cross.

The next morning, after waking to the barking of baboons, we’re asked to introduce ourselves at the breakfast table and explain why we’re here. Glen Meeks, from the Forest of Dean, cites that he’s on his third midlife crisis. Stefanie Staley, from Traverse City, Michigan, mentions that she’s a maritime historian and thought it would be an interesting way to see the shipwreck. “You’re taking the long route,” somebody remarks. Economist Michael Flint of Herefordshire explains that he’s come because he loves the desert, adding that it’s one of the last landscapes that humanity hasn’t fucked up (later on, he hedges that anyone living or working around the many Chinese lithium mines in Africa might disagree).

Installing the all-important sand gaiters on running shoes

Installing the all-important sand gaiters on running shoes

James Appleton

We meet Abbi Naylor, the project manager of the expedition race. Naylor ran a mountaineering company hosting high-altitude expeditions in the Himalayas until the Covid pandemic, when she attended graduate school for a degree in crisis and disaster management to work in combat areas. She walks us through the basics, mentioning that medical clinics will be held in the mornings and the evenings.

The main challenges we’ll face are dehydration, overheating and blisters. “Take it easy; take it in,” she says. “We’ve seen time after time people going out too fast and ending up in a medical tent.” Naylor explains that the race is untimed and is more about “completing than competing”. Some participants will be fat-biking for the first two days. Many will opt to hike rather than run the majority of the distance. 4x4 sweeper vehicles operate at the back of the pack and will look after anyone who feels they can’t make it any further. The SUVs require special permits from the local Topnaar People and are operated by some of the best off-road drivers in southern Africa.

The route is not waymarked. Navigation is conducted almost entirely via the map on one’s GPS watch. Conveniently, the charger for my Suunto is in my missing checked luggage. After my umpteenth conversation with Paragon Aviation Services, I cut my losses. BA has misplaced my luggage for the third time in a year, and I’ll be taking on this challenge without my kit. Cortisol levels run high. Thankfully, the Rat Race staff have worked hard to ensure I’m provisioned with everything needed. Before we pass out of phone reception and wifi for the better part of a week (and during the US election), I chat with my kid. She delivers one brief. “Sand, papa. Bring me some sand.” At 40 years old, I’m surprised to experience a stab of childlike homesickness.

Oryx have been known to kill lions with their horns

Oryx have been known to kill lions with their horns

James Appleton

The Faces of the Namib Gate

The wind is whipping across the flatland as we clamber out of a fleet of four-wheel-drive vehicles onto a vast gravel plain. It’s strangely chilly in the early morning light and everybody seems eager to move. Without standing on ceremony, we take off at an easy pace along a single-track trail into what is poetically named The Faces of the Namib Gate. Not long after, a pair of oryx perk their ears inquisitively, then mince off toward a small range of fold mountains. This genus of antelope is the national animal of Namibia, with striking markings and knobbled scimitar-shaped horns. Oryx have been known to kill lions and hyenas when defending their young. They can live for weeks without water and withstand temperatures of up to 46°C, yet even they are not immune to the desert’s extremes.

By 11am it is sauna hot. The medic, Esmarie Swiegers, pops her thermometer into the orange sand. The mercury reads 55°C. The air temp is north of 35°C. At the first pitstop (Rat Race parlance for an aid station), I start running with Gary Fixter, a young father from Chester who works in IT sales. We keep our eyes peeled for Namib sand snakes, cobras and zebra snakes, which are known to spit venom into the faces of unlucky passersby, like the dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park.

When the stars finally emerge, the sky is on fire

We pass zebra carcasses desiccated into whorled hides and the incinerated frames of two vehicles. We hear later that the second 4x4 caught fire when it spun out over a patch of bushman’s grass. The friction ignited a small blaze and things escalated quickly.

Fixter is a fast runner but hasn’t taken on a distance longer than a half marathon before, so we celebrate with an awkward iPhone video when we clock in 42km, his first marathon distance. We wrap up the day seven kilometres later and make a beeline for the cold drinks, like adolescent children. Fixter has been hallucinating frosty cans of Fanta for hours, and the Coca-Cola I knock back hits different. As people stream in, we set up our tents in a row along a sandstone bluff and enjoy the first of many excellent three-course braai barbecues cooked in the middle of the desert. When the stars finally emerge, the sky is on fire.

The Kuiseb River Valley

The Kuiseb River Valley

James Appleton

The Kuiseb River Valley

After waking, inspecting our shoes for scorpions, breakfasting, hydrating and striking camp, the group takes off down a gulch and onto a sand sheet. I find myself running with a couple – James Campbell and Bex Watson – both 32 years old. Campbell works for Rat Race in the same capacity as Abbi Naylor, as a project manager, while Watson is senior manager of studio experience at Peloton in London. They met around a campfire at the Impact Marathon in Nepal, which Campbell was organising. Between the two of them, they’ve run hundreds of ultras. Watson turns out to be one of the toughest people in the race. Though her feet are severely blistered, she’s always at the front of the pack.

