Blogs
December 2013
Quite when did this become a reality?
Apologies for not bringing the blog up to date for sometime. Guess you could call the last few months as a "transitional" stage of my progress towards the MdS. Transitional in that one minute you are enjoying the day to day training which an event such as this entails, not really stretching yourself beyond adding the odd extra training session, extra mile or sprint at the end of the long run (if doing one at all!) and serving oneself a slightly smaller portion of chips to the plate, call it... medium fries rather than large......to the next minute when the nights have drawn in and the Marathon Des Sables is only 5 months away, the whole situation has changed. Changing far too quickly.
This transiton has brought a sobering reality to the whole process of firstly contemplating, then applying, getting accepted, plannng the training, starting to train, telling people, doing this blog, fund raising and so the cycle continues until we depart for the desert on Friday 4th April. No longer is the training an option...no longer do I have the ability to decide whether or not to plan the next few training runs or cross training sessions. Now this has become reality... I realise that I am no longer the decision maker in my "hobby", no I'm suddenly being bossed around by this powerful force which is breathing down on me, heavier and heavier. The only solution, it says, the only antidote it perscribes....is getting that bloody medal and the hug/kiss from the frenchman! (For clarity, if concerned, the frenchman is Patrick Bauer, a french concert promoter who founded the MdS in welcomes all 1000+ competitors across the finishline with a very continental welcome!).
Don't get me wrong, this is no competitor suddenly waving the white flag at the evidently high commitment required to complete the MdS, far from it, but it does probably demonstrate the power of an event such as this and the expectation one places on oneself when you target something which you know....you might just not be able to do. I guess that's why so many people enter challenging events such as the Mds these days. Within minutes more and more extreme challenging and often dangerous events are sold out, only to be superceed and again oversubscribed by the "next big thing". Welcome to the age of extremes!
October 2013
The niggling pains of distance running!
After the hot weather we enjoyed throughout July ,and a few cooler days towards the end of the month (which demonstrated how much more air there appears to be when the temperature drops by even a few degrees), it was back to hotter conditions with 2 wonderful weeks holidaying with the family at Lake Garda in Italy. Coincidentally our 2 weeks landed right in the middle of a period of exceptionally hot weather and for the majority of the time temperatures hung around 40’ by day and rarely dropped below 25’ by night. Great for acclimatisation runs, but not ideal for a comfortable night’s sleep.
Since starting on the specific training regime for the MdS back in May I’ve been following a progressively increasing mileage plan with increases of 2 miles per week. Hitting the required weekly target has never really been much of an issue as I started the chart at 10 miles when I was comfortably covering 30 miles, however the 2 weeks in Italy dropped my actual just under the required mileage (38, 36) for the first time since May (managed 26 & 28) and now as I write in late August the mileage target seems to be quickly increasing such that within 6 weeks I’ll be at 70 miles per week. Amazing how this target has become so ingrained to my routine that I find myself forward planning the next few runs specifically to reach that magic figure! Once I reach the 70 miles per week I don’t intend to go much beyond that for the fear of injury and/or over training. Already I am starting to feel the effects of over 650 miles in the last 14 weeks with a new pain or strain seemingly appearing each and every morning as I step out of the (increasingly difficult to leave) bed!
After straining my left ankle during my last Yorkshire 3 Peaks challenge in July I appear to have been running trying to compensate to protect that ankle and am now having problems with my Piriformis muscle which runs from the pelvis to the hip, a particularly problematic area as this puts pressure on the Sciatic nerve and causes all sorts of uncomfortable aches and pains from hip to toe. After a few weeks saying “oh…It’ll go away” and trying to ignore the ever increasing pain I finally gave in and visited the ‘Physio’ for some deep muscle massage, a visit which has been booked again each week for the next month. I guess as we are now 7 months away from the race I am becoming more aware of the dangers of ignoring what my body is telling me whilst I could recover from an injury now, the outlook could be much more grim if I got injured later in the year.
Better news came via an email this week from the organisers giving amongst other things details of the flights to and from Morocco next April. As a change from previous years we will be flying deeper into the desert to Errachida and transferring straight to the first bivoac (camp) rather than enjoying one last night of luxury In a 5 star hotel. At least the coach transfer will be less than the 8 hours which it usually is!
The provisional flights are as follows;
Outbound – London Gatwick to Errachidia
04 Apr 14 - Friday MONARCH 9160 LGW-ERH 1130-1525
Inbound – Ouazarzate to London Gatwick
14 Apr 14 - Monday MONARCH 9157 OZZ-LGW 0900-123
Now I’ve never heard of Errachidia, so out of curiosity, I entered this airport into Google Earth. Wish I’d not bothered – the airport looks more like a slightly flattened strip of sand next to a mountain in the middle of nowhere. In fact on reading more into this I discover that I suspicions were confounded as in fact it IS a slightly flattened strip of sand next to a mountain in the middle of nowhere!
