A Date With Destiny..

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..

My BBC Radio Jersey Interview

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!

Getting The Hay In The Barn...

The last month has been a case of getting the miles done. 

I think so far this year I have run 580 miles which is well beyond my corresponding mileage of this time last year. It has been tough, both mentally dealing with the cold and the routine of training in some capacity every day of the week and also physically. The demands that such a regime places on the body and mind are not really something that is immediately obvious (at least in my case) however I have found that over the last 2 months I have had little time for little else than anything MDS related. The effects of these demands definitely came to a head for me the last weekend, I did my 2 back to back long days of 20 miles and 14 miles and by the end had had enough of running full stop! I think mentally I was tired of running in the cold and into headwinds, physically the niggles I had in my body seemed numerous and I was generally quite fed up. I also think that the lifestyle changes that I have made gradually over the last 6 months or so to the point that I no longer go out on a Sat night, am mindful of the next training session, no longer see much of my very understanding and awesome friends and the general tiredness of hard training weeks have meant that I just wanted time out from it all. Luckily it snowed here in Jersey on Monday just gone which mean that running was not really on the agenda, which further meant that I had 3 guilt free days without running. I attended a Bikram Yoga class towards the middle of the week and then decided to run again on the Thursday with full pack weight and for the first time in a few weeks felt really up for the run having taken time out.. Which kind of proves the whole “rest is best” theory and has given me a new lease of life mentally leading into the last big mileage weekend of my MDS regime. I now feel back on track after a little hiccup and ready for the next week or so of tough training before the taper..

I went to visit my GP for the obligatory ECG which we need to present upon the start of the race, along with a signed medical form to say you are fit to race. I had a ver low resting heart rate, perfect blood pressure, but the ECG did throw up some irregularities which meant I have been referred to a Cardiologist this coming week for a cursory check of my readings. I have read a little about this and it seems alot of the UK competitors are getting the same irregularities as it is a by product of endurance sports such as ultra running, so I hope to get the all clear in the next few days!! 

So this weekend see a few of us running 27 miles on Saturday and then I will be doing another long one with a pack on Sunday.. After this I will then be switching my focus to more frequent runs with weight as well as interspersing these session with lots of Bikram yoga to hopefully acclimate to the heat.

With just under 3 weeks to go the massive list of equipment I have had to gather for this race has all but come together. I took the snow nights as an opportunity to sit down and weigh the stuff I will be taking and to put a handle on what is essential and what is a luxury to take with me. This was pretty eye opening and led to a few tough decisions, so it looks like a lot of compromises on photographic/video equipment, MP3 players, spare T shirts, sleeping pads and other items I had initially factored into taking.. The jury is still out on these choices, but I am currently erring on the ruthless side with minimalism winning the day. I imagine when faced with the reality of lasting in the desert for a week with only one t-shirt, one spare pair of pants and other delightful dilemmas some of these decisions might be revisited!

I was lucky enough to be featured in this months Gallery Magazine which is a local lifestyle magazine here in Jersey. I had a photography shoot with local photographer Danny Evans and I was really pleased with the results. It was slightly surreal and lots of attempts were taken to get the pic of me running towards the camera but Danny was great, really made me feel at ease in such an alien environment for me, and the article has really raised the profile of the fundraising I am doing for local charity Jersey Hospice Care.

I had set the initial target of £5000 for Hospice which I hit back in December. I then re-evaluated this and re set the target to £8000. I am currently on just over £7000 with a couple of event to go before I head off. Next week end should you be venturing past Marks and Spencers in St Helier you will encounter me running on a treadmill with my colleague Nicola Gott who is doing the London Marathon and also raising money for Jersey Hospice Care. We plan to run for 8 hours between us whilst also trying to collect funds in buckets, so please be sure to pop by and say hi!

As mentioned I am raising funds for Jersey Hospice Care and am running the Marathon des Sables in memory of Natalie Moss a friend of mine who sadly passed away just over a year ago and was in the care of Jersey Hospice during the last 6 weeks of her illness. They are amazing its as simple as that. If you can see your way to donating please hop over to www.justgiving.com/Paulsdesertrun

Many thanks – More to follow soon!

The Business End Of The Regime..

Well the weeks are ticking down and ticking down, only 5 weeks til we fly to Morocco on the adventure of a lifetime. After almost 2 years of preparation I cant believe it is here to be honest.

