8:15
I know it doesn't really look like it now, but the next week is about to be one of the most chaotic of our entire lives, and we want to take you along for the journey. That is without a doubt the closest I've ever been to missing a flight without actually missing it. The saga continues. One week from today, I am going to be running Marathon Desab, which has earned the nickname the hardest foot race in the world. It's six marathons in six days through the Sahara Desert. This video is going to be documenting the crazy week leading up to the race. Today did not go as expected. It's going to be random. It's going to be jam-packed. So, let me give you a high-level overview of what to expect. I
have to get myself from Vancouver here to Morocco where I'm standing now. But along the way, I make a brief stop in Tenneref to run another race to get me into a bigger race later this year. All the while Cara's back in Tennessee throwing a retirement party for her dad and then eventually we're both going to meet up here in Marrakesh. I'm going to get all my stuff ready for MDS and then we're going to make the 10-hour journey out into the desert to the start line of MDS. We are packing a lot into one week and we thought it would be fun to give you a little glimpse behind the scenes of the chaos leading up to the biggest physical challenge of my entire life.
Here we go. Good very early morning from the Vancouver airport. 16 hours ago I was heling and for some reason my whole body's a little sore this morning. From here I'm about to hop on my first of three flights that are going to take me to Tenneref. This is home sweet home own for the next 4 and 1/2 hours and route to Newark. I found this flight with points using Daily Drop Pro. It should have cost over 600,000 points, but I was able to redeem 115,000 United points and less than $70 in taxes and fees. Getting business class from Vancouver to New York and then business class all the way across the Atlantic from New York to Dublin. And then the final flight was included as well in that price, but it's an economy.
4 hours 23 minutes. Thanks for joining us and we hope you enjoy your flight list. All right, now that we're up in the air, I wanted to give you a quick tour around Air Canada's business class seat on a 787. It is a 121 configuration. The seat overall is super comfy, but there's definitely a uh lack of privacy. Can make eye contact with the neighbor over here to my left, which makes filming all this a bit more awkward. Over on the right hand side of the seat, you have an armrest that moves up and down. Over here on the left hand side of the seat, we have a nice big shelf. Half that shelf opens up and inside you've got the remote for the TV, but the TV is also touchscreen so you don't have to use it if you don't want
to. There is an outlet and then underneath that you have your touchscreen seat controls, reading light, and potentially the most comfortable pair of headphones that I've ever been given on a flight. Overall, super comfy for a 4 and 1/2 hour flight to New York. Just put that over to the side. Breakfast. Going with the chia pudding and that came with a side of cheese and bread. Nice and light. Good fuel for the race. Simple, but really, really good. Thank you for choosing Air Canada. We hope you have a friend. Thank you. Welcome to New York. Wow. I ended up working most of the flight, organizing all the footage from the Hely ski trip, and it was just so fun getting to relive all of that through the
footage. I now have a 3-hour layover here in New York before boarding my next flight to Dublin. So, uh, time to find a lounge. So, the Polaris lounge has a fancy sit-down dining room. And I think I'm close enough to this race in Tenneref that I can consider this car bloating. Plus, this whole travel day is pretty much guilt-free because I'm about to run six marathons in 6 days. I think the more calories I can put in my body, the better. Speaking of calories, thank you. All right. Home for the next 7 hours. Once airborne this evening, our flight time scheduled for 5 hours and 53 minutes. The flight tonight is going to be less than 6 hours over the Atlantic.
Thankfully, I ate in the lounge. And even though everything on the menu sounds great on this rare occasion, I'm going to skip dinner, try to get a little bit of sleep, which thankfully they've given me plenty of stuff for. Blanket, memory foam pillow, regular pillow, and another blanket with a Vera body amenity kit. Most importantly, the eye mask. All right, see you in 5 hours. From all of us here at United and our Starlight, thank you so much for flying with us. Have a great day everyone and a great rest of your week. My uh body thinks it's 12 a.m. like the middle of the night. I have to stay awake for the next 7 hours during this layover. All right, I'm about to board
my third and final flight to Tiner. It's 4 and 1 half hours in Alingus business class. Don't think I'll review this one and just see you when I get there. 27 hours after leaving Vancouver, I've officially made it to Tiny. Did not realize how far south we were coming. This flight was actually longer than my flight from Vancouver to New York. That's me with the heavy lying. The taxi line is like waiting for a ride at Disney. This is madness. On the bright side, it feels amazing in Tennere Reef. Couldn't be much different than where I just came from. 30 minutes later.
