Dion Leonard - Finding Gobi

If it all paid off, and I ran as well as I thought I could do in China, I’d tackle the prestigious race that the organizers were putting on later in the year—across the Atacama salt plains in Chile. If I won there, I’d be in the perfect shape to get back to the Marathon des Sables the following year and make a real name for myself.

I was the first passenger off when we pulled into Hami and at the head of the pack as we surged towards the exit. This is more like it , I thought.

The guard manning the security checkpoint put a quick end to my joy.

“What you do here?”

I could see a long line of taxis outside the door, all waiting beside a vacant pavement for my fellow passengers to lay claim to them. I tried to explain about the race and say that I wanted to go and get a cab, but I knew it was no use. He looked quizzically back and forth between me and my passport, then motioned me to follow him into a trailer that doubled as an office.

It took half an hour to explain what all the packets of energy gels and dried foods were for, and even then I wasn’t convinced he believed me. Mostly I think he let me go because he was bored.

By the time I got out and approached the pavement, the crowds had all gone. And so had the taxis.

Great .

I stood alone and waited. I was fatigued and wanting this ridiculous journey to be over.

Thirty minutes later a taxi pulled up. I’d made sure to print off the address of my hotel in Chinese script before I’d left Urumqi, and as I showed it to the driver, I was pleased to see that she seemed to recognize it. I climbed in the back, squashed my knees up against the metal grille, and closed my eyes as we pulled out.

We’d only got a few hundred feet when the car stopped. My driver was taking on another passenger. Just go with the flow, Dion. I didn’t see any point in complaining. At least, I didn’t until she turned to me, pointed to the door, and made it perfectly clear that the other passenger was a far better customer, and I was no longer welcome in the cab.

I walked back, spent another twenty minutes getting through the inevitable security checks, and lined up once more, alone, at the deserted taxi stand.

Another taxi came, eventually. The driver was happy and polite and knew exactly where to go. In fact, he was so confident that when he pulled up in front of a large, grey building ten minutes later, I didn’t think to check that I was at the right hotel. I just handed over my money, pulled my bag out after me, and listened to him drive away.

It was only when I walked into the entrance that I realized I was in the wrong place entirely. It was not a hotel but an office block. An office block in which nobody spoke any English.

For forty minutes I tried to communicate with the office workers, they tried to communicate with me, and the phone calls to I-didn’t-know-who failed to get us any closer. It was only when I saw a taxi drive slowly past the front of the building that I grabbed my bag, ran out, and begged the driver to take me where I needed to go.

Thirty minutes later, as I stood and stared at the empty bed in the budget hotel the race organizers had booked, I said out loud my solemn vow.

“I am never, ever coming back to China.”

It wasn’t the frustration of not being able to communicate properly or even the muscle aches and serious fatigue that were bothering me. All day I’d fought hard against the urge to worry, but as one thing went wrong after another, I ended up getting nervous. It wasn’t logical, and it didn’t make sense. I’d reminded myself again and again that I had allowed plenty of time to get from Beijing to the race start, and I figured that even if I’d missed my train, I could have found a way to put things right. And I knew, deep down, that any aches I’d picked up from the previous couple of days would soon shake themselves out once I started running.

Even so, by the time I arrived at the hotel near the race headquarters, I was more anxious than I’d ever been before any race I’d ever run. The source of my nerves wasn’t the journey, and it wasn’t the knowledge of the physical challenges that lay ahead of me. It was something far, far deeper than that.

It was the worry that this might be my last race ever and the fear that maybe I was never going to win a race—winning had been the only thing that motivated me to run competitively in the first place.

Tuesday, 3 January, 1984. The day after my ninth birthday. That was when I first understood how quickly life can change. The day had been a great one, soaked in beautiful Australian summer sunshine. In the morning I’d ridden my bike over some jumps I’d put together while Mum and Dad read the papers and my three-year-old sister played out in the yard near Nan’s downstairs flat at the far end of the house. I’d finally managed to perfect my somersault on the trampoline, and after lunch Dad and I went out with our cricket bats and a few old balls. He was just recovering from a chest infection, and it was the first time in ages that he’d joined me for a bit of sport outside. He taught me how to hold the bat in just the right way to hit a ball so hard and high that it sailed way out over the scrubby grass and beyond the far boundary of our property.

When I finally came inside in the late afternoon, I found the house to be full of the smells of Mum’s cooking. She steamed her chocolate pudding for hours and made Bolognese so rich that I would hold my head over the pot and inhale the aroma for as long as I could before the heat got to be too much.

It was a perfect day.

Like any nine-year-old, I denied I was tired when it came time to go to bed, but soon enough I was drifting off to sleep, vaguely aware of Mum leaving for her Tuesday night aerobics class while Dad watched cricket on TV with the sound turned down low.

“Dion!”

I didn’t want to wake up. It was dark and my head was still half-stuck in its curious dream world.

“Dion!” I heard Dad’s voice again. There was no other noise in the house, no TV, and no sound of Mum anywhere.

I didn’t know why he’d be calling me like this, and I let myself drift back to sleep.

I couldn’t tell you how much longer Dad went on calling my name, but at some point I knew I had to get up and go and see what he wanted.

He was lying on his bed, under a sheet. He didn’t look at me when I came in, and I didn’t want to go too far into the room. His breathing sounded all wrong, as if he was having to use all the strength he possessed to drag even the smallest lungful of air in. Something told me he was really sick.

“Go and get your grandmother straightaway, Dion.”

I ran downstairs and knocked on Nan’s front door.

“Nan, you’ve got to come,” I said. “Dad needs you. Something’s wrong.”

She came right out, and I followed her back upstairs. I remember thinking that because she used to be a nurse, Dad would be okay. Whenever my little sister, Christie, or I was hurt, Nan would always make us laugh as she tended to our wounds, telling us stories from when she worked in a war repatriation hospital as a head nurse in charge of the others. She was a tough woman, a fighter who I believed held within her hands the power to make any illness or pain disappear.

As soon as she saw Dad, she left to call an ambulance. I stayed with him while she made the call, but as soon as she came back, she told me to leave the room.

Christie was asleep in the next room. I stood and watched her, listening to my dad’s breathing grow worse and Nan talk in a voice I’d never heard her use. “Garry,” she said, a little louder than normal. “The ambulance is coming. You’re having an asthma attack. Keep calm, Garry. Stay with me.”

Christie woke up from the noise and started crying. “Dad doesn’t feel well, Christie,” I said, trying to sound strong like Nan. “But people are coming to help.”