The preparation and the anticipation is about to come to fruition.. This
is the last 9 days or so before I finally step on to the start line for the
Marathon des Sable – the focus of my life it seems for the last 2 years and the
end result to which I have been training for, talking about, and obsessing
about!
I cant actually believe that in just over a week I will be lining up on
the start line in the Moroccan Sahara contemplating the 150 miles ahead of me,
AC/DC‘s “Highway to Hell” blaring out over loudspeakers, helicopters circling
above and the sand underfoot. I feel prepared mainly; I know I have trained
well for this, perhaps more than for any other race or indeed anything I have ever
done! Over the last few weeks a lot more people locally are aware that I am
doing the race, I have been in local magazines and on local radio which has had
a positive knock on to the fundraising I have been doing for Jersey Hospice
Care. I guess I am concerned now about things that I have no direct control
over: What if the heat is too much? What if I get injured? What if I am not
tough enough to get through the inevitable hard times? What if I can’t manage
to carry my pack on the long day? What if I get too many blisters and have to
quit? I think these are quite a lot of my main concerns as I don’t want to go
out there and not succeed. I hope the training and racing I have done over the
last 2 years has given me the strength and reserves of courage to carry me
through when it gets hard going. I know for sure that a lot of my fellow MDS
competitors will have very similar thoughts as we have all invested alot of
time, energy and money at great personal expense; deferring nights out, time
with friends, time with family and using up valuable holiday through the year
to do crazy races just to get used to the type of hardship we will encounter in
the desert. I have faced a number of challenges over the last couple of years
particularly and have always been nervous about whether I will pass the test,
and each time I have come through; my first marathon, my first ultra marathon,
my first multi day ultra marathon and a lot more challenges on the way, so I
would hope that by now I could draw that confidence and be assured of success..
But the doubt is still there J
I am sure though
that once on the start line and in the groove the game of ticking off the miles
and bargaining with ones psyche will start and all will fall into place mile by
mile..
The Achilles heel that I possess (as some of my fellow running friends
will attest to) is that I often in races go out far too fast and peak far too
soon and go down in a blaze of glory, whilst the people I passed at the
beginning tread my limp body into the trail and use me as a point of reference
for the “slow and steady wins the day” saying.. I also tend to set time or
position goals in races and these often become a stick to beat myself with, as
I heard it so eloquently described in an article the other day. My big
challenge in the MDS is to ensure that I go out consistently and try to
maintain a good average pace without redlining it, particularly in the first
few days. I hope this is something that I can achieve as I believe this is the
key to a good performance over a multi day race.
In the last week or so I have been taking it a little easier, favouring
the longer taper for this race, which should see me get to Morocco rested,
injury and niggle free, and more importantly psychologically rested to give the
race my best. I think that the training over the last few months has been
necessary and had definitely made me feel well prepared for the MDS, but as
alluded to in my previous post I have found going out in the cold and wind
progressively harder both mentally and physically the closer I have got to the
race. I accept this as a natural side effect of training to high levels to
achieve the goals I set myself and also trust in the fact that “rest is best”
and within the next 9 days my body should spring back to life!
After the fundraiser on Saturday where Nicola Gott and I ran 21 miles on
a treadmill each and raised £1,248 between us for Jersey Hospice I haven’t
actually run due to other things getting in the way.. My body is in shock a
little I think at the moment and doesn’t quite know what to do with this sudden
period of inactivity. I am eating a similar amount to when I was in peak
training and feeling sluggish and a little like a fish out of water currently..
I plan to do a few runs over the weekend as well as 4 or 5 days of intensive
Bikram Yoga to try and get all the heat acclimatisation I can in before the off
on Weds..
One of the things now I am most concerned about is the bugs that seem to
be flying around everyone I know.. As anyone who has ever done an endurance
event of any length will attest, as soon as you start to taper after all the
training you do inevitably some kind of bug strikes, be it a cold, cough or
flu.. I have been stocking up on veggies, fruit, and vitamins and being mindful
of people with colds and bugs around me, which so far has been doing the trick.
I sat down last night and started to pack the things into my rucksack
that I will be taking with me. I have been compiling a spreadsheet of all the
items I intend to take with weights so that I have a rough estimate of how
heavy the pack will be that I will run with. Bearing in mind that I have to
carry my food and anything else I need for the week, I have had to be quite
ruthless. I am trying to strike the balance between comfort and lightweight
which has meant that the a few decisions have to be made and I think as is
natural for us humans we tend to err on the side of caution, particularly as
far as how much food to take to a situation we have no real reference points to
and situations like that.. I am planning to take flapjack bars for breakfast
and the dehydrated astronaut foods for dinner, with various in race nutrition
planned also. This works out at around the 2,300 calorie per day mark which is
possibly a little on the low side, but I have been reliably informed that you
don’t get hungry in the desert and so i am going to trust in this advice and
try and travel as light as possible to promote a quicker running pace. I spent
a couple of hours the other night unpacking the meals out of their foil bagging
and decanting them into freezer bags, thereby saving a whopping 70grams of
weight once I was done! It has really got down to the point where 20 grams here
and there makes a collective difference and can mean the difference between me
galloping through the desert like a Gazelle or lurching through the desert like
a drunken fool..
This long weekend will see me finishing up packing the rucksack,
minimising the weight in any conceivable way that I can. Rock n roll eh? Easter
break with a pair of weighing scales and dehydrated foods!!
Fundraising has gone through the roof with the new total equalling £9364 so I have reset my target to £12,000.00 for Jersey Hospice Care. To donate please visit here.
Happy Easter All!
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