I truly agree with what Mary said about joining Gobi March - it's either life changing or life-enhancing.

One of the reasons has to be meeting lots of inspiring people. I was asked to contribute feature articles by doing interviews with some of the runners. Meet Stephanie Case. She is a UN Volunteer/Human Rights lawyer working in Afghanistan (and 1st runner up female in this race by the way). The competition trail was close to the Kunlun mountain range separating China and Afghanistan. She told me she felt sad because the world is so different over on the other side. Here, she has been running with absolute freedom along the competition trail. Over on the other side, she is confined to the military zone, which is a tiny section of Kabul. Most athletes can train almost anywhere they want, whereas for her, she would be running round and round the military zone for hours a day, hearing gun shots at the same time. "The mental training is quite good though, and you can train yourself on how to face fear." We talked about how we could make Afghanistan a place for running freely. "30 years", she said. I told her, "we both have plenty of time to make this happen".