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Raise Your Game: How did you feel after completing the Marathon de Sables?

Molly Melhuish: I felt mentally and physically exhausted! The last six months of my life were geared towards this one event and now it's time to recharge.

RYG: How do you wind down after something like that?

MM: At the moment, all I'm doing is waiting for my feet to get better. A lot of people who ran the race have already got new challenges planned!

RYG: Did you encounter any difficulties during the race?

MM: The main difficulties were my feet blistering and at one point I thought I'd lost my little toe! I thought it was somewhere in my shoe because I couldn't feel it. There was a lot of blood and I was in a lot of pain but when I tried to wriggle my toes I couldn't do anything with the little one. I thought it had gone and at that point I was a bit scared to take my trainers off!

RYG: What were the conditions in the desert?

MM: The conditions were exactly how I expected them to be. In fact they were better than I'd expected. Although it went up to 49 degrees Celsius there weren't any sandstorms. Sandstorms are a real worry because you can't see anything and you get dehydrated without realising it.

RYG: How did the temperature affect you?

MM: It was extremely cold during the night and I didn't sleep very well. It was also very windy and our tents would blow down and land on everybody as we slept. During the day it was over 40 degrees from around 8am until 6:30pm.

RYG: How did you ration your water intake during each stage of the race?

MM: We were delegated certain amounts of water for each period and you had to make it last. If you ran out of water and needed another bottle they'd give you a bottle but they'd add half an hour to your finishing time.

If you ran out of water a second time, they'd add an extra hour to your finishing time, and if you ran out of water a third time you would be eliminated from the race.

RYG: How did you manage your daily food intake?

MM: On the first day my food intake was fine but from the second day onwards it all started to go wrong. I had taken couscous and savoury rice, really simple food that I thought I couldn't go wrong with, and I started throwing them up so I knew I couldn't eat that!

I had a friend running with me and we shared a saucepan but as he got very excited during the race he left me behind so when it came to the longest day I couldn't cook any food and I had to modify my intake.

I took dried coconut with me but I couldn't eat it. I kept retching so I had to re-plan how I was going to get my necessary calories. I had to eat food from the other days' rations and hope that I'd feel better the next day so that I could eat the coconut at that point instead.

RYG: Did you have to modify any of your equipment during the race?

MM: I had to cut holes out of my shoes so that my feet could bulge out once I had developed lots of blisters and had bandages around them. A lot of people had their rucksacks digging into them and they had to tape up their backs but luckily I didn't have any problems with that at all. I made sure I had taken very limited equipment - I had food and the essentials but that was all.

RYG: Did these modifications affect your preparations for each stage?

MM: With the food, I was calculating my calories because I might think "I'm going to have a packet of dried fruit before the next checkpoint," but considering I wasn't able to keep the dried fruit down I'd have to eat two pepperamis instead. Then I had to think about what I was going to have later on that night in its place. I had to time my food intake to make sure that I didn't get dehydrated at any point.

RYG: Did you perform as well as you'd anticipated?

MM: I started off well and then towards the end I started slacking quite badly. I think I was probably disappointed with myself over the last couple of days because there wasn't anything wrong with my legs or my back, it was all down to the blisters. There was nothing I could do about it as my feet weren't used to the terrain but I had to keep going.

RYG: What would you do differently next time? If there's going to be a next time?

MM: I had a plan where I wasn't even going to jog at the beginning of the race. I planned to march for the first couple of days.

On the long stage, which was a 50 mile stage on day four, I found myself all alone in the dark and I panicked and to avoid that happening again during the race I made sure I was with somebody.

During the last day, my blisters hurt and I was in a huge amount of pain. I was very weak by that point and I was stumbling along. I should have jogged it because the last day is only a 12 mile run and I can do that quite comfortably in less than two hours.

In my mind I knew it was the last day and I started giving up which meant it took me four hours to complete the stage - twice as long as it should have taken.

RYG: You say you almost gave up towards the end, what made you overcome that and start running again?

MM: You just think to yourself "I'm not going through all this only to go home without that medal." When I thought I'd lost my little toe on the fourth day I had to think "Well, if you've lost it you've lost it," and carried on running. You don't go through it all for nothing!

RYG: Do you and the other runners help each other out when there are problems?

MM: There was one runner whose luggage went missing at the airport so everybody gave him bits of their equipment but he actually got pulled out of the race in the end because he wasn't coping very well. If there was any food that I couldn't eat I would give it to one of my tent mates and they'd do the same.

RYG: What sort of mental structure did you put together for each day?

MM: I tried to make myself feel as normal as possible so I'd get up, comb my hair and I'd clean my teeth Then I'd wash my face with a flannel and have some food with a cup of tea so that everything felt perfectly normal.

I'd strap up my feet and the last thing I did was put my trainers on. We each had a road book saying things like "You'll go past these ruins," and "You'll go up this mountain for such and such a distance," so I'd read from the start to the first checkpoint every day and then I'd divide my water into my bladder (water pouch) and into my bottles.

When I got to each checkpoint I wouldn't even sit down. There were tents where people would crash out but I thought "If I crash out I won't get back up again," so I'd squat down, fill my bladder and my water bottles again and read from checkpoint one to checkpoint two in my road book so that I knew exactly how long it would take me. I did the same thing at each checkpoint every single day.

RYG: What were your strengths in the desert?

MM: My mental strength. The other people in my tent kept saying that I was always very calm but inside I knew that I wasn't very calm at all! I would tell myself to stay calm and I think that was one of my strengths.

I was in a tent full of men and they were all full of male bravado and kept discussing what races they've done before and their training regimes. That was very off-putting and it made me feel slightly intimidated.

These guys were talking about running marathons in under two and a half hours and they were all comparing their equipment. They all had brand new stuff but I just kept reminding myself that I should stay calm because I'd prepared properly and I knew what I was doing.

RYG: What were the dangers in the desert?

MM: We saw lots of people coming at us from the middle of nowhere and they'd try and get our trainers and our clothing! One of the girls in the race was offered a camel for her shoes! Another runner was offered two carpets for his t-shirt!

RYG: What was your recovery regime when you arrived back home?

MM: I didn't do anything for the first three days but then I started back with a little swimming and then I moved on to running in the water. Once my blisters healed I went for a 5km run around the park and gradually got back into it from there.

RYG: Did you pick up any handy hints for future marathons or for next time you run the Marathon de Sables?

MM: Not really because I think I was one of the better prepared runners. I saw a lot of people being sick while on the run and I wasn't like that. I know I was in a bad state but I was nowhere near as bad as a lot of people.

A lot of people had diarrhoea and some were collapsing but luckily I didn't suffer with anything like that. I thought my feet were bad but they were nothing compared to other people whose feet were infected. I was pretty 'with it' most of the time.

It was hard work mentally but you have to remember to keep calm and to do what's right for you rather than what's right for everybody else.

RYG: What is your inspiration to continue to push yourself?

MM: The Marathon de Sables is so hard and it had taken over, not only my life but my family's life, and we'd all decided that this can't go on much longer. I hadn't done all this work for nothing. I had to finish it just to put an end to that chapter of my life.

RYG: What do you think is going to be your next challenge?

MM: I don't know at the moment. I have a lot of dreams that I'd like to accomplish. I wanted to run the Marathon de Sables and now I've done that but there are lots of different things really. To be honest with you, it's not really up for discussion in our family at the moment!