How good? I made it. Oh, sweet. I somehow managed to get 8 hours of solid sleep my first night in Europe, which is basically a miracle. So, what I'm about to do is a terrible idea. I should be resting and getting ready for marathon deos. But there's a big race that I want to get into later this year. And in order to get into that race, I have to run this one. So, we're going to make it happen in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Check out the view I woke up to this morning. Those are the mountains I'm going to be running in tonight. We've got some surfers down here. And then I'm going to head over to these white tents in just a minute to pick up my race bib.
All right, got my bib and the race starts at 5:30 tonight, which feels super weird. I don't think I've ever run a race that doesn't start first thing in the morning. But how about Tenneref? This place is absolutely stunning. Could not ask for a more beautiful place to be running my first race of the year. This race is only 15 miles, but there's over 4,000 feet of vertical elevation in the race. To put that in perspective, the Leadville 100 felt like I was pretty much just running up and down mountains the whole time. And there was 15,000 ft of vert in that race. So, this short race has almost a third of the amount of vertical elevation that the entire
Leadville 100 race had. And uh if these roads are any indication, it's going to be steep. All right, here we go. 15 miles, 4,000 vertical feet, and an hour and a half till it gets dark. While Nate is running his brains out. I am back in Nashville, Tennessee, planning my dad's retirement party with my sister and my family and our friends. We're officially at the party. We're just waiting for the retirement to get here. We're decorated. It's going to be awesome. And no one deserves it more than my dad. So, this was my dad's first car. This was his last car. How beautiful are these cookies? All thanks to my friend Allison. That's uh that's my one. It's been straight up. The uh 5 and 1/2 hour
cut off time on 15 miles is starting to make more sense. Nobody's talking. Everyone's just breathing hard. Hey. All right. Finally, we got flat. Mile two, half marathon to go and a traffic jam in the jungle. Literally posting on Instagram during the race. We're going so slow. Still not easy, guys. Sweat rolls off my nose. Here we go. All three. All four. That thing better than a flowy downhill run a little. This trail is going to get tricky in the dark. I don't think there's been a flat part of this trail. It's either up or down. It's super muddy.
Are they wet? I think I got them dry. It's guys. That's five and five of the craziest miles of terrain I've ever done in my entire life. It's like uh being on a never- ending stairmaster. I guess that's the point of those. They don't end, but you know what I mean. At six, we just climbed up a massive mountain and now we're running back down the backside. It's a bit like a slip and slide. Wow, that was crazy. Seven crazy miles. That's my eight. A little over halfway. Celebrating with my only caffeine. That's going to pick me up. I don't think you can see anything.
