Stage 1
As morning broke in the village of Zaouiat Ahansal in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, runners set off on Stage One of the takes place from 12th to 22nd May 2017. Start-line chat in a heady mix of Arabic, French, Spanish and English gave way to the sound of footfalls, the giggles of onlooking children and the cheers of waving locals.
What followed was a tough 55km, including three serious climbs, bringing runners to a lung-testing altitude of nearly 3,000m. The Atlas held other challenges, too – snakes, a hailstorm – but also presented a fast-moving slide-show preview of the landscapes to come, from dusty roads to snowy mountain tops, and from slick rock to flower-blanketed fields. It’s these ever-changing views that are the real beauty of this race.
After piles of couscous and gallons of Moroccan mint tea, the tired competitors slipped gratefully into their sleeping bags to dream of everything the Atlas would throw at them over the next few days.
Stage 2
‘Berd, berd, berd,’ muttered a Moroccan competitor through chattering teeth on the Stage Two start line: ‘Cold, cold, cold.’ At 6:30am, 1,300m up in the mountain village of Agouti, with the fog hanging over the peaks adding a dreamlike quality to the chilly air, it was hard to imagine that just below the Atlas it was 38C in Marrakech.
‘Today, you’ll visit everywhere in the world,’ race director Mohamad Ahansal had said of the scenery to come in the next 58km. ‘Pyrenees, Alps, Tibet… everywhere. ’Runners climbed to nearly 3,400m, crunching through snow, then plunging down into valleys to wade chest-deep across rivers, then on into clouds of desert dust. And the shifts in scenery did indeed feel like a whistle-stop tour of other mountain ranges: whispering grasses on red, chalky cliffs gave way to the high-altitude flats of the Rockies, then the snowy peaks of the Alps and on to the foggy, plunging valleys of Tibet. There was so much variety, in fact, that it seemed wrong to try to clothe it in hand-me-down descriptions taken from other mountain systems: the Atlas wear a finery all their own.
Stage 3
The next morning, just three kilometres from the stage three start line in the village of Ait Ali N’ltto, runners climbed a dry riverbed into Magdaz. This ancient village, with its red-mud houses clinging to the mountainside, one on top of the other, is a UNESCO heritage site. In Ahansal’s opinion, it is also ‘the most beautiful village in the Atlas’. He stopped to buy dates to power runners through the rest of the day’s 43km journey across peaks and canyons, and through village after village, where children climbed onto rocks to get a better view, other locals cheered and many decided to join in for a time, hiking out of town with the runners. It was a day when we could feel a connection not just to the beauty of the region, but also to its people.
Stage 4
A shade over 30km from stage four’s morning start in the village of Tighza we watched the sun set on the valley of Tizi N’Tichka, where we would sleep under the stars. The day had taken us past ancient orange rock formations and to a checkpoint in the colourful mountain village of Ouzlim, where runners sat on the ground eating local bread and olive oil. Ahansal had been busy, making a midnight run to buy bread for breakfast, haggling over the price of watermelons in a midday souk, and picking up bags of figs and dates. The competitors had seen none of this, but it was interesting to note how much the simple act of sharing food had brought the group together. The TAM is focused on having contact with Berber tradition, and a huge part of this culture is sharing spaces, time and, especially, meals.
That night, the group’s increasing closeness became obvious. As some runners lay wrapped in sleeping bags in open-sided tents, there was dancing, clapping and laughing by the campfire, and any barriers of background, language or culture among us seemed to have melted away into the mountain air.
Stage 5
Running any mountain race is a gamble with the elements, but the Atlas have a great poker face. From the beginning, Ahansal had stressed the importance of respecting the capricious weather and taking the course ‘beshwiya, beshwiya’ – slowly, slowly. Part of the explanation for the range of conditions is that the course runs both to the north and to the south of the Atlas, with each side having its own microclimate. North of the Atlas it tends to be green, mossy, damp… think clammy skin, clinging shirts and pruney toes. To the south it’s a arid, red-orange… think peeling lips and dust plastered to sunscreened faces. But the Atlas will not be pigeonholed: stage five was in the south, but a shivering cold night gave way to a wet, foggy morning, then a dry, scorching afternoon, with the sun so strong that runners finished the day burnt and heat-blistered after their 44.2km in the mountains.
Stage 6
‘It’s like the end of a good book, isn’t it?’ said competitor Nick Mars, sipping a cup of tea at the finish line in the village of Imlil. He couldn’t have put it better; it was indeed a bittersweet day. Competitors were steaming in the humidity as they ran along a colourful village street to cross the finish line. Wide-eyed children perched along the race’s fi nal kilometre and shopkeepers had abandoned their storefronts to cheer the finishers. The contrast of this welcome with the moody, rainy afternoon sky overhead seemed a manifestation of the group’s conflicted feelings: elated to have been part of something so special, yet sad that it had come to an end.
The TAM had been a wondrous week of running, dancing, heavy fog and flower-filled fields, of new friendships, sunburn and soaking-wet shoes, prowling thunderstorms and clear, star-pierced skies. It had been dirty and it had been raw, but mostly it had been beautiful.
The next takes place from 12th to 22nd May 2017 takes place from 12th to 22nd May 2017.
All photography by Kirsten Kortebein.