20th August 2013
Heat. . . . . in the desert? . . . . nah. . . . .thats not a problem for me. . . . . i love the sun. . . . . .
As I write this update we are enjoying one of the best spells of consistent sunny hot weather for what seems an age, temperatures in the mid 80's and little or no wind.......ideal training conditions for the Mds???
When reasearching about the type of training I need to do to fully prepare myself for the conditions which we will experience in Morocco, one words keeps popping up....."SPECIFICITY", which the dictionary describes as
;
Definition: Specificity is the principle of training that states that sports training should be relevant and appropriate to the sport for which the individual is training in order to produce a training effect.
The Specificity Principle simply states that training must go from highly general training to highly specific training. The principle of Specificity also implies that to become better at a particular exercise or skill, you must perform that exercise or skill. To be a good cyclist, you must cycle.
Throughout the last couple of months, chiefly from the start of June when my "specific" training for the Mds started in any real anger, I've given little or no consideration to the heat I will be experiencing in the race. I have well laid plans covering weekly mileages, (currently around 60 miles per week with a long run of around 20 miles), cross training schedules, tempo runs and nutritian plans, but nowhere have I really considered how my body will react to the heat of the desert. After training in the heat of the last week, the "specificity" of the heat we will experience is something I will need to train to.....problem is I've no idea how throughout the winter I will be able to experience the temperatures and direct sun for days on end that we've had the last few weeks???? Indeed I read an article recently which sugegsted that heat training is usefull for only 2-3 weeks, after which time the body "forgets"the heat training unless it is maintained....useless in Yorkshire in JAN/FEB/MAR!!, so at the moment this ones got me stumped as I've experienced over the last week how the heat has a direct effect on my performance.
One evening this week I was forced to walk for a couple of intervals during a 15miles run which I've been happily doing for the last 3 months without much effort but the heat seemed to make my lungs scream as it felt that little or no air was reaching them, and this in temperatures of around 75'F, not the 100'F which it probably will be in the desert!!
Also, HYDRATION!!! This last week has taught me that I need to plan carefully my nutrition and hydration during training to ensure I have this boxed off for the MDS. I have fallen well short of fluid on 2 occassions. Most noticably 11th July whilst decending the 2nd Peak of the Yorkshire 3 peaks challenge in 80'F whilst trying to break the 6hr mark (came back in 6hr 14mins after spraining an ankle about 3 miles of the 25 from the finish!!! no lasting damage I think, hope!), I ran out of fluid and was dry for the last 3 hours and approx 12 miles!
So whilst I have been happy with how the training has been progressing, this last week has taught me that I might have been a little too confident at this stage, and theres an awful lot I need to learn over the next 7 months!!
12th July 2013
4th May 2013
Had quite an exciting email this last week. Dropping into my inbox were the official username and passwords to access the competitors section of runningsahara.com, the official site for the MdS.
Went straight to the list of confirmed starters....and there I am, runner number 11001872
Thoughts of the training and run quickly pale into insignificance as this week I bumped into a friend whom I'd not seen for 12 months or so, only to discover that he was on his way back from his first day of treatment for cancer of the throat.
A stark reminder of the reasons I am embarking on this and why your sponsorship, however small is so very important.
Winter 12/13 & April 2013
So I dropped off the face of the earth......
Late last year I undertook a training run across a distant remote wilderness, got lost in a huge sandstorm which lasted weeks, was forced to remove the lower part of my left leg which became infected following a fight with a pack of lions and survived by applying the science of everything Bear Grylls had taught me on the discovery channel.
None of this of course is even remotely true. The whooping cough certainly took while to clear, at least 4 months until I could confidently say that it had totally gone, and that was the catalyst for the drop in the amount of training I either could do or felt motivated to attempt. Also when a run seems so far away, after the initial excitement at getting the place, reality soon takes over......how can I raise the monies, how many miles training per week will I need to do......all that equipment.......how will the family put up with the next 12/18 months.........All this I guess started to burden me a little and the running decreased and I felt more drawn to the weights at the gym rather than the treadmill. - not really a good start I admit!!
So throughout the lions share of the long cold winter we experienced, I generally stuck indoors. Still keeping some half decent level of cardio fitness with the cycle fit classes but managing to push the scales up from 13 stone to just under 14.
I have happily put the winter firmly behind me now, have managed to find the motivation again and ("touch wood") can report no injuries or illnesses. Seems that with the longer days (waking to sunshine sure makes a whole difference to how we feel for the rest of the day), the motivation has grown, the fund raising and training starts here.......it gets serious I guess now!
The next step is to put some form of plan together, currently I have 2 items on this list.....
1. Raise the remainder (majority) of £10,000
2. Scale the training up gradually to 80 miles per week min.
Simple!
(sounds of weeping in the background)
