In the midst of the Covid pandemic and having no road races to work towards, I started focusing more on trail runs to challenge myself, and came across the Recce Raid Trail race.

Basically I was fit as a fiddle Saturday morning with no sign of cardiovascular disease (by the way, there is still no sign) and while running a very small piece of plaque in the coronary artery came loose and formed a blood clot that completely blocked the artery in the right side of the heart. Cardiologists called it a major heart attack.

The chosen place for the solo run was the Messum Crater, which lies within the Namib Desert. The start was just outside the village of Uis and the run would take me around the southwestern base of Namibia’s highest mountain, the Brandberg, through the crater and across the desert to the coast by Cape Cross

I was saved at the Sky Run by a magical little place called The Hut. We reached it around 3:30am when I was dead tired. A very special lady is there all night, handing out warm cups of soup and coffee to broken runners.