Dion Leonard - Finding Gobi

Maybe you could say that running in the heat was a form of escape. What I do know for sure is that as I ran in the Gobi Desert, I was no longer running to get away from my past. I was running towards my future. I was running with hope, not sorrow.

My pace slowed as every step became its own battle. There was snow all around, and at one point the track ran alongside a glacier. At other times the mountain would drop away at the side. I guessed there were some pretty dramatic views this high up, but I was thankful the cloud was so low that it was impossible to see anything more than a thick wall of grey mist. The experience was surreal, and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

The checkpoint finally came into view, and I heard people call out the usual encouragement. Once they saw the dog, they shouted a little louder.

“There’s that dog again!”

I’d almost forgotten the little dog at my side. All the time that I’d been struggling up the hill, the dog had kept pace with me, skipping along as if running 2,500 feet up into the sky was the most natural thing in the world.

Once I was at the checkpoint, I faced the usual range of questions about how I was feeling and whether I had been drinking my water. Checkpoints are there to give runners an opportunity to refill their water bottles, but they’re also a chance for the race team to check us over and make sure we are fit to carry on.

This time, however, it was the dog who got far more attention than me. A couple of volunteers took some photos as the dog sniffed about the checkpoint tent. As soon as my bottles were full and I was ready to go, I moved out, half expecting this might be the point when the dog decided to leave me in favour of a better meal ticket.

But when I and my yellow gaiters started running out, the dog joined me straightaway.

If the climb to the top of the mountain had been tough, then the descent was its own unique sort of pain. For more than five miles the route took me straight down a path covered in rocks and loose stones. It was brutal on the joints, but like any runner, I knew that if I ran at anything less than 100 per cent, I’d get caught by whoever was behind me.

And that’s exactly what happened. I was feeling sluggish and struggled to hit anything close to my maximum pace on the descent, and soon enough Tommy glided past me, quickly followed by Julian.

I was annoyed with myself for giving too much on the ascent. I’d made a basic error, the kind I knew better not to make.

I checked myself. Getting annoyed could lead me to make another basic error. At times in the past, I’d let myself obsess about a mistake I’d made. Over the course of a few miles, the frustration would build and build until I’d lose all interest in the race and bail out.

I tried to distract myself by concentrating on the view. Coming down from the mountain at one point, I thought I saw a giant lake ahead of us, stretched out wide and dark beneath the grey skies. The closer I got, the more it became clear that it wasn’t a lake but a huge expanse of dark sand and gravel.

As the path flattened, I settled into a steady six-and-a-half-minute-per-mile pace, bursting through the final checkpoint, not bothering to stop for water. I saw Tommy, Zeng, and Julian up ahead and found they hadn’t opened up the gap as much as I had feared. They were racing one another hard, and with less than a mile to go, there was no way for me to catch them. But I didn’t mind so much. I felt good to be finishing strong without any hint of pain in my leg. I could hear the drums that played every time a runner crossed the finish line, and I knew that finishing a close fourth for the day would hopefully be enough to keep me in third overall.

Just as at each of the day’s checkpoints, the dog was the focus of attention at the finish. People were taking pictures and filming, cheering for the little brown mutt as it crossed the line. The dog seemed to like the attention, and I could swear it was playing to the crowd by wagging its tail even faster.

Tommy had got in a minute or two before me, and he joined in the applause. “That dog, man! It’s been following you all day!”

“Has it had any water?” asked one of the volunteers.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe it drank at some of the streams on the way.” I felt a little bad about it. I didn’t like the idea of it being thirsty or hungry.

Someone found a small bucket and gave the dog some water. It lapped it up, obviously thirsty.

I stepped back, wanting to leave the dog to it and get away from the crowds a little. Again I thought it might wander off and go find someone else to follow, but it didn’t. As soon as it finished drinking, it looked up, locked eyes on my yellow gaiters, and trotted over to my side, following me wherever I went.

It was hot in the camp, and I was glad we’d left all that horrible alpine cold up in the mountains. From now on the race was going to be about coping with the heat, not struggling through the cold. From tomorrow onward we’d be in the Gobi Desert. I couldn’t wait.

As soon as I sat down in the tent, the dog curled up next to me—and I started thinking about germs and diseases. It’s crucial during a weeklong race to keep as clean as possible because without any access to showers or wash basins, it’s easy to get sick from anything you touch. The dog was looking right into my eyes, just as it had earlier that morning. I had a few hours before my six-thirty meal, so I pulled out one of the packs of nuts and biltong. The dog’s stare was unbreakable.

With a piece of meat midway to my mouth, it struck me that I hadn’t seen the dog eat a thing all day. It had run the best part of a marathon, and still it wasn’t trying to beg or steal any of the food I had in front of me.

“Here you go,” I said, tossing half the meat down onto the tarpaulin in front of it, instinct telling me that feeding by hand wasn’t a risk I wanted to take. The dog chewed, swallowed, spun around a few times, and lay down. Within seconds it was snoring, then twitching, then whimpering as it drifted deeper and deeper into sleep.

I woke up to the sound of grown men cooing like school kids.

“Ah, how cute is that?”

“Isn’t that the dog from last night? Did you hear she followed him all day?”

She. The dog had run with me all day, and I’d never thought to check what sex it was.

I opened my eyes. The dog was staring right at me, looking deeper into my eyes than I would have thought possible. I checked. They were right. It wasn’t an it. It was a she.

“Yeah,” I said to Richard and the rest of the guys. “She stuck with me all day. She’s got a good little motor on her.”

Some of the guys fed her, and again she took whatever she was given, but gently. It was almost as though she knew she was getting a good deal here and she needed to be on her best behaviour.

I told the guys I’d been wondering where she came from and that I’d guessed she’d belonged to whoever owned the yurts we’d stayed in the previous night.

“I don’t think so,” said Richard. “I heard some of the other runners say she joined them out on the dune yesterday.”

That meant she had put in almost fifty miles in two days. I was staggered.

It also meant she didn’t belong to the people back at the previous camp or to one of the race organizers.

“You know what you’ve got to do now, don’t you?” said Richard.

“What?”

“You’ve got to give her a name.”

6

I stopped running less than a mile in and cursed my stupidity.

The last twenty-four hours had brought all kinds of weather our way, from the snow and rain of the mountains to the dry heat that greeted us as we came down to camp. All night high winds had been tearing at the sides of the tent, and when I got up, the temperature was the coldest for any start yet.