I spilled a bunch of gel stuff on my camera. But that was nine. Drink some more. Good morning. Have a little bit of a problem. Y'all know I'm a chronic over stuffer. Usually have to sit on top of my suitcase to close it. And that is no different today. But somehow I have to pack all of my stuff in addition to all of Nate's stuff. and fly across the world. Yeah, should have started packing sooner. My dad's retirement party was so much fun. Congratulations again, Daddy. I love you. But today, I'm leaving Tennessee and I'm going to reunite with Nate. What an exciting week. Um, okay. So, how did I end up with all of Nate's stuff? That is
because Nate is one of those last minute everything people. He started ordering things that he needed for his race that begins in four days last week, meaning he had to send everything to me here in Tennessee because he was heling in Canada. And I get to carry it all the way to Morocco. I've got his shoes that he's running MDS in. This entire jug of powdered butter. I don't even know what half this stuff is, honestly. sunscreen, emergency blankets, veggie stock, a whole box of honey, toothbrush, shaking butter, medical ointments, whatever these are. More food, all of his instant dinners, and a whole box of gels. All right, I think I'm going to try to fit everything into one of these
old duffel bags that my mom said I could pack and then just donate to someone. Surely, I can fit everything in one of those. Real quick, we want to say a big thank you to Heirloom for sponsoring this video. Immediately being connected when you land in a new country takes so much of the stress out of travel. Aerolo is an eim marketplace that offers digital eim cards. And it's super easy to install one of these digital eim cards before you leave for your next trip. And then when you land, you're immediately connected and you can use your phone just like you would at home. And the best part is you even get to keep your home phone number. And by home I mean like mobile. Nobody has home
phones anymore. I'm scrolling through the eims that I currently have installed on my phone. And we've used air in Italy, Japan, Germany, Austria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Scotland, and there's probably a few in here that I've deleted. So, if you don't want to plan your entire phone plan around a couple trips that you're going to take every year, and you want to make sure that you avoid those expensive roaming fees from your home carrier, be sure to check out Airlift. And right now, they have a special discount for our followers. If you use code cara and Nate, you're going to get $3 off your first e. and they have plans starting for as little as $5.
It's super easy to install. You just choose from over 200 destinations and then it takes a few minutes to get it set up. Once I landed in Morocco, I was immediately connected and that was without having to connect to sketchy Wi-Fi or go hunting around the airport for a physical SIM card. More than 15 million travelers use ALO, so join them and let them take the stress out of your next trip. Be sure to install the free Aerolo app. You can do so by scanning the QR code here on the screen. And don't forget to use code carrot and Nate to save $3 on your first eim. We'll leave a link in the description that you can check out and learn more. Look, I got it all to fit in this one tiny bag.
I'm so proud of myself. Lap 12, 11:15. Don't embarrass me. start? So, this is just one of those terrible travel day stories. I'll start with the original plan. I was supposed to fly from Nashville to Newark. I was going to land here at 8:30. I was going to have a couple hour layover and then take off at 11 for Dublin where I was going to have another layover and then finally take my final flight to Marrakesh to reunite with Nate. That's not what happened. We board the flight. We're almost there. Pilot comes on and he's like, "We're just going to circle the airport for about 20 to 30 minutes. We can't land because it's like I think he said it was raining too hard." So, we're circling. 30 minutes go by, he
comes back on. He's like, "We're just going to go over to our neighbors in Pittsburgh real quick. We're going to land there, fill up with fuel, and then we'll come back here and land at EWR." So, I was pretty confused by that. Pretty sure I was going to miss my flight to Dublin if we go to Pittsburgh first. But what made it so funny is pretty much half the plane. Everyone I was surrounded by came from this cheerleading competition that Nashville has every year at the Opryland Hotel. I grew up doing this competition every single year. So in a way it was kind of sweet and cute, but man, cheer mom's from New Jersey. They got an attitude.
We only know as much as you know. not fasten your seat belt cuz it's going to be and they were mad and they complained for the next 3 hours. Oh my gosh, 4 hours. 5 hours. I was on that plane for 5 hours. So we land, we fill up with fuel forever. They had suspended drinks and snack services on the flight because of the turbulence that we never had. So I hadn't eaten. We finally took off. We landed in New York, but then I realized my suitcase was checked all the way to Marrakesh. So now that I didn't get on that flight, is my bag still just going to Marash? Do I need to get my bag a baggage claim? The answer is no. My bag did not come out of baggage claim. The lady told me that it's just going to go
on my next flight with me. Hopefully in the morning everything goes smoothly from here. I'm going to go back to the airport. My bag's gonna get on my plane with me and I have a whole new flight itinerary to get to Marra Cash. Wish me luck. I've got to go to sleep. All right. Thanks for being my therapy. Good night. See, Madrid, I am Embark. For anyone who cares, my quads are completely wrecked. Hopefully they recover in the next few days. All right, first flight of the day is three hours to Madrid. Two and a half hours later, I have landed in Madrid and I believe Cara should be Yeah. starting her day in New York right now.
