Tom in training for gruelling Sahara desert challenge

When he goes for a run, Mullingar man Tom Farrell is far more accustomed to the squelch underfoot of water-saturated soil than the scrape of Saharan sand; more used to mist in his face than sunshine.

For seven gruelling days this April, however, his runs will be in those somewhat less familiar conditions as he participates in a 250km endurance event in the Moroccan Sahara – the awe-inspiring Marathon des Sables.

As if running that distance over sand in searing sunshine wasn’t enough, Tom, 29, will have to carry on his back everything he needs for that week – food, clothes, any electronics he wants, sleeping gear.

"Some guys I know are actually shaving the handles off their toothbrushes, because every gramme counts," he reveals, adding that he is trying to decide if he can get by without the weight of a phone.

Trading that sort of talk is part of the process for the 12 Irish athletes who have signed up for this year’s iteration of what is one of the toughest endurance running events. Although not the first ever Westmeath man to participate (that honour fell to Barry McDermott of Ballymore), Tom is the only Westmeath man taking part this year.

A native of the Lynn Road and a past pupil of St Finian’s College and the Dublin Institute of Technology, Tom works in aviation leasing, happy to have moved into that sector after his six or seven years working in flight operations as a flight planner with various airlines – Ryanair, Aer Lingus and ASL.

In his new role as a project manager, he travels a lot – to the States and Asia quite commonly – but from a quality of life dimension, he really appreciates the end of the 12-hour shift schedule.

Importantly, it gives him time for sport – which has always been a huge passion in Tom’s life, albeit one in competition with another big love, music. A long-time member of Mullingar Town Band, with which he played trumpet, Tom spent the summer of 2015 in the US playing with the Sacramento Mandarins, a drum and bugle corps who are part of the prestigious US Drum Corps International. He also played with the local band Good Man Sheila.

Something had to give, however, and it was sport that won out: "I kind of stayed on the music side of things up to my early 20s, but I was always in the gym, you know, five or six days a week and I always liked the physical side of things but, I suppose, it’s only in the last six or seven years I started to get into the outdoors and into mountaineering – the kind of adventures that I go on."

Mountaineering

Perhaps surprisingly for someone taking on such an immense challenge, Tom isn’t so much as a runner as a mountaineer. As it happened though, for this year, he had decided to take a 12-month break from the peaks, but still needed to feed his hunger for adventure. As he looked for something that represented the type of big new experience he wanted to try, the Marathon des Sables idea began to interest him.

"I’d heard of it; it seemed like an adventure that I’d be just about capable of – I think I’m just about capable of it. So I said I’d take the one year off and I’d do the Marathon des Sables – and also I’m planning on doing an Ironman in about six months’ time as well. So that’s kind of it, I’m just putting myself out there to see what I can do, on the year off."

Gruelling

The Marathon des Sables is not for the faint-hearted. To make the race fair, the weight of the starting pack all competitors bear must be at least 6.5kg; their food supplies must amount to a minimum of 14,000 calories. They don’t have to carry tents or water – but if they want their food warm, they need to bring a stove. Average daily temperatures in April are 30 degrees – but it can get as hot as 50 degrees.

The Sables is also not for the unfit: "It’s pretty much six back-to-back marathons," Tom points out. While participants can walk the route if they wish, the average speed of participants is around 5.2kmh; the minimum speed allowed is 3kmh.

Tom is extremely disciplined in his training: even a Valentine’s trip away with his girlfriend had to be organised in a way that allowed him to keep the momentum going.

"It’s a funny one, because it depends on how you think you’re going to do in the race," he says of the preparation programme.

"So," he explains, "if you’re a runner and running is your bread and butter, you will focus on running for the race. But for, I suppose, the mid-packers like myself, we just want a general overall fitness. So I decided that I would use triathlon fitness as my guide, so I’m doing an awful lot of running each week – I think I do about 13 to 14 hours total of training each week, so I’m doing swimming, biking, a lot of running, and gym work as well, whereas some of the other guys are just simply running because they want they want one of the top spots of the race.

"So, yeah, an awful lot of different training goes into it: running with weights and things like Stairmaster and also we have to get ready for the heat. So I think a couple of weeks in advance of the race we have to be in a sauna for an hour or two a day just to get our bodies used to the temperatures that we will actually be facing out there."

A really big part of the preparation is working out what he can afford to have in the backpack – and what can be left out. While the packs have to weigh at least 6.5kg, for most people a starting weight of 8-9kgs is almost unavoidable: "We all have spreadsheets at the moment and we’re trying to figure out where we can save weight," he says, going on to add that because of the weight considerations, the food will only be freeze-dried fare.

Croagh Patrick

Whatever about the Marathon des Sables, it still only represents a temporary diversion away from his mountaineering passion for Tom.

What originally started his taste for mountaineering was the entirely home-grown starter venue: Croagh Patrick.

"Many years ago, there was a school trip to Croagh Patrick – but unfortunately, I was too sick to go that day and all my friends had great craic and I missed out. But I ended up going a couple of weeks later with my dad and my uncle, and all of a sudden I had this fondness for the outdoors and for mountains and so I’ve just always had a fascination with high altitude mountaineering and I wanted to get into that."

Tom isn’t one to jump first and check later: he takes a measured and methodical approach, and while the word ‘Everest’ obviously features in any conversation with serious mountaineers, Tom is happy to play the long game, to earn his stripes, before even considering Everest. He has considered it; he has even been there; he hasn’t ruled it out completely, but equally, he hasn’t ruled it in.

"You can’t just go with no experience: it takes a lot of years to build up that kind of a mountaineering apprenticeship.

"I started doing a lot of hikes around Ireland and the UK. I did a winter course in the Pyrenees. I did Mont Blanc, Gran Paradiso; a few mountains around the Alps; I went to Africa – to Kilimanjaro – to get the first taste of high altitude, above 5000 metres, just to see how the body would work there.

"And then I ended up in Nepal for a month with a guy called Rolfe Oostra, who is a guide from a company called 360 Expeditions, so we went to Everest base camp. For the first two weeks, we were part of a hiking group. After two weeks, all the trekkers left and then about 10 of us climbers stayed on and we climbed to a 6000-metre peak, one that would be used by Everest climbers to acclimatise – pretty much to get their bodies used to the high altitude before they make their summit pushes, because Everest has become such a tourist trap these days.

"So yeah, I think my long-term goal would be to climb a few 8000-metre peaks. I’m not sure if I’m too interested in Everest these days because there’s a lot of other 8000-metre peaks in Pakistan and further out in Nepal. That really interests me more. So maybe – the plan is – next year to climb a 7000-metre peak, and we’re nearly there then."

Surrounding the whole question of how high it is feasible to go is, inevitably, the question of cost.

"Thankfully I work a good job. I have no sponsorship for any of these. Your average Kilimanjaro trip can cost anywhere between €3,000 and €5,000, but climbing 8,000-metre peaks, you are talking at least €25,000, per peak, and I’d like to do two or three. So you need to be sponsored at some point.

"To climb even a 7000-metre peak, which I hope to do next year – will probably cost between €10,000 and €15,000."