They were also required to carry all their equipment for the duration of the ultra-marathon -- from food and sleeping gear to an anti-venom pump and glow sticks -- as they battled with weariness and dehydration whilst snaking their way past rolling dunes, steep-sided uplands, dried-up lakes and abandoned settlements in the hostile heat.
On the streets of downtown Cairo, however, just blocks outside the square, hundreds of pro-Mubarak supporters, carrying sticks and throwing rocks, charged barricades erected by anti-regime protesters.