Morning. I kid you not, my flight is already delayed. 45 minutes. Hopefully that's all though. I'm just going to look at it as 45 more minutes in the Polaris Lounge. Well, scratch that. Not going to the Polaris lounge. Apparently, my new flight doesn't give me access to that. Wampmp wamp. Still going to be a great day. I'm now going to the United Club, which isn't as good, but I'm sure it's lovely. Ooh, that's a wellness room. Robots. Thank you. Have a good day. Check out this buffet. Breakfast sandwiches and breakfast burritos. I forgot to share the most exciting part of all Christmas.
This is all night stuff. Instead of trying to squeeze it in my check bag or instead of bringing a second check bag so I didn't have to deal with it, I decided to bring it in a carryon just in case because if he doesn't have the stuff, he can't do this race. And look what happens. It is heavy and annoying. So Nate, you owe me. I just landed in Toronto and my checked luggage is still at Newark. Somehow I just knew this was going to happen. I know it sounds like I'm being really dramatic right now, but for some reason, for the first time ever, I accidentally put my seizure medication in my checked bag. and I always have it with me in my carry-on, but it's just been such a hectic week that I wasn't
thinking and it got checked and now I'm in Toronto. I'm about to take off for Zurich and then to Marrakesh and then Nate and I are supposed to get on a bus that takes us to the middle of the desert so he can start his race in a couple of days and I only have a couple more days of my medication with me and then if my bike doesn't get here I don't know what's going to happen. I think I'm also just really tired. Hopefully, it'll come before we're in the middle of the desert and none of this will be a big deal. I guess the other positive thing is I'm still lugging this around. My gosh, what a mess. Guess I'm just going to go to the lounge, take some deep breaths, and hope for the best. I'm sorry this is so depressing.
I've been really trying to hold it together. Please keep clear and hold on for departure. Train to gate 7 and All right. Getting an extra run in today. My gate closes in 7 minutes and the sign says I have 7 minutes to get there. Oh, quads are still sore. I need to take the sweatshirt off, but I don't have time. Oh my gosh. This is one of the closest I've ever cut it. I didn't realize my gate was in a completely different terminal and I had to go through passport control. You're the best one. Yeah. Thank you. you bus. That is without a doubt the closest I've ever been to missing a flight without actually missing it. On the bus ride to the plane, I met the guy who currently holds the record for
the oldest MDS finisher. He was 76 last year when he finished, and this year he's 77 and going back to do it again. Cool. Which is just epic. I hope our body holds up that long. Oh, wow. Big bathroom. Okay. of a total mess earlier. I'm only a small mess now. About two hours into this 7 and 1 half hour flight to Zurich. Before we took off, I posted a little call for help on Instagram just because I didn't know what else to do. And I've been overwhelmed by the response. I've been chatting with doctors trying to help me get medicine abroad, airline workers trying to help me get my bags, and just every time I read a message, I just get emotional again. I
feel so thankful that I have this like tool for help that I know not everybody gets to have, but I'm feeling pretty good. I have some options starting with my layover in Missouri. This is all just assuming my mag doesn't get here in the next couple of days. I feel like I should mention another reason I'm extra emotional besides it's that time of the month is I'm currently in the middle of my longest streak ever of not having an aura which is like that mini seizure that I have. So I've been feeling really good about that and feeling like finally maybe it's under control. And so to think that I can mess that up by this dumb mistake I made just makes me really sad. That's gross. We'll move on from that
for now. Bright sides. I just watched a beautiful n documentary about a family of eagles who lost baby foxes. That made me happy. And I'm flying Swiss Air business class for the first time. Had a lovely meal. I seen it's going to say great, but I don't know if I'm right. It's great because it's business class. That's all that matters. It could be pinky, but I'm not really in the mood to do that. Okay. The headphones aren't that great. The sound only came out of one side. Not a lot of storage. And the seating floor plan is pretty open. So, there's very little privacy. You actually go out into the middle aisle. You guys have way more space than people
outside. So, we have the usual ear plugs, toothpaste, reading socks. Yes. Brandon, chapstick. All right. I think you need to try to rest. Wish me luck. Thank you. Byebye. Made it to Marsh. Marathon. This place is starting to feel a little more real. Thank goodness. If this bag would not have made it, the trip would have been much. Wow. fancy.
