JOHANNESBURG - It’s the numbers game - a trade-off of calories, water and weight - all to survive a hard 250km slog through a scorching desert.
That difficult trek through the Sahara is billed as the toughest foot race in the world, in which athletes are known to get lost - and even to lose their lives.
But if all goes to plan in fewer than three weeks, Parktown resident Lee den Hond will be waiting nervously for the guitar riff of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell to blare out across the desert to signal the start of Marathon des Sables 2017 - and with it six days of pain.
Not that the Joburger is a stranger to pain or endurance. In 2013 she became the third South African woman to summit Everest.
She has run the Comrades Marathon and completed a couple of Iron Mans.
But this trek through the Moroccan desert leaves her uneasy.
“I’m nervous about the unknown, the temperature and running on sand,” she says. “It’s what you can’t prepare for.”
For those six days, Den Hond will, on average, run a marathon a day, in temperatures that can draw the mercury up to 50ºC.
Everything she will need in those six days, she will have to carry on her back: a sleeping bag, food, extra clothing, and, in Den Hond’s case, some biltong for snacks.
There is something else she will have to make room for: a large South African flag that carries the signatures of the children she helps.
That flag she lugged to the summit of Everest. “Even if it weights 2kg, I’m taking it all the way to the finish.”
Day four is the big one, an 80km leg that athletes have 36 hours to complete. It’s nearly the same distance as the Comrades Marathon, but on energy-sapping sand.
“In these next couple of weeks I have to get it into my head that I need to be self-sufficient,” Den Hond says.
Her journey started on a couch, in the winter of 2012, when Den Hond decided she would head to Everest. She hit Google and began shopping for a guiding company to lead her to the top of the world.
The Canadian expedition company Peak Freaks agreed to take the complete novice. To cope with the cold - even at base camp it was -21ºC - she came up with a mantra she would repeat over and over.
“I would say ‘Lee, the cold mustn’t manage you, you must manage the cold’.”
It took her 14 hours to summit Everest, and then nine hours to get back to Camp 4. “This was the hardest thing I had ever done.”
While preparing for Everest, Den Hond built a centre that included a soccer field, and a toy and book library for the Schaumburg community near Hartbeespoort, for charity.
Den Hond believes these challenges find her - like the Marathon des Sables, which found Den Hond on an aeroplane reading an in-flight magazine.
Picture: Dimpho Maja
It featured a review of a book by Sir Ranulph Fiennes called Heat: Extreme Adventures at the Highest Temperatures on Earth. The explorer wrote about competing in the Marathon des Sables.
“The first thing I did was call my dermatologist and asked him if my skin could take it. I’m quite fair,” says Den Hond. “There was silence, then he said ‘why are you phoning your dermatologist, you should be phoning your psychologist’.”
Again, Den Hond is raising money for charity - this time she wants to build a permanent clinic for the Schaumburg community
To prepare for the desert, Den Hond has been running, a lot. On average she runs 150km a week, splitting her runs between a treadmill and the streets of Parkhurst. But the problem is that she can’t replicate the temperatures she is likely to experience in the Sahara.
Sports guru Tim Noakes believes that a competitor running the Marathon des Sables could get away with drinking about half a litre of water an hour while on the trail.
This will stave off dehydration. “The human body is amazing and most competitors will have learnt from experience,” he says.
Dehydration is just one of the perils. In 1994 Mauro Prosperi got lost in a sand storm. He ended up spending 11 days in the desert, drinking his urine and bat’s blood, before being rescued.
In the coming weeks, Den Hond will be keeping up her exercise routine, pounding those streets in Parks. She is preparing for the pain and the extremes for one simple reason: “It is the challenge. That’s why I’m doing it.”