The last month or so has been intense. Life has centred mainly around training with my week involving some variation on the theme of running, yoga or strength work interspersed with organising all the finer details to arrive at the start line prepared. My training plan has looked something like this:

Mon - Bikram Yoga
Tues - Run with weight (avg 10 miles with 5-6KG pack)
Wed - Run at Lunch Time (8 miles) Run at Night Time (8 miles)
Thur - Running Club Hill Session (avg 8 miles
Fri - Strength/ Core Session
Sat - Long Run - (avg 20 miles)
Sun - Long Run (avg 14 miles)

This has changed slightly depending on what has been going on, 2 weeks or so ago a few of us did a 45 mile training run around the island of Jersey which was a great day out and fell just on one of the sunniest days so far this winter, which was a great morale booster, and was a great confidence booster for running the long day on the MDS which ranges between 50 and 60 miles.

One of the biggest factors I have found difficult with training has been getting motivated to get out there in the cold. I think I am not alone in this as it seems to be a recurring conversation with other runners at the moment, I am almost looking forward to the 40 deg heat of the Sahara at this point, although I am sure a day under the searing sun will have me begging for snowy cliff paths and boggy trails with windy beach runs that make me want to cry!! I think it is natural to lose motivation as the pure mileage has been high over the last few weeks, with every session being key whether the goal be to acclimatise to the heat (Bikram) build endurance, run with weight or hill work. This weekend sees me hitting my peak in terms of training with a 3 day odyssey planned: 26 miles on Sat, 26 miles on Sun and 26 miles on Monday afternoon. I think once this is done whilst I will still be logging miles I will gradually take the intensity and mileage down as the goal is now to get to the start line healthy and injury free. 

Equipment wise the last few weeks have been active: I received my shoes back from the cobbler with the velcro attached yesterday which means I am able to attach the sand gaiters to them and so form a seal which will prevent sand from getting in to them and prevent chafing and blisters. I also took delivery of my evening meals yesterday: the finest that Expedition Foods has to offer in dehydrated foods... Once you add water and let them stand they do look actually begin to look like food and taste ok (based on the Chicken Tikka one I tried a few weeks ago) if a little bland, but a bit of salt and pepper will solve that I am sure.. My rucksack weight is currently looking like just under 7KG on paper although a real life pack hasnt happened yet and I am sure other items will sneak in and bump the weight up. I have tried to be ruthless using lightweight items where I can, only taking essentials and it looks like I will be wearing the same clothes for the whole week! I just hope my tent mates have decided to do the same otherwise I might be quarantined!

I have decided on most of my clothing with the following T Shirt which is Under Armour Heat Gear and I had printed up to thank the local companies that have supported me in my buildup in some way or another: www.mymemory.co.uk, Sportsbug Jersey, BNP Paribas Jersey, Fit 2 Function Jersey, Tonic Body & Skin Therapy, Bean Around the World Coffee Shop and Leanne Rive Personal Training.

Fundraising has seen me break the £6000 barrier, which is awesome. I have a goal of reaching £8000 raised for Jersey Hospice Care before I leave in 5 weeks with some events planned to hopefully get me there. I have been canvassing most people I know for donations so am sure people will be glad to see the back of me by the time I get on that plane!! :-) If you are in any doubt as to how to donate please visit: www.justgiving.com/Paulsdesertrun all donations no matter how small are welcome, and to just know that people are supporting me gives me amazing motivation during those long, hard, cold training runs!

This was quite an interesting picture that I came across on the net which gives you an idea of some of the things we have to carry as well as some of the decisions us MDS runners have been faced with over the last few weeks: 

We were given our race numbers a few weeks ago, I am number 624.. Once we are out there the MDS website http://www.darbaroud.com/en/ provides real time updates of how we are doing, photos of the days racing and vitally you are able to send messages to the competitors through the website. It goes without saying how important that will be for morale so if you have a few spare minutes between the 5th and 15th April please drop me a line..

More to follow over the next few weeks.. 

The End Of A Love Affair....

So over the weekend a very important relationship for me ended..

We had been together for nigh on 2 years now, shared some good times, bad times, awful times and amazing times. We had travelled around the country together taking in the various sights that good ole Blighty has to offer and spent alot of one on one time just soaking up the view and connecting with nature..

We met across a crowded Ebay auction about 2 years ago, when I saw them I knew they were the right trail shoes for me.. Inov-8 Roclite 295's oh how you have served me well.. In the last 2 years I have run nearly 600 miles in those bad boys; from my first trail race, to my first trail marathon, my first ultra marathon and my first multi day ultra marathon. I have to say they never let me down, I have always felt confident running in whatever conditions Mother Nature has thrown at me, and I think I have experienced her greatest hits! From the slippery clay of the Jurassic Coast, to the slippery mud of the Jersey North Coast, to the Slippery Clayey mud of the North Downs (see the theme here???) and so on and so forth..


