Getting In · International ultra
Marathon des Sables
Six stages across the Sahara in a week, carrying all your food, your sleeping bag, and your gear on your back. The organisers give you water and a shared open-sided tent. Everything else, including 14,000 calories for the week, you carry from the start.
- Distance
- ~250 km6 stages, 7 days
- Long stage
- ~80 kmOften overnight
- Pack weight
- 6.5 to 15 kg
- Temperature
- Up to 50°C
- Cost
- £4,000 to £5,000+
- Field
- ~1,000
The MdS invented the self-sufficient desert stage race and remains the one everybody knows. You sleep eight to a Berber tent on a rug in the sand, you rehydrate freeze-dried meals with rationed water, and you walk or run between 20 and 80 kilometres a day over dunes, jebels, dry lake beds, and rock.
The long stage is the centrepiece: roughly 80 kilometres, often finishing in the dark, with slower runners walking through the night and arriving the next morning. The day after is a rest day in camp, which is when the event's peculiar social intensity kicks in and the tent you were assigned becomes a group of people you'll know forever.
How to get in
- Tour operatorBook through your national agency
MdS sells places through country-specific official agencies, and the deal differs by country: some include flights and transfers, some don't. Places for popular editions book out well ahead, with waiting lists. There is no qualifying requirement: if you can pay and pass the medical, you can enter.
- Open entryWaiting lists and other MdS events
The organisation now runs several events, and if the flagship Morocco edition is full, the waiting list moves and the other editions are genuinely good races in their own right.
The pack is the whole problem
Every choice is a weight choice, and every gram is carried for 250 kilometres.
- Mandatory kit is non-negotiable and checked: sleeping bag, headlamp, anti-venom pump, signalling mirror, compass, 2,000 calories per day minimum, and more. Random checks happen mid-race with time penalties.
- Aim for a base weight near the minimum. Most people target 7 to 9 kg with water. Every extra kilo costs meaningfully more over a week.
- Calories per gram is the food metric. Experienced entrants optimise obsessively for it, and still finish the week having lost several kilos.
- Gaiters, sewn on, not velcro. Sand in shoes is the number one cause of race-ending feet. Have them professionally attached to your shoes.
- Heat train seriously. Sauna work or heat-chamber sessions for weeks beforehand, and practise carrying a loaded pack in that heat.
Questions runners actually ask
Do I need to qualify for the Marathon des Sables?
No. There is no qualifying race requirement. You need to book a place through your country's official agency, pass a medical, and be able to fund it.
How much does it cost?
Recent editions have run in the region of £4,000 to £5,000 or more, with the exact package depending on your country's agency and whether flights are included.
What do I have to carry?
Everything except water and the tent: food for the week at a minimum of 2,000 calories a day, sleeping bag, cooking system, and a specified list of mandatory safety kit.
Go to the source
Entry rules, dates, standards, fees, and odds change every single year, and the interesting races change them the most. Use this guide to build the plan; use the official site to confirm the details before you book anything.
If this is your kind of thing
Need the races in between? The hard part of a bucket list year is everything else on the calendar: the qualifier, the tune-up, the long run with a bib on.