Deserted

[Posted by Jon, by text] Just arrived in our new home in the desert. It's cold and raining. I'm blaming Ingram! Also, Ian Cross is taking quite a number of photos which he will be publishing later on his TalkUltra page on facebook.

Kit

[posted by Simon]

Ok so it is now 6:45 in the hotel in Ouarzazate and we are almost heading out for a 6hr bus ride to the camp. There we will be for two days before the race and self sufficiency starts on Sunday. Giving us a time to fine tune kit if we want but also time for organisers to check all the medical forms / food etc...

I promised you some details on kit that we are taking. In all (minus any fluids) our bags are weighing about 8.5-9.7kg. JPD having the lightest (low food levels), me in the middle (high food levels but light kit), and Chris having the highest (high evening warmth kit). Not sure about Neil's kit - he has packed but I think it is probably due a few repacks...

Ok so here is my list:

• Food (Will cover separately but wil be 5-6kg of the total weight)
• Camping stove and fuel, cooking implements
  
• Rucksack (to carry everything - we are using either 20L MdS bag - Chris and I or a raidlight equivalent - JPD and Neil)
• Sleeping bag & Carry mat (either blow up or lightweight foam)
• Ear plugs, and eye mask & pillow (blow up) - probably optional but think it is worthwhile!
  
• First aid kits including blister plasters (and scorpion venom extractor!)
• Camera - again optional
• Suntan lotion
• Second pair of socks
• Toothbrush / paste
• Something to wear around camp (am going for a forensic suit as lightweight solution)
• Kindle - my luxury for the day off
• Knive, Compass, Headtorch, Whistle, Safety pins, aluminum blanket,topical disinfectant - all compulsory
• Kit given by the organisers; Race book with the route, Distres flare, Luminous signal stick and salt tablets.

We will be making last choices on what to wear over today (will report later hopefully)

Simon

In Limbo

[posted by Jon] This will probably be our last entry before we start, even though that's not until Sunday morning. Our flight to Ouarzazate (French, so "Waz-az-at") was uneventful, we landed just after 4pm local time. Tonight we're staying in the 5-star Berbere Palace hotel; it's not 5-star by London standards, but it's the best hotel in the town - quiet, comfortable and well decorated (including many props from the local film studios). After a quick trip to the foreign exchange for some dirhams (which has the excellent currency code "MAD") and the supermarket for some bananas, we set about packing. I ditched everything on the "nice-to-have" list (except the iPod), giving me an initial pack weight of 8.6kg, although this will be topped up with a few items we're yet to be given (see below) and 1.5 litres of water. We now face two days of waiting. If someone offered us the chance to start first thing tomorrow we'd bite their hand off (except maybe Chris who is waiting for the weather to heat up at bit). Instead, we have a long coach journey tomorrow morning to the start camp. There's nothing planned for the afternoon, so we'll have plenty of time to test out kit in the race environment and mull over what lies ahead. At least food is provided for us - we've got plenty to spare but we don't have to start on the freeze-dried meals straight away. Saturday is the registration day. Individually this ought be at most a 30 minute process, but since there are about a thousand competitors to register there will be queues and it will probably take most of the day. Registration is pretty simple. We hand in our medical certificates and ECGs, and are given the "road book" (course maps and notes), an emergency flare, salt tablets and our pre-ordered fuel (not allowed on the plane). The organisers will also check our bags for the compulsory items and sufficient food. Again, lots of time to test kit and anticipate the start. The real action finally begins on Sunday morning. We'll be self-sufficient at this point, so breakfast is up to us. We can leave a bag of unwanted kit to be transported back to the hotel, then it's just us and our race packs, jostling for position behind the start line. As for what lies beyond - we'll have to wait and see...

Fast tracking

[posted by Neil]

Several of you have asked how you can follow our progress during the race. Firstly, we hope to be able to update this blog from the desert - at each overnight camp, there will be a communications tent from where (in theory) we are each allowed to send one email per day, though it's possible the queues will be prohibitive.

Another way to track our progress is via the organisers' website: http://www.darbaroud.com/en/. This should have provisional stage results each day from Sunday and might even have some live GPS timing this year. There will also be information on the British team's website: http://www.marathondessables.co.uk/.