Anyway I would like to bid them a fond farewell, I hope you will join me in raising a glass to my faithful, battered, muddy Inov-8's.. I will be consigning them to the bin this evening.. By the way I have replaced them with a much younger, sexier model who is sure to give me many ups and downs over the coming years!! :-)

There is a shoe in there honestly!

The weekend just gone I participated in the XNRG Pilgrims Challenge 2 Day Ultra on the North Downs Way in Surrey. My mate Pete and I flew over on Friday night and were lucky enough to spend a night in a travel lodge in Aldershot. Saturday morning I awoke after a great nights sleep and we set off to the start line, not really knowing what to expect, but having the vague idea that the course would be less extreme than the Dorset Ultra weighing in at about 3000ft of elevation as opposed to nearly double that in Dorset.

Remember these Signs?

I was set to start at 10am, but it was so cold I asked if I could switch to the 9am start to get going.. We started and the day was beautiful, cold, sunny and perfect for a 33 mile run.. Apart from the mud! Right from the off I paired up with a couple of guys who ran way beyond my ability levels, and one of who had a GPS map of the route on his IPhone and seemed to know the way, there were alot of points along the initial part of the route where the signage was not obvious so I thought it prudent to stick with them.  We blasted off at a crazy pace running all the hills and completely turning my carefully thought out race strategy (drawn on the back of a fag packet!!) out the window.. By 15 miles I had said goodbye to my fast friends, taken a few wrong turns and set about the painful task of living with the damage I had inflicted by committing the cardinal sin - Going out too fast! The rest of the race passed uneventfully, if a little painfully with beautiful scenery and some very muddy pathways along the way. The XNRG crew at the check points were all very friendly and supportive and were a welcome sight after a couple of hours on my own listening to my cheeky girls play mix on my IPod.. The checkpoint food was also spot on, with a selection of fine cheeses, pretzels, sausage rolls and other culinary delights. I finished the day in 5 hours 20 mins with no real wrong turns and a lesson learnt about the need to control pace at the start of a 2 day event. I had a massage right at the end of the race which set me up for the next day and kept the aches and pains at bay. The field was a very strong one, with the winner for day one coming in at just over 4 hours and breaking the course record.

That night was spent listening to ultra endurance athlete Andy Mouncey doing a presentation on Ultra marathon running and his career which was very entertaining, and was good to see him manning checkpoint 2 on Sunday morning giving words of encouragement to all people moving through. The big highlight of the Sat evening for me (apart from the delicious Pasta Bolognese) was when the last 3 guys in from the race arrived in 12 hours later after starting at about 8am and the whole room erupted in a standing ovation for them.. This sent shivers down my spine and summed up one of the things I love most about ultra running.. One of the 3 had a bottle of Stella in her water bottle carrier, I think she had earnt that!

The Presidential Suite For Me!!

Onto day 2 and after a restless nights sleep in a school gymnasium with 200 other smelly endurance athletes the lights came on at 6am and up we got. 8am start for the race today, and the course was the reverse of the previous day taking 33 miles of the beautiful North Downs back to Farnham which psychologically was home for the day.. Pete and I had a flight to catch at 7pm which added a nice little bit of motivation  to make it snappy so off we went. The legs were stiff to start and I decided on keeping a steady pace initially so that I could ease into the day and not blow up too early on. This plan went out the window when I took a wrong turn about 10 miles in, and added an extra mile or so plus an extra hill to my race. I trudged back up that hill a broken man after galloping down it like a leaping gazelle.. I joined the race and the North Downs Way once more and set about trying to reclaim some of the time I had lost. I did hit a few bad patches periodically and thought that it was going to be a long day indeed, but after bumping into a few people and chatting a bit along the way I found my spirits lifting and hitting a nice flat section where I got into a good rhythm and ticking of a good few miles which made everything look a lot better.

A bit further down the track I bumped into 3 runners around the 20 mile mark who were obviously preparing for the MDS and had done both days of the Pilgrims with the rucksacks they would be using in Morocco plus approximate weight. This was where I learnt my second valuable lesson of the weekend: Its good to run with other people! I stuck with the guys I met, Tom, Damian and Therese and really hit it off with them, we had a good couple of hours together and the banter was great and really kept my spirits up through the latter part of a very tough couple of days. I look forward to this type of camaraderie in the desert, particularly touching base again with all the people I met over the weekend who will be doing the MDS: Joey, Warwick, Sally, Gordon, Pete, Susie, Rory, Ian, Stuart, Kate and alot of other people who I chatted to along the way, at meal times, ran with and said hello to.