At around 10am, the Kuiseb River Valley crumbles away to the north, the sand spilling over dark grey schist in granular rills. It runs 560 kilometres from the Khomas Highlands to the Namib Desert, with an ephemeral river that flows seasonally after heavy rains and helps sustain camelthorn and ana trees, which in turn provide shelter for wildlife such as springbok, hyenas, and extremely rare desert-adapted lions and elephants.

After roughly 35 kilometres running alongside the Kuiseb, I descend a steep slip face into the valley, feeling as if I’m leaping many metres at a time, shoes sinking deep into soft sand with each stride, deep enough to envelop the ankles. As I concentrate on not falling, I start to question whether I’m experiencing a mirage. Gazing down the toe of the slope, I spot a man of South Asian descent in a Panama hat and Ray-Bans standing with arms akimbo next to a Toyota Land Cruiser in the riverbed, neck craned back, gawking upwards.

A wiry goatherd in a torn Frank Ocean T-shirt pacifies his barking guard dogs

“What the fuck are you doing, mate?” he enquires in a clipped South African accent. His name is Mauri. “I’m just impressed,” he says. Mauri is up from Cape Town for the week on a road trip, exploring the area with his girlfriend. I explain that I’m participating in an expedition race. When I mention that he could take a shot at the next one in 2026, he replies, “fuck that” and wishes me luck.

I continue westwards along the valley basin, trying to shade myself under tree foliage and canyon walls in the high-30s heat for the remaining 22 kilometres. Goshawks circle on thermals above dark cliffs that flow like magma. A wiry goatherd in a torn Frank Ocean T-shirt pacifies his barking guard dogs. After over seven hours of running, I arrive at the campsite.

We have another braai at a nearby farm, enjoying the local cooking and culture. The Topnaar people have lived along the Kuiseb River for centuries, relying on the river for water and harvesting nara melons, a desert plant that thrives in the sandy environment. There are no melons in sight, but I get my first taste of fatcakes, deep-fried dough balls made with flour, sugar, salt and baking powder that are perfect for mopping up pap and potjiekos lamb stew. As I waddle back to my tent, which I’ve pitched in a secluded bower of acacia trees, an eagle owl perching on a branch above hoots once before flying off into the darkness, as if to say goodnight.

The Sand Dune Sea

We run a mile in the riverbed before climbing a big incline into the Namib Naukluft Desert, through a carousel of different ecosystems, ranging from gravel plains to saltpans to fields of reeds and desert grass and the occasional welwitschia mirabilis, an ugly octopus-like pile of leaves that’s one of the oldest living plants in the world and can live up to 3,000 years. Finally, we get our first taste of proper sand dunes, the most exciting landscape of them all, enormous earthen waves that are constantly shifting and migrating, blown by powerful desert winds. I yip in joy as I run along the flank of a sinuous 25-metre dune, listening to Jimi Hendrix on my headphones, and startle a pair of oryx out of my sightline on the opposite side. They run across the interdune and up the cornice of the next riser, where they survey me warily, possibly wondering what kind of idiot they’ve encountered.

Pushing further into the Namib Naukluft, the dunes ascend to hundreds of metres. There’s almost always a long stoss slope to cross before the more vertical sections, which can be as steep as 40 degrees. Scaling them is a project that requires an inherent knack for geometry; take the wrong strike angle, and you might find yourself tumbling back the way you came. To prevent backsliding, trekking poles with ski baskets are a must, and your arms get the same workout as your legs on a slip face. After a while, you get a feeling for the way these immense undulations of sand move and which line to follow. I occasionally come across the footprints of an oryx or a bat-eared fox and shadow them on the assumption that the desert animals know the path of least resistance through this austere yet sensuous landscape.

On the fourth day – nicknamed Big Dune Day by the staff – we run just under 45 kilometres over 26 massive dunes, with an elevation gain of over 1,500 metres. The sand takes on tones of umber and ochre, petrified by the sun or oxidised by iron, occasionally appearing to breathe, particularly after a long climb up a dune crest. It often resembles a Georgia O’Keefe painting. James Appleton, the photographer for the trip, notes that if you look at the way that the sand is wind-sculpted on a micro-scale and then zoom out to the macro (with a drone, for instance), the dune corridors appear almost exactly the same way as does the desert floor. You can go an entire day without encountering any evidence of humanity and pretend that our species never existed. In the shadow of the American election, this is a peaceable thought.

