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Gruelling challenge is over for news execs on 24-hour 120km 'ultra-marathon'

Bill Martin and Pete Holdgate, from The Herald in Plymouth, have crossed the Namibian desert after months of training for a 120km “ultra-marathon”.

Bill, who is editor, and picture editor Pete have already raised more than £3,000 for St Luke’s Hospice which serves the whole of Plymouth, south-east Cornwall and south-west Devon.

Here, in their words, is the story of the trek.


All of us were here for different reasons.

All of us had prepared differently.

But one thing we had in common was ahead of us lay 120km of unknown desert – and pain.

The route we were to take would lead us across gravel plains, river beds, sand expanses with no horizon and through the magnificent Messum crater, a 20km wide scar on the earth caused by a meteorite collision millions of years ago.

River bed to crater entrance: this was the section of our journey when the Namib desert became a cauldron.

We learned later that all the competitors found their race plans shredded and their bodies drained as temperatures soared to an unbelievable 46 degrees.

The scenery was starkly stunning but the give of the gravel river bed began to burn our calf muscles and eat into our mental reserves. This section seemed endless and our pre-race briefing began to pay dividends as we took a break in the shade of a solitary thorn tree to escape the merciless heat for just a few minutes.

Though it was unspoken the task ahead seemed impossible and I began to question in my own mind whether we had trained hard enough for this unbelievable environment.

These two stages are one story because the darkness and the silence of the desert took us into a world of surreality.

A stunning canopy of stars was the only feature through seven hours of trekking when you see the world by the light of your head torch and are guided by tiny glow sticks placed along our route far away in the distance.

For us this was a journey of almost total silence and the high points were a glimpse of light that always seemed impossibly far away.

On and on and on. This was the greatest test. There was nothing to talk about apart from the sheer hell of what we were doing.

There was nothing to consider but going on. We went through check point four at 1.20am unsure whether we would make the distance in the 24-hour limit.

We felt the end would never come.

Pete’s watch became our ruler because we knew if we kept going at pace we would make it.

Eventually out of the early morning light came a white race van with a race marshal. “Three miles to go,” he told us.

We were nearly there.

  • Approaching the end of their journey
  • It is impossible to describe how far or how hard those three miles felt. Your body and your mind are at such a low that even when we could see the finish it seemed a million miles away. The last ten steps and there was a ripple of applause and some loud cheers from our fellow finishers and race supporters.

    We had finished the Namibia desert Ultra Marathon within the 24 hour time limit. In fact we had 19 minutes to spare.

    We shook hands and hugged each other. We sat in camping chairs in a dusty camp site on the Skeleton Coast and were given a cup of tea. We had done it. We had actually done it.