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Dion had to admire the little dog. She didn’t know when to quit! Well, neither did he. The path led up into the mountains, which was tough. Then back down, which was even tougher because he had to worry more about keeping his balance and not falling. He could feel himself getting tired, but he refused to stop or slow down. One of the other runners, Tommy Chen from Taiwan, was out in front. He was really popular, and everyone figured he’d win. He’d come in first yesterday. Another guy, Julian from Romania, had come in second. Dion had been third. Not bad for the first day and his first race back. But Tommy, Julian, and another runner, Zeng from China, were all ahead of him already. Still, Dion managed to come in a close fourth. He was happy with that. It meant he was still in third place overall.
The dog had been right beside him when he crossed the day’s finish line. Even Tommy had noticed. “That dog, man!” he told Dion. “It’s been following you all day!”
“Has it had any water?” one of the volunteers asked.
Dion frowned. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “Maybe it drank at some of the streams on the way.” Someone set out a small bucket of water, and the dog practically attacked it. Dion felt a little bad about that. Still, it wasn’t like she was his dog.
When he started to move away, the dog looked up from the water. Then she trotted over to him. And that was that. She followed him to the tent he’d been assigned for the race and went inside with him. He’d brought an inflatable mattress with him – normally he wouldn’t have, because you had to carry all of your own gear, but he hadn’t wanted to risk hurting his leg again. Now the dog watched as he blew it up, then hopped up onto it as soon as Dion sat down.
Shaking his head, Dion pulled out a packet of nuts and dried meat. You had to carry your own food too. He was about to pop a piece of meat in his mouth when he stopped.
She was watching him intently. But she wasn’t begging. She hadn’t whimpered once, other than back at the creek. And as far as he knew, she hadn’t eaten anything all day.
“Here you go,” he said, tossing the meat in front of her. She wolfed it down and wagged her tail. Then she turned around a few times and settled down. Within seconds she was snoring, fast asleep.
“Great,” Dion muttered. “Just what I need, another roommate.” He was sharing the tent with several other runners, and three of them had stayed up all last night talking. Now he had the dog to deal with too. And she snored!
But he couldn’t bring himself to shoo her away. She’d run hard the whole day, after all. He couldn’t blame her for being tired. And if some soft snores were the worst she did all night, well, he could live with that.
She’d been curled up beside him when he woke up this morning. “You know what you’ve got to do now, don’t you?” Richard, one of the other runners, asked him.
“What?” Dion replied.
Richard had smiled. “You’ve got to give her a name.”
Dion had groaned at that. She wasn’t his dog! But she did seem to have attached herself to him. And he couldn’t just keep thinking of her as “dog”. Richard was right. She needed a name. But what name?
It should be short, he thought; long names just got shortened anyway. It should be fun and playful but not silly. It should suit her. And it should have something to do with the race, maybe.
Then he had it. Part of this race led through the Gobi Desert. And that was the perfect name for her. Gobi.
Gobi was excited. Now she had a name! And the man had given it to her! And he’d fed her and let her curl up beside him to sleep. This was so great!
And now it was daytime again, the sun was out, and it was nice and warm, and they were about to run some more! She couldn’t wait!
She was so excited she actually wandered away for a little bit. There were lots of other runners, and many of them said hi to her and petted her. Some even fed her or gave her water. It was really nice.
But once the race got underway, Gobi went looking for one runner in particular. A tall one all in yellow. She found him after a little bit, and he smiled when he saw her.
Then they started running together again.
Dion was surprised at how happy he was to see Gobi return. He’d thought she’d got tired of him or found her owner, or something else. But here she was, running alongside him like she’d never left.
Today’s race led through a bunch of boulders. The footing was tricky because the rocks shifted around beneath your feet. You had to be careful if you didn’t want to get hurt.
Dion slowed a little as he reached the boulders. Gobi didn’t. She was light enough that she could leap from rock to rock without a problem.
Julien was the same way. Dion had seen him leap from rock to rock the day before. Today Dion had made sure to be in front before they got to the boulders, because he knew he’d lose some time once they reached that section. Sure enough, he soon heard Julien coming up behind him.
But when Dion got to the top of the pile, he stopped. He could see for miles from up here. There was the next checkpoint, way ahead, just past a small village. There was the starting line, way behind them. There was the path from here to the village – it was nice and flat and straight, and they’d been running on that until the markers had led them up here.
And there was one runner, flying down another path.
It was Tommy.
“Whoa,” Julien said from beside Dion. “Not right.”
When Dion reached the checkpoint, he stopped and found one of the race organisers. “Tommy somehow skipped that whole rocky section back there. I don’t know if he did it deliberately or not, but it’s not fair.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “We’ll look into it,” she said.
Dion still wasn’t sure the organizer believed them, but he’d done all he could do. Time to get back in the race.
Tommy was way ahead, but the race path curved a bit. At one point, he and Dion were maybe half a mile apart.
Dion assumed Tommy had seen him and would slow down but Tommy continued running fast ahead and didn’t stop for Dion so that they could run together as they had before Tommy
