Morning came quickly. I didn’t get much sleep. No matter. Start time for the final leg of the race was at 7AM. There was no time to waste.  I ate my final meal of ramen and packed my backpack. My girls ate dehydrated porridge in a bag. (For once, they were complimentary about my cooking at home!).  Dawn and Grace got a head start on the pack at 0640.  Olivia and I set off together for the final 10kms of the race at 0700.  A river crossing, dusty hills, and into the ancient city of Kharkhorin.

Olivia was keeping up with the fast pack and was quick to respond to coaching about strategy and tactics as we went along.  Dawn and Grace were incredibly fleet, as they were already waiting at the gates of the ancient city walls when Olivia and I arrived with the cavalry. The four of us strode across the finish line together as a family.

I received my Gobi medal with its bright red ribbon. The weight felt good around my neck. And then, the elusive 4 Deserts medal, with the black ribbon.  I had only seen it once before, in Antarctica.  To rousing applause, in the living room of the Mongol Empire, I became the 166th person on the Planet to join the 4 Deserts Club.

I expected to feel overjoyed and gush with uncontrollable emotion.  Instead, I felt something very different.  A profound sense of perspective, inner peace, and alignment.  The bright morning sunlight dimmed to evening twilight.  All of the ambient noise of the finish line fell silent. I was in moving in slow motion.  My shoulders dropped and my breathing and heart rate slowed to a near stop.  All the restlessness, time, money, training, injuries, challenges, frustrations, and failures that I had endured in getting here were no longer just random happenings.  They were all individual brush strokes on the canvas of my long journey to this very moment.   For the first time, I could step back and see the whole painting.  It was a perfectly imperfect masterpiece, and done.

Simon