In summary the Pilgrims was a great event, well organised and great value for the entry fee. There were alot of MDS 2013 competitors there which was great to put face to names and to exchange information. I would not hesitate to recommend the event and will probably venture back there myself next year. Lots of lessons learnt for the MDS as well as a great confidence boost ahead of the big one.

More to follow soon!

I will be running in aid of Jersey Hospice care and in memory of my friend Natalie Moss - if you would like to donate please visit my just giving page here

10 Weeks To Go.......

First segment of “Hard as Nails” training completed!! It was a tough 3 weeks taking in around 210 miles on road and scenic Jersey coastal and cliff paths culminating in a 3 day back to back session averaging 20 miles per day for the 3 days. Happily I completed the 3 days well, and felt good after each day, and managed to run each day at a decent pace, so all on track and looking good at the moment.

I took the opportunity over the week after the tough training to take it easy and to let my body recover and repair, scaling down the mileage to a still respectable 48 miles for the week but maintaining a lower intensity and less frequency. I visited a local masseur Samantha Wade at Tonic Body and Skincare (Click here) who massaged my legs back to normal and I even had a lie in at the weekend just gone which was much appreciated. It wasn’t all self pampering though and I was out for a nice Sunday 15 mile run the weekend just gone with my friend Simon McKenzie where the sun came out and it almost felt like spring! (Apart from the woolly hats, gloves, puddles and wet feet!)

Good Game! Good Game! :-)

So everything feels like it has now settled down, little niggles that were starting to appear have been tended to and I am now tapering for the XNRG Pilgrims Challenge Ultra Race. This takes place on Sat 3rd and Sun 4th Feb and is 33 miles on each day over the North Downs in England. This is a very popular race amongst people training for the MDS and I expect to meet quite a few people from the UK who are travelling to Morocco in April over the weekend. I think I am looking forward to this as much as the race. The forecast for the race is sunny on the Saturday with rain on the Sunday which I will take as last year it snowed on the Sunday and apparently the going was pretty tough. This will be the last race I do before the MDS so will be nice to gauge where I am and to identify any tweaks to my training regime.

Next weekend also sees us moving into single figures with the amount of time left before I go to Morocco. 9 weeks! Basically right now everything is about the MDS: Training, equipment choice, mental preparation, massages, nutrition, fund raising, thinking about MDS, writing about MDS and talking about it :-) I can imagine people who know me & who don’t run might be a little MDS’ed out to be honest. I am not particularly nervous at this point, more excited, although there have been a few reports of people getting injuries who were due to take part in 2013 which is a little unsettling. It’s the delicate balance of training and putting stress on the body to improve vs. not putting too much on the body so that it cant cope.

I got a great quote off Canadian ultra runner Jason Loutitt when I contacted him a few weeks ago which kind of sums up the balancing act of rest vs. training and also testifies to his abilities as a runner: "The more you cross that 'too tough' barrier in training, the easier the race will be and the better the result guaranteed... But to do that and not get injured is everything so you have to really know your body. If you don't have good body awareness take subtle training like Pilates. If all good and you can kill yourself in training, stay on top of recovery in all aspects – nutrition, massage etc. Give ‘em sh1t out there!" I didn’t realise this at the time but he had about 10 hours or so previously come second in a 100 mile race called the H.U.R.T. 100 miler in Hawaii so was pretty awesome of him to come back with advice at all, let alone so quickly after a race! 

As I have previously covered in this blog one of the big factors of prep for the MDS is equipment, particularly the clothes you wear, the shoes you wear and the rucksack you carry. I have pretty much decided on the clothing and recently took order of some shiny new Salomon gear courtesy of Craig Meredith at Fit 2 Function here in Jersey (click here) who is a specialist local supplier of Salomon and Inov-8 trail running shoes, accessories, clothing and hydration packs amongst other things.

I have decided on my footwear (99% anyway..!!) and have opted for the Salomon Crossmax Guidance Trail shoe which is a road to trail shoe. It has great support; great grip and is very cushioned so on the surface appears to fit the requirements I have for MDS. I tried them over the weekend on the cliff paths in very boggy, sludgy wet conditions and the grip was second to none. I found them to be very comfortable and I really felt the medial support post in them and as someone who pronates i feel that the support will come in to play quite heavily in the latter stages of a stage or a race. I will test them further this weekend at the Pilgrims and then decide more fully after this. Once I have decided on the vital shoe choice, I need to get them off to a cobbler where I need Velcro sewn around the whole shoe in order to be able to attach the sand gaiters that will keep the sand out of my shoes/socks and protect my feet from blisters (hopefully!) 