And of course there's our sponsorship page at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/SaharanPrints. Once again, thank you so much to everyone that has donated. We're already well on the way to our target of £10,000, but it would be fantastic to raise much more than that.

We fly from Gatwick at lunchtime today (Thursday) and will be transferred to the desert by truck tomorrow morning. We'll then have Friday night and all of Saturday in the first desert camp or 'bivouac' to get used to the terrain and the camping arrangements, to try out any last-minute kit acquisitions and to experience the heat of the day and the cold of the night before starting the race on Sunday morning. This gives us one last opportunity to make final kit decisions, since we can hand back a 'spares' bag on Saturday afternoon to be taken into storage for us. After that, we'll be on our own to survive for a week with whatever's in our packs and (other than water) nothing else.

At 3am last night we were all still packing and JPD was baking his breakfast flapjacks for the race... fortunately, apart from my needing a haircut, I think we're almost there now.

Training

[Posted by Chris]

Many people have asked me how one trains for an event like this.  I suspect there is no definitive answer. However, I will start by saying that most healthy and active people could actually enter and complete the MdS on zero training if they walked it.
A lot of people will scoff at this but they've probably not discovered what one is capable of when pushed.
The human body is uniquely evolved to travel huge distances on two legs using minimal calories, and in hot weather too.  All our ancestors did so regularly just a few hundred generations ago and there has not been enough time for this to have evolved (or unevolved) away.
However, I'm hoping to go a little faster than walking for much of it and this has necessitated quite a training commitment.

I've been doing the odd run regularly for a while so I wasn't completely unfit when I entered this 18 months ago. I began by doing about 50km per week from Sept '11 to March '12 culminating in the Cambridge half marathon where I got a PB but missed my 90 min target by 10 seconds. That was particularly painful as it was apparent before halfway that 90min was right on the edge of my capacity which meant red lining it for most of the 13 miles! All good mental training...

Unfortunately my role at work as Timetabler for an ever-expanding school with a lot of very conflicting and unique pupil/subject/teacher/room constraints means that I spend stupid hours per week at my computer from mid April to mid July. I'm not completely averse to midnight training but running did kind of take a backseat and in some weeks dropped down to just 10-20km. Now unfortunately, I have a below-average natural athletic ability* so fitness tends to vanish very quickly for me, and being sleep-deprived doesn't help. When I began training properly again in August I was back to being rather slow, struggling to even manage a handful of 5 min kms. This was the most depressing time of the entire training, made worse by discovering that some of my more naturally talented friends  could easily keep up with me having done no training at all.

However, who couldn't be inspired by The Olympics and so I began to build up the miles again with a 100km / week target. I haven't always hit that target but since September I have averaged nearly 90km and have done about 3700km since the start of last year.
Pleasingly, the speed and fitness started to return and I was soon back running 5 min kms for long distances.  I try to mix up the sessions a bit based around other things in my life (I'd love to boast about what these all are but in reality it's mainly work...)  However, a week usually consists of one long run (25km+), one extended intervals session (my favourite is alternating 4 min light and 6 min hard for an hour) and about 4 aerobic sessions of 40 - 80 min at sustainable speeds. I sometimes fit in one more hard session, either short intervals or a hard 30 min tempo run. I also ensure I take 1 day free of running each week.

As a proper geek I obsessively record all the details of every session helped by a very swish GPS and heart rate monitoring watch and an unnecessarily complicated spreadsheet.

What I have found is that this volume of training has not got me much faster (the extra 50km a week bought me a whole minute in this year's Cambridge half marathon, but I did finally break 90 min). However, I have noticed an enormous improvement in my recovery time, both short and long term.  I can run a hard interval session in the morning and be virtually unaffected in the evening. I also find that the day after the long runs is no longer miserable and it is this aspect that is the key thing for this.

My New Zealand holiday (where all 4 of us were there) gave the chance for some practice long days, although I am still unsure whether our (successful) attempt to kayak 96km in a day will be of much benefit.