When we strike camp the next morning, every trace of us will be erased by the wind in a matter of hours, as if it were a zen garden

Descending takes nimble feet. Runners often tumble over hard sand where the steep faces graduate into gentler aprons and the surface of the sand fluctuates from fine to firm. You have to anticipate the transition from soft patches to stoss slopes as resistant as artificial turf. Focusing on a midfoot strike, taking a choppy step to stay balanced, turning to keep in line with the GPX file on my GPS watch, heart rate elevated and mind absorbed in the movement, a sense of being urgently, brightly alive ascends, and then persists for hours on end; half pain, half purification. I’m not 100% sure what a flow state is, but this feels pretty close. At an aid station, medic Esmarie Swiegers rubs sunblock into my neck. When I tell her that I wish there were more dunes to run, she cups her hand around her mouth and whispers the words, “I think you need therapy.”

I’m almost sad to arrive at the camp. I wish I could do it over again. I drink a beer at the finish line with a Namibian crew member named Ronya Goethje. She discovers a long, string-like creeper while we sit in the sand. “I wonder what this is?” she asks. Moments later, she returns from behind a clump of desert reeds and asks if I can come with her for a moment. “This kind of breaks my heart,” she says, kneeling down. We find another creeper, and she gently teases it out of the sand to reveal a single clay-coloured root. “Look, that’s the plant – just a string and a root. I wanted you to see how full of life this desert is, even if it’s sometimes hard to see.” When we strike camp the next morning, every trace of us will be erased by the wind in a matter of hours, as if it were a zen garden, but the plants will persevere.

On the final stretch

On the final stretch

James Appleton

The Wreck

It’s cold when we wake. The Benguela Current flows northward along the southwestern coast of Africa, shrouding the shoreline in fog and lowering the temperature. I decide to cane it for the last day of the race, a half marathon distance, and push myself to the wall. After roughly ten kilometres of dunes, I bound down a sharp decline to the final pitstop, where the entire team has gathered to cheer. From here, the salt pan extends into a grey shroud of mist. Two curious jackals run alongside me as I jam out the final stretch through claggy flats that snag at the feet.

I can see the Eduard Bohlen from a few kilometres away and smell the stench of cape fur seals. Colonies of thousands call the Skeleton Coast home and use it as a latrine. Countless shell fragments appear trapped in individual pimples of sand, and flocks of flamingoes wheel in the air above. As I traverse the final plain, the rusting hulk of the shipwreck looms, its corroded ribs protruding from the sand like the fossilised remains of a prehistoric leviathan. The wreck grows larger with each stride, its skeletal frame defiant against time, half-consumed by the desert yet still standing – a monument to endurance. My body bellows in protest but I manage a sprint across the finish line, where Abbi Naylor places a medal around my neck.

As I traverse the final plain, the rusting hulk of the shipwreck looms

The German tanker ran aground on a sandbank near Conception Bay in 1909 during a thick fog. Due to wind-driven sand movement from the Benguela Current, the westward creep of the Namib Desert and tectonic shifts, it is currently situated half a kilometre away from the Atlantic. The wreck has been used as a filming location in various sci-fi movies and television shows, including Steel Dawn and Fallout. Now, as we find out, it’s being used as a den for jackals, one of which steals Bex Watson’s running pole and carries it into the vessel’s cabin. As racers finish, a larger circle of onlookers congregates to rattle cowbells and cheer. There’s a heady sense of satisfaction, and emotion, in the air. The team lays out a spread of sparkling wine and oysters on a folding table. “Race to get wrecked!” somebody shouts. The majority of us oblige. The beer has never tasted so good, and after 200 kilometres, we’re all cheap dates.

Not long after, we drive back to civilisation in a caravan of SUVs, north to Walvis Bay. When we come back in range of 4G and eventually onto wifi, little screens ignite with the psychosis of an American presidential election and the various stressors of our everyday lives. Yet the timelessness of the dunes helps to smudge their lines. Glen Meek, whom I started the race with five days ago, says, “We’re all great. Everyone here is great. It’s like my faith in humanity has been restored… for a very, very short while.”

A den of jackals

A den of jackals

James Appleton

Living life on borrowed time – or, in my case, underwear – might be the ultimate expression of resistance. One of the best things about exploring true wilderness is that it allows you to explore the wilderness inside yourself, the ancient part that can persist on little and find joy in the very small things. A light breeze to relieve the heat, a mouthful of water to slake thirst – these fundamentals often cannot be taken away from you. I find myself ruminating on the nature of possessions – how we clutch at them talismanically to protect us against uncertainty and the unknown, eventually imbuing them with our personalities, so that we feel uncomfortable without them. But we aren’t defined by objects.

Nor are we defined by performance. It’s the people who encircle us that allow us to play to our strengths. Though I’m first across the finish line, it doesn’t matter at all. I wouldn’t be here without the kinship of the group and their painstaking thoughtfulness and preparation, which allowed me to push myself to the extent of my ability, and bring home a handful of sand for my daughter.

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