Other equipment I have been testing includes the Power Traveller Explorer Solar Power Charger, which was kindly provided to me by the guys at www.mymemory.co.uk. An amazing bit of kit which is a battery that can be charged by a solar panel, which is handy as I hear there is a lot of sun in the Sahara! I am in the process of testing this to see how many charges I can get out of the battery, how quickly the solar panel charges the battery and general reliability of the item. 

Once the Pilgrims is done, it looks like another 3 weeks of intensive training is on the cards within which I hope to introduce some weight to replicate running with a more heavily laden rucksack, a bit of running on sand and also a bit of Bikram yoga to get used to heat and also maintain flexibility. On Feb 16th a few of us are going to run round the island of Jersey (48 miles) as there are a number of us taking part in long distance events over the coming months (Simon McKenzie – Thames Path 100 and South Downs 100, Phil Taylor – Endurancelife CTS Ultra Sussex, Leanne Rive – Connemara Road Ultra, Matt Cuthbert South Downs 100) So alot of races for Jersey runners coming up in the next few months with alot more on the horizon in 2013 for those of us hoping for UTMB qualification for next year. But that is another story.... Happy training! 

I will be running in aid of Jersey Hospice care and in memory of my friend Natalie Moss - if you would like to donate please visit my just giving page here

Training and Recovery....

Since the start of January I have embarked on my specific MDS training proper. My plan, which was set by Rory Coleman back in November sees a massive ramp up in mileage and intensity for me, so the last few weeks have been tough going. The first week was tough and I think after the xmas and new year indulgences my body didnt really know what had hit it the first few days!

My plan basically means that I am training every day of the week, running 5 times a week and weight training for the other 2 days, so at the moment it is go go go every day with no real rest. I am operating on a 3 tougher weeks then a slightly easier week to avoid burnout and injury. My workouts have looked a little like this for the past week:

Mon - Weights session (legs, core and upper body
Tues - Spartans speed session (track 9 miles on avg)
Weds - Half Marathon (8 miles at lunch and the rest in the evening
Thurs - Spartans Hill session (avg 9 miles)
Fri - Weights session (Core and upper body)
Sat - Long run one (17 miles - cliff paths)
Sun - Long run two (17 miles - road)

As you can imagine it has been pretty intense, but I have been loving the training and the challenge of pushing myself. The track nights have helped and I have also been doing some of the longer runs with friends such as Phil Taylor and Lee De St Croix so the craic has been good..

One of the biggest things I have been contending with is recovery. As I am training every day, I have been trying to ensure that as soon as one session ends, my recovery for the next one begins. This has meant stretching thoroughly, taking in food/recovery shake within 45 minutes of session end and foam rollering the hell out of every part of my body. This strategy has been working out well and so far I have been coping well with the higher intensity track sessions, and then recovering well enough for the long runs at the weekend. I think this for me is one of the biggest considerations for the MDS as the main challenge (apart from the heat!!!) is getting up and running after having run a large distance the previous day and doing this for six days. This weekend is a big one for me I will be running 19 miles on Sat, 19 mile on Sun and then 19 miles on Monday so should be a big test. I will be employing all that I have learnt about recovery and hoping I get through it well!

After the big miles this weekend I have a relatively easy week of training next week followed by the Southern Cross Country championships next Saturday in London. Its a 15km course and I along with 16 others will be representing Jersey Spartans in the race. Should be a good event, apparently its 800 people storming up a hill at the beginning so should be quite the atmosphere! Check this vid to get an idea:

The 2012 National Cross Country Champs - Parliament Hill

After this the following weekend (First weekend in February) I have signed up for the XNRG Extreme Energy Pilgrims Challenge - a 2 day ultra marathon on the North Downs in England. Day one is 33 miles, we sleep over night in a school hall, then 33 miles back to the start the following day! Alot of people taking part in the MDS will be taking part in this also, so I hope to make contact with a few over the two days. This should be another great test and upon successful completion I would hope it would indicate the training is heading in the right direction.

So in-between training, entering other races and working, I have been slowly picking my way through all the decisions that have to be made as far as the equipment I need to take, the food I need to eat, the clothes I need to wear and the shoes I need to wear in the desert. I never contemplated how complex this part of the planning would be, with a lot of advice being bandied around - a lot of it conflicting! I am 85% of the way there with a lot of the decisions although I imagine I may U-turn on a few of these before April.. I can imagine I will be selling a lot of surplus equipment on Ebay so watch this space for a bargain :-)

I will be running in aid of Jersey Hospice care and in memory of my friend Natalie Moss - if you would like to donate please visit my just giving page here

Snow forecast this weekend here in sunny Jersey which should prove to be interesting for the weekends running!

More to follow as and when it happens!