For the past month I have also been running with 10kg on my back, as I will be next week. I have found this slows me down by slightly less than you might expect (it is 14% of my mass) on the flat but considerably more on any hills.

The final training is the heat acclimatisation. The wonderful UK weather has not exactly helped but I have spent the last fortnight running in many fleeces and even rigged up a couple of fan heaters in front of the treadmill for some sessions.  I decided to make one of these into a proper scientific investigation and so on one particularly grim Saturday I completed 32 km like this, weighing myself and taking my temperature every 15 min. This actually went surprisingly well and my temperature only rose by 1C (and never actually went above 37 but I think oral measurements are always a bit low). However I did discover that I sweat 1.6kg per hour which might explain why I'm never too hot but will mean  I'll have to drink lots!

*People who don't understand the effects training have often scoff at this, but 3 years ago I was found to have a minor tricuspid insufficiency. This sounds alarming but essentially means that the valves in my heart aren't perfect and thus blood is pumped around inefficiently**. It is entirely benign but suffice to say no amount of training would get me to the front of this race! However, as this race is probably 75% mental and I'm not trying to win it anyway, there is no cause for concern!

**If you haven't already then please sponsor us. My nominated charity is the British Heart Foundation and it is from their work that machines exist that can measure these things and also spot all the other more serious issues that would otherwise go undiagnosed.

Pack man

[posted by Neil]

In the last post, Simon asked the question "Am I ready?". This is an easy one for me to answer. No, I'm not. I'm probably closer than JPD, though, who in characteristic style is currently driving to Doncaster to pick up an item of kit!

However, I have had some positive news. A cancellation meant that the "nice lady doctor" (her words, not mine) was able to arrange for my foot to be scanned at short notice yesterday. The results were mixed: plenty of "wear and tear" (no surprise there) on the big toe joint (sesamoid bones & tendons) and irritation to the second metatarsal (probably because of compensation for the original injury), but no actual stress fracture although the consultant thought it was "heading towards that". But he also said that nothing actually seemed about to break, and while 150 miles' running in 7 days might change that, I've decided to go ahead. If I break, at least I've had lots of previous practice on crutches.

So, back to not being ready. I get quite a lot of stick for the "pack, unpack, repack" loop which seems to be on continuous play whenever I'm away from home. The mockers have a point, but it's not actually the repacking I'm bad at: it's the decision-making. I'm really, really hopeless at this, which where the Marathon des Sables is concerned is a Bad Thing.

I find it hard enough for the two-day mountain marathons run in this country, for which the compulsory kit list is fairly prescriptive and anything else would probably count as a luxury item. For the MdS, where you have almost carte blanche to take or leave whatever you like, it's a nightmare. Do I need a warm top for the evenings? What about leggings? Or a sleeping mat? Should I bother with a stove or just go for cold food? Which rucksack? Which shoes?

The last two of these questions are two of the most important questions and also among the most difficult. For footwear, the key decision is whether to go with road shoes, as Chris has (see below), or off-road / trail shoes. Road shoes give better cushioning and comfort but tend to be heavier, whereas the lighter trail-type shoes are more suited to rocky or uneven terrain but less kind on the joints. After much agonising I've decided to run in La Sportiva 'Crosslites', which are slightly more cushioned than your average trail shoe, fairly neutral (compared with, say, Inov8 shoes which don't suit my foot shape at all) and are tried and tested on the fells. Most relevantly, I've run far further in a day in these than I ever have in road shoes, with no blisters or serious joint issues - although I haven't previously been on the verge of a stress fracture.

The choice of rucksack was even more difficult - as in, it hasn't been made yet. The rucksack I've run with for years is the OMM 25 litre pack, but one of its few drawbacks is the lack of an suitable external water-holding system - the net pockets are too flimsy. There's an internal compartment for a Camelbak or similar, but when the rucksack is very full (as it certainly will be for the first couple of days) it's very awkward to put the bladder back in after refilling.

