Second place in the Sahara Race, the second event in the Four Deserts Cup, is another personal high for extreme runner Christian Schiester. The 42-year-old Austrian talks about the tortures of the Egyptian desert.
You finished in a solid sixth place at the Atacama Crossing in April but missed out on your personal goal of getting on the podium. Does this result make up for that?
If you want to be on the podium, everything has to fall into place. It’s almost a like playing the lottery. I got lost in the Atacama and forfeited about two-and-a-half hours – that’s why I ‘only’ finished sixth, but I'm still very happy about. It was touch-and-go again this time because I lost my sleeping bag on the second day and got a time penalty of 30 minutes because of that, as well as having to suffer the cold nights...
How bad was that? Were you able to sleep at all?
The temperature drops considerably between one and six in the morning, so you can’t sleep much. I kept getting up and would stand in front of the tent and look at the stars. This helped to distract me a bit, but it was really freezing, freezing cold.
How can you run under such circumstances?
That’s something you have o cope with as an extreme athlete. We have to be really flexible and able to deal with various situations. If you’re missing something, you have to improvise. That’s how you deal with this unique situation. A marathon runner can stop at any time. We can’t do that.
Otherwise, your tactics seem to have been spot on. In the last stage, many runners had to pay the price for their quick start at the beginning, but you didn’t...
It wasn’t quite like that. I also had my slump on the third day, where I lost three-quarters of an hour on the leaders. Ten kilometers before the end I used up all my water and consequently got dehydrated. That was really tight ...
But weren't the others were in the same predicament?
In races like this you’ve got to know that there’ll always be a day that you’ll suffer a setback. Remember, up until the fourth day the German Tobias Frenz still had the lead, before he lost a whole four hours in the long leg and fell back to second place. Anything can happen at any time. The Atacama winner Mehmet Danis was unbeatable up until day two, but on the third, he suffered a greater setback than I did, and suddenly he was back in 15th place.
From a pro extreme runner’s point of view, what’s the difference between the Atacama and the Sahara?
The main difference is the altitude. The Atacama is about 3,000 meters above sea level. You can really feel the lack of oxygen when you’re on the move for hours. The second thing is the constant ascent and descent over rocky paths. In the Sahara on the other hand, it’s the heat. Over 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in the shade; in the sun, it's another 10 degrees for sure. When you cross the finish line you feel like a roast chicken, done to a turn.
You're running for a total of 29 hours across 250 kilometers in the searing heat of the Sahara in six day... is it possible to put the pain you go through into words?
When it’s over, your body is in an exceptional situation. I wouldn’t even describe it as pain. It’s more like a car accident: one crash and you can’t do a thing with your body because you just don’t know what happened.
As an extreme athlete you’re always on the road. How do you stay in touch with your family during the contest phases?
During the actual race, not at all. My wife gets mails from my PR person, saying that all is running smoothly. But I have to distance myself from my family. I don’t want my kids to see me in this situation. It’s not nice to watch someone suffering the whole day long. It has become my profession, and I’m collecting these experiences so that at home and in my talks I can pass on these emotions and feelings. The whole thing is a learning experience and you have to first go through the fire in order to be able to say what it’s like.
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