Wheels Up + Off to the Desert

They're off.

Jennifer and Lane left Atlanta yesterday afternoon en route to Paris, and then on to Morocco for this weekend's start of the six-day, 150+ mile Marathon de Sables stage race. Contrary to what you may have assumed, they actually flew across the Atlantic, rather than taking a little 'warm up' swim to stretch before the race.

Before even getting off of the ground, Team Vogel had already dealt with their first setback, and now find themselves with a 2,000 calorie deficit. You see, Lane's peanut butter stash didn't quite make it onto the plane. It appears as though the airline security folks may be profiling studly ultra-endurance athletes (Who actually ARE nuts), and Lane clearly meets that criteria, as does Jen. Given the difficulty of a race like MdS, and the harsh and unforgiving conditions that Team Vogel will encounter along the way, it's safe to say that this will be the first of many challenges that they will face and overcome, and that this minor inconvenience will quickly fade from their memory as they crest their first 200 foot high sand dune. After all, if this race were easy, they would not have signed on in the first place, right?

Stay tuned...



A few housekeeping items. Subsequent posts will provide info on sending e-mails to Team Vogel USA. While the number of e-mails that they can receive is not limited, given the race logistics and the fact that they will be hunkered down in the desert in their tent each night after that day's point-to-point leg, each runner is limited to sending out only one e-mail per day. While this was covered in a previous post, as a reminder, you can track Jennifer & Lane's progress on the Marathon de Sables website (Linked above), and their race #s are 696 for Jen, and 697 for Lane.

Also, should you have any questions or are having any technical issues with the blog or the Team Vogel site, my e-mail address is jon@bigpeachrunningco.com, and I am also on Facebook.

Again, please stay tuned for ongoing updates, and please feel free to pass along a link to this Endurance Spot blog so that others who might be interested may follow along.


All the Best,

Jon Ross