For this reason I've been experimenting with a Raidlight rucksack - only 20 litres, but designed specifically for the MdS so it must be big enough - which has the key advantage of having two water-bottle holders on the front straps. This means that in the MdS, where you are given a 1.5 litre water bottle at each checkpoint, it's a much quicker process to decant and move off. It's also reasonably comfortable, but the waist strap is too elastic - I like it really tight - and the pockets are quite hard to access on the run. I'm also a little concerned about its durability, compared to the indestructable OMM 25 model, but nonetheless it's probably the current favourite.

As far as other choices go, I've decided that a full-length inflatable sleeping mat at 240g is worth it for me - it will be cold at night and I can't afford not to sleep properly - as are a stove and fuel for hot food, but that, contrary to a lot of advice I've been given, I can manage with just one pair of socks. Other than my running shirt and shorts I'll take one extra top and possibly a pair of leggings, plus a buff and a sunhat, and hope that my goose down sleeping bag will keep me warm overnight.

Of course, that still leaves one of the main questions: what to eat? For main meals, commercial freeze-dried products are the only real option since the organisers insist on you proving how many calories you have per day (a minimum of 2000 is stipulated) and they're all much the same in terms of cost and calories-to-weight ratio (and probably taste too). For snacks during the day, it's a very individual thing. Apparently the Moroccans that win this race live mostly on dates. I'll have a selection of snacks such as flapjacks, yoghurt-coated fruit, nuts, cheese crackers, crisps and Peperami (I don't really like Peperami but it ticks a lot of boxes where this race is concerned). With porridge or similar for breakfast and a few extra calories from things like coffee and milkshake powder sachets and electrolyte tablets, I should have around 3000 calories per day at a total weight for six days of 4.5kg. Is this enough, too much or just right? I honestly have no idea, but I'm certain that I'll eat everything I take.

Finally, this might be my last post before the race, so I'd just like to say a humungous, ginormous "thank you" to everyone who has donated to our fund-raising page and who does so while we're away. We're already halfway to five figures which I find quite unbelievable - with all your amazing support behind us it will take more than a poxy stress fracture to make me give up.

With 24 hours to go to check-in at Gatwick, and despite the myriad dilemmas still to be resolved, I almost feel like I'm getting there. Now, where did I put my passport?

Neil

Am I ready?

[Posted by Simon]

Ok so I am now back in UK (flew back on Saturday), so thought I would give
you an insight into my Easter Sunday and conversations with people before I
left.

One of the main questions people have been asking me the last few days is
'Are you ready?' Unwavering my answers has been 'No'. I don't feel ready
but then I am not sure I would feel ready if this was a 2014 (or 2015!) I
think as a group there is a lot we have not done before. Even if we were
comfortable with the 80km distance (and that is a big even for me!) none of
us have done anything in the desert (heat / sand) or multi-day with our
equipment/food on our backs. There are so many things to consider (one of
us will write a blog on equipment and another on food at some point in the
coming week). Still as unready as I feel, (I think) I am prepared.

So yesterday we travelled down to Devon (from Gatwick) - where we will
celebrate my grandmother's birthday with the family. After getting here and
watching the race (no comment) I went for my last long(ish) run. 25km down
the river (and back again). First run outside since about October so my
ankles were a bit sore from uneven ground (but then what can you do when
you are in Moscow with snow everywhere). Then out for dinner (think the
waiter was surprised at the number of water jug refills needed).

There is also some gossip about the course. This is usually announced the
day before the race begins but gossip has it that one of the senior MdS
people talked about it / confirmed it. So what the gossip says:

• 1st leg – 37.2k Undulating terrain, interspersed with small ergs

   representing 5km of small dunes (dunettes).

• 2nd leg – 30.7km 3 djebels with 10 to 25% gradients – exceptional

   panoramic views.

• 3rd leg – 38km 2 djebel sections, 2 dried-up lakes and lots of sand.

• 4th leg – 75.7km a total of 13km of dunes and around 30km of sandy

   terrain.

• Day off / finishing 4th leg!

• 5th leg – 42.2km the final leg is a marathon with ergs, regs, a dried-up lake and wadi beds...
• Total distance 223.8km

For the first time it is a day shorter and with a charity (7km?) on the day after the final official day. Still it makes the other days harder as we start with a longer stage than last year (29km last year). Still if the long day is ONLY 75.7km it is good - as it averages 80km I think.