“Too hot.” His words were slurred, and I had to grab him to stop him from falling over. It was a little after one in the afternoon, and the sun was directly above us. I knew it was only going to get hotter, and I looked about for some shade, but there was none at all, just a series of windblown rocks off to the side.
I checked my watch. We were just over a mile into the section with another three to go until the next checkpoint. I thought about telling him to turn back, but he was in no state to go anywhere by himself. It was all up to me.
Do I go back, or do I go on? I wondered.
Tommy fumbled for his water bottles. One was completely empty, and he drained the other in a couple of gulps. I guessed that we’d left the checkpoint twenty or thirty minutes before, and that when we did, Tommy must have left with full bottles. That meant he’d drunk seventy ounces in no time at all.
“I need to pee,” he said, pulling down his pants. His urine was like molasses.
He slumped down in the sand, right in the full glare of the sun. “Need to sit,” he said. “I need to sit. Can you wait?”
“There’s no sitting here, Tommy. You’ve got to get into some shade.” I looked back to see if I’d missed anything, but there was nothing that could shield him from the sun. I hoped I’d see some other runners too, but there was nobody.
I scanned ahead. I thought I could see a path of shade to the side of a rock formation about a mile in the distance. It looked as though it might be big enough to offer Tommy some protection from the sun, and it struck me as our best hope.
It took another twenty minutes to reach it. I had to drag Tommy with one arm through the sand while carrying his backpack and giving him as much of my water as he wanted. I tried to keep him talking, but I couldn’t think of much more to say than “Keep coming, mate. We’re nearly there.” He barely said a single word in return.
I knew how serious Tommy’s condition was. He was dizzy, disoriented, and soaked in sweat. It was a clear case of heat exhaustion, and I knew that if I didn’t cool him down soon, it could slip into heatstroke. From that point he’d be at risk of falling into a coma in as few as thirty minutes. After that he would need special medical equipment to keep him alive.
I finally managed to drag him to the sand rock and put him in the small rectangle of shade that fell beside it. I unzipped his shirt, hoping to let out any heat that I could. I was shocked by how pale his skin was. He looked half-dead already.
Tommy half fell onto his side and peed some more. His urine was even darker this time.
What am I going to do? I could feel the urge to panic but fought as hard as I could to keep my emotions in check. I guessed that we were probably halfway through the stage. I ran up a slight hill to see if there were any signs of life, but there was nothing and no one around.
“Listen, Tommy,” I said as I crouched back at his side. “You need help. I’m going to keep going to the next checkpoint and get them to drive back to you, okay?”
“I don’t want to run anymore,” he said.
“I know, mate. You don’t have to. Just stay here and wait for them to come. Don’t move.”
I gave him the last of my water, made sure his feet were tucked up in the shade, and ran.
My head was full of numbers. I calculated I had just lost forty-five minutes. I had given away the last forty ounces of my water, and I had just under three miles left to run before I could get any more. It was 120 degrees and likely to get even hotter over the next hour. If I hadn’t looked back when I did, Tommy might already have spent thirty minutes in heatstroke. If I hadn’t looked back, he might have already slipped into a coma.
As I ran, I scanned ahead for the markers but also looked far into the distance in the hope of seeing a vehicle or someone else who could help. Still nothing.
After the numbers came the questions. Why had I looked back in the first place? Had I sensed something? Was something or someone guiding me to help Tommy? And had I made the right decision to run ahead? Would Tommy have got help quicker if I’d gone back?
To save time, I tried to cut the course. I lost the markers for a while and started to panic. I was in a gully, feeling trapped. My heart was racing, and I feared, for the first time, that I might have made a terrible mistake.
I cleared a ridge and saw that I was back on track. In the distance, a mile off, I could see the checkpoint. It shimmered like a mirage, and no matter how fast I tried to run, it didn’t appear to get any closer.
Half a mile out, a race vehicle approached. I waved it down and told them about Tommy and where to find him.
“You’ve got to get there quickly,” I said. “He’s in real trouble. And I’m out of water myself. You haven’t got any water, have you?”
The little they had was enough to get me to the checkpoint, and as soon as I made it there, I sat down and ran through the Tommy story again. I took on as much water as I could and ran through my symptoms. But having run with too little water in me and too much pressure to raise the alarm, I’d already pushed myself too hard. I was feeling queasy and weak. At least I was aware of my symptoms. That meant I was thinking straight. I didn’t have heat exhaustion, yet.
I asked about Zeng and was surprised to hear that he was only twenty minutes ahead. Twenty minutes? That meant the overall result was in the balance. Zeng had cancelled out the lead I’d had on him at the start of the day, but I still had a chance.
I found it hard not to think about death as I ran. I wondered if we were near the place where the other runner had died of heatstroke back in 2010. And I thought about Tommy too. I felt sad to think that he might be in a coma even now. I hoped he wasn’t. I hoped I’d done enough. Suddenly, having been so angry about him gaining five minutes on us at the boulder section seemed silly.
Half a mile after leaving the checkpoint, my chest started to feel strange. It was as if it wasn’t pumping correctly, as though I had a band wrapped tight around my lungs. Whenever I took a drink of water, it felt like it was boiling. Gradually I slowed down. I was feeling ill. Soon I was shuffling along, my feet scuffing and stumbling like I was half-asleep.
I was terrified of just one physical symptom: heart palpitations. I’d had them two or three times before. My chest would feel like I was going to explode, the sweat would pour out of me, and I’d feel sick and faint. The doctors had linked it to me drinking too much coffee, and ever since then I’d cut out caffeine in the build-up to a race. But the memory of it still bothered me, and out there in the heat of the Gobi Desert, I could feel the symptoms all lining up. And if my heart did start to freak out again, I knew I couldn’t blame it on coffee this time. If I started having palpitations out here, it could only mean that something serious was happening.
I spotted a race vehicle parked up ahead of me. I knew it was there to offer emergency assistance, and I must have looked like a viable candidate as I staggered up. When I was close enough to hear the engine running, the volunteers jumped out.
“Are you okay? Do you want some water?”