I'm on a mission. I have 1 hour until my flight departs, which means I have much less than an hour until my flight boards. I need to find a pharmacy inside security and see if they have my drug. This is my only option besides United getting my bag to me, which just is not looking promising at the moment. Oh, this is nuts. I just stamped into Switzerland when I didn't have to just to get to the B gates and then I have to get back over to the E-gates, like leave Switzerland again. I do not have time for this. Oh my gosh, I found it. Hi. Is there a pharmacist? Do you have this seizure medication? No, I can check for that. Okay. I think we don't even have this substance. I have a backup substance of this. Do you know if you have this one? Yeah,
just I made it. What a rush. I finally stopped sweating from sprinting back into Switzerland and walking directly onto the plane. The timing was nuts. So, that pharmacy mission wasn't a total success, but it wasn't a total failure either. As you heard, they did not have my drug in stock. However, they had a different seizure medication in stock and I bought all that she had, which was about 2 weeks worth. It's kind of like a if all else fails, option B kind of thing. I've never taken this different drug before. I would rather not try a totally different drug in a foreign country. Also, I don't think I've mentioned that I have enough of my own medication to get me through the next 2
and 1/2 days. So, there is a chance that my bag can come just in time. And all of this will just be a nice lesson learned. I obviously did not pack my medication in my checked bag on purpose. It was a total accident, but it will never happen again. Thank you for listening to my bathroom therapy round two. As you can see, I'm in a much better place, and this is my last flight. I'm finally going to reunite with Native America. So cool. Finally, Merry Cash. Oh my gosh, I just had the most what's the right word? unproductive time filing a claim for my bag. Now I need to get a taxi. Okay,
look. I'm here. Yay. You're my taxi driver. Yeah. Okay. Great. How are you? Thank you. What's your name? My name Abu. And you? Nice to meet you, Cara. Nice to meet you. I just realized that I left my parents house on Monday at 3:00 in the afternoon. It is now 600 a.m. on Wednesday at my parents house. And if I've done my math correctly, I've been traveling for 39 hours straight. Now I just need my bags. Finally. Take your stupid bag. I don't want anymore. I'm so glad that you have this bag, though. I never want to see it ever again. How heavy is it? Oh, I've been lugging that around for 39 hours. Guess
who has to run through the desert with us for 6 days on his back? I've been training for you. Your hair is so curly. That's crazy, isn't it? I love it. Okay, time to pack for MDS. Oh, it's just torture. All the things I've been lugging around. Don't worry, don't There's more. Oh, that was that. Sorry, that one wasn't even going into Oh gosh. Man, your back didn't get lost. Starting this process feels very overwhelming.
This is going to be the first time that I've attempted to put everything I need for the race in the backpack. It just didn't all come soon enough. I know I should have done it before. Check this out. I got Velcro sewed around the shoes and then these gators like they attach over the shoe like this and that keeps all the sand out. Never been tested. Oh, where to start? Uh Cara has actually been asleep while I've been doing this, but I think I have all of my food sorted. So, it's basically six full days, and it was too much brain power to try to come up with different meals on different days. So,
I'm just planning on eating the same thing every single day. Protein oatmeal for breakfast. This is basically a bunch of bars, gels, and powders. This is everything that I'll eat while I'm actually out running. And then this is my big 800 calorie meal every night. So, that is one day's worth of food. And then I had the exact same thing six days in a row. And then each day is about 2800 calories, which is not near enough when I'm running a marathon. But you also have to balance the amount of calories that you want to intake with the amount of weight that you want to carry on your back. So I would love to probably carry 4,000 calories a day.
