Some Spring in Their Step

A quick note from Jennifer Vogel, from a tent that she's sharing with Lane somewhere in the Sahara, following Stage 3:

We are hanging in there. Today was round 3 with the Sahara- 24 miles of flat hot salt flats [Note: See photo to left] with a few dunes for fun. Tons of camels. Super hard not to stop and try to pet the babies. Time to recover and prepare for 55 tomorrow. The emails rock, please keep them coming.

The following is a recap of Stage 4, and it appears as though they were well prepared indeed...

While the race organizers describe yesterday's leg of the Marathon de Sables as an 'Exceptionally beautiful long stage', it is considered by many to be the toughest of the six stages, and rightfully so. With that, both Jennifer and Lane not only finished the 82.2 kilometer (51.1 mile) Stage 4, they also moved up significantly in the overall standings. As they left the relative comfort of the camp at Bivouac 4 Wednesday morning and pushed off into the desert towards the first checkpoint, Jen was in 183rd place overall out of the 961 remaining runners (1013 began Stage 1), and picked up 107 spots, which puts her in 76th overall going into Stage 5 which begins Friday morning. Lane moved up 144 spots, putting him 153rd overall amongst a field of some of the top ultrarunners in the world, on one of the world's most extreme and toughest courses.

The following is an excerpt from the MdS narrative of one of the more stunning portions of Stage 4:

...They also know from reading their road-book that it’s the price to pay to access the beautiful valley between Jebel Zireg and Jebel El Mziouda. After climbing up to a pass, they marvel at the extraordinary landscape: golden sand at the foot of the mountains, rocky undulations, fields of locust tree and camel grass, large stretches of black shiny stones.
Coming out of the valley, they come across CP 2, at km 26.1, and behind it, the dried up lake of the El Mader wadi. They cross it and then go up towards the El Maharch oasis, its inn and most of all its palm trees, offering shade to those who want to rest and recover. Further, CP 3 at km 38.7 opens towards the East and the Rhéris wadi crossing and CP 4 at km 51.

After painting that amazing picture in my mind, here is what I read next about the group of runners who started Stage 4 at 09:15 local time that morning (This was the entire field including all of the remaining competitors, except for the top 50 who had started three hours later at 12:15):

The first woman in this group to have reached the 51 km check point was Jennifer Vogel (696 – USA), at 4.22.

That's 31+ miles in just over 4 hours. In that heat. In the Sahara. After having already run a cumulative 104.5 kilometers (65 miles) over the previous three days. Both she and Lane clearly appear to be getting stronger, while many of the other competitors continue to fall off of the pace. Way to go, guys. Incredible. Seriously.


You may click here for their splits at each checkpoint, and their respective finishing times for Stage 4, and here for some Stage 4 videos.

Stay tuned for updates as they become available, and please take a moment to send each of them an e-mail to let them know that we are following their every step during this amazing adventure.

JR