James Cracknell is no stranger to masochism. Instead of putting his feet up after 13 years of pain and early mornings as a professional rower, he celebrated his retirement in 2005 by rowing across the Atlantic with Ben Fogle, trekking 757km to the south pole and swimming the Strait of Gibraltar with comedian David Walliams.
And two weeks ago the 37-year-old embarked on yet another demonstration of his passion for extreme suffering. While the rest of us tucked into our Easter eggs, the Olympic gold medal winner set off on what is commonly referred to as the toughest foot race on the planet — the Marathon des Sables, a six-day, 250km ultramarathon run in the brutal heat of the Moroccan desert, where temperatures have been known to rise to 49° even in early April.
After the 29km first stage, Cracknell was placed a very respectable ninth out of almost 1 050 competitors, finishing the course in just under two-and-a-half hours. Not bad, you may think — standing 1.90m and weighing 93kg on the starting line, he is hardly built for long-distance running.
But according to scientist Simon Wickes, Cracknell is probably furious with himself for letting the whippet-like winner, Mohamad Ahansal (1,70m and 59kg) beat him. “James is, as you might expect, very, very competitive and measures his own success according to the performance of others. He will put his body on the line to be the best,” said Wickes, a human physiology expert who works with fighter pilots as well as professional athletes at the international defence technology company QinetiQ.
Wickes knows this because he headed the five-strong QinetiQ team monitoring Cracknell before, during and after the race. The scientists used Cracknell as a guinea pig to try to understand how the body copes in extreme conditions. Essentially, he surrendered his body to science, becoming a living, breathing, competing experiment, the results of which will be revealed in a documentary on the Discovery Channel in August.
During the race, Cracknell wore a “life monitor” system, which is a souped-up version of a heart rate monitor. As well as providing a heart rate reading in numerical form, it gives the ECG trace (which charts the electrical activity of the heart over time and flags up potential anomalies) and measures skin surface temperature.
He also swallowed a radio pill, which acts as an internal thermometer, providing continuous readings of his temperature which were picked up by a life monitor strapped across his chest.
At the start and finish of each day, the team tested the water content of Cracknell’s urine to measure how dehydrated he had become. A “dipstick” test of the urine looked for abnormalities, such as protein in the urine — an early warning sign of trauma or body malfunction.
They also weighed him daily to see how much body mass he had lost through sweating. Cracknell is apparently an Olympic sweater as well as rower. “He sweats an awful lot — far more than the average person,” said Wickes. “We did some heat acclimatisation over five days recently and in a session lasting one to two hours, James was losing 4kg to 5kg in body weight.”
This was a concern given that water is strictly rationed throughout the race. Even on the non-stop overnight stage — which lasts 80km — competitors are allowed no more than 22,5 litres over the two days.
Water is the only thing competitors do not have to bring with them to last the whole race. Instead, they picked up 1,5-litre bottles at regular checkpoints. One strict rule of the Marathon des Sables is that all competitors must carry everything else they need, including food, clothing, sleeping bag, cooking equipment, anti-venom pump, signalling mirror, compass, torch and whistle.
Though much of what the team was measuring was physical, Cracknell also allowed psychologist Paula Brown access to the workings of his mind.
Before the race, she asked him reams of questions to assess how he viewed competition, which revealed his unusually sharp competitive instincts.
Among the statements he agreed with strongly were: “I am always willing to risk injury in order to accomplish my athletic goals”, “During preparation for competition, I always push myself to the absolute limit” and “I always feel that I have to win at everything”.
For comparison, the QinetiQ squad did the same psychological test on Ahansal, who won the race last year, and discovered something interesting.
“Mohamad’s competitive nature is very low — if he does his best and someone else beats him, he thinks ‘Good for them’, which is not the case with James,” said Wickes.
“He would do a lot of self-analysis of what he could have done better. He would rerun the race in his mind. He doesn’t like to lose.”
What I loved about it
I did the Marathon des Sables about six years ago. I still think it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Psychologically, I found it very difficult to get through each day. Plus I wasn’t very well prepared. I only got a place six weeks before the start and up until then I hadn’t done any running. At the end of the first day I had the most dreadful blisters.
The hardest bit for me was probably the non-stop overnight stage — I saw a lot of grown men cry that night. I just kept thinking: “80km! How am I going to run 80km in 24 hours?” I started it one day and I finished it the next, just after a huge sandstorm. What I loved about it was the variety of people who sign up for it. I met a veterinary nurse and a tree surgeon and there are always a few celebrities too. — Ben Fogle,