Like I think my body could eat that when I'm running a marathon every day, but at the same time, I just can't afford that much weight on my back. So, this is going to be like a running challenge and then also like a calorie restriction challenge. I assume I'm going to lose a lot of weight during this. Okay, this is how seriously I'm taking weight. I'm transferring all of my overnight oats into smaller plastic bags to cut down on the packaging weight. And also, I'll be able to throw some water in here with the overnight oats, zip it up, and then I'll just eat straight out of this bag in the mornings. All right, breakfast. I packed all my food. This is just food. I don't know how I'm going to fit anything else
in here. This is 17,840 calories. Nice. I think this is the highest calories per g of weight. Powdered butter. One tablespoon of this has 60 calories. So, I put in a cup of this, which gave me an extra 1,000 calories. All right, that is everything. It does all fit. It's way bigger than expected. It's not bad. It sits decent. It's quite big. And it really like pushes in my back now that I have it all stuffed. I cannot believe this is the first time I've put everything in this bag. You are crazy. All right, here. Try it on. My back is so sore when I'm traveling. I don't even want to. Oh my gosh, that is heavy. You're crazy. It looks pretty good though. It does look good. Oh, here's another option.
Brushing my teeth. Yeah, but what if I need you? Don't ask me anymore. We're readjusting to living together. Have to remember what compromise is like. I'm bound to brush my teeth twice. We're both like, "Will you help me with something?" This is everything that I need for an entire week to run six marathons in the desert. It's a big relief that it all fits. late only. Oh, all right. We are on the move again. From here, we have another 6-hour bus ride further into the desert. This is it. So, we've just been handed our road books. We knew coming into this that we were going to be running 250 km,
but up until this point, we haven't known the course. We're not running exactly a marathon each day. It changes. All right, day 1 32 km. Day 2 40 32. It's a long day. Day 4. 82 km in one Well, I know what I'm doing on this bus ride. All right. Here we go. Hopefully home for the next 6 hours. The travel ultramarathon continues. Starting to feel very, very real right now. I can tell you're a little nervous. Starting to size up all the other people in the bus. Not because I want to beat him, but just like, okay, if you signed up for this and you think you can
finish, we look similar and maybe I can, too. Yeah, you miss here. Hey, she made it. Hey, we got some camels to welcome us. stops. It was worth the 10 days of travel and we are officially at the start line of MDS. All right, that tent is about to be home for the next eight, maybe nine nights. I haven't even wrapped my head around exactly how long we're going to be out here. Wow, this place is absolutely nuts. Nate and I were swept off our feet
when we got here. I went straight to the media tent, started uploading our video for this weekend with their wifi. This is my home for the week. I will be sharing this tent with three new friends. They gave me all this stuff. Two t-shirts so I can change my shirt for the first time. Wow. This is awesome. And it's going down so fast. Oh my gosh. I'm in disbelief that these are in my hand right now. I actually have my seizure medication here at camp. I have enough to last me the whole time we're here. Even if the only way I get my suitcase is by flying to Dublin and getting it myself, I have enough. I woke up this morning. There's a guy called Ferdinand and he is a magician. Somehow
he got a doctor from France to pick this up for me and then he came all the way to the desert. I think he was coming anyway, but the fact that this worked out is just blowing my mind and I'm so thankful. Speaking of my bag, still no updates. It's still sitting in Dublin. It's supposed to fly out this afternoon and land in Marrakesh. I'm very far from Marrakesh and we'll see what happens. Okay, I know we still haven't found Cara's bag yet, but this is the longest video we've ever filmed. I don't think I've ever filmed for 10 days straight and put it all into one video. So, we'll end it here. Show you some highlights
from the race next week. Hopefully get you excited to watch the next video. What have I got myself into? The saga continues. I don't even know what to say. It still doesn't feel real that my bag made it all the way to the middle of the Sahara. I have no idea how it got here. The airline told me, "We don't deliver things like it will go to the airport and then you have to pick it up." Ferdinand. Ferdinand makes miracles happen. Ferdinand makes dreams come true. This thing showed up to the middle of the desert at about 9:30 last night and he just casually tapped me on the
shoulder and said, "Look over there." and it was just here. I might have to switch to a carry-on bag. And I will never make the mistake of accidentally checking my medication again. This has been a crazy week. Okay, I love you.
