3 weeks until the end....

What a beautiful weekend, waking up on Saturday morning to the sun streaming though my window set the scene for a nice relaxing day on the common, few glasses of wine in hand and a very unhealthy pick-nick lunch; perfect preparation with only 2 weeks to go before my beach holiday, a nice week on the soft golden sands of the Sahara in blistering heat.

Throwing corrosion to the wind the wind I opted for plan B. A 20 mile runs around Richmond Park, almost the same thing. It is an amazing place and got to chase a few dear, fenton, Fenton, FENTON!

I decided that I would go for a full kit test; although I did cover my modesty with a pair of normal shorts over my Lycia shorts, did not think Richmond was quite ready for full desert atria just yet, and glad I did. A women became so affixed with my Gaiters attached to my trainers that she fell over a fence post, I dread to think what incidents I would have been responsible for if I had been in my full Lycia number. I got so much abuse from people in the park form my gaiters, mostly form very unfit people struggling to peddle round the park, if you are going to mock me, at least know what you are mocking, it’s funny how the people on the bikes that looked like they knew what they were doing chose to should words of encouragement and good luck for the MDS – ok rant over (The gaiters are stitched to my trainers which needed to be run in bit more in case you are wondering).

The run it’s self was good, the first time out with full race weight bag; I set off at a fairly steady 7:30 min/miles, kept at this pace for the first two laps (1 lap = 6.75 miles) and glad I did, it is amazing how the extra Kg's on your back really makes it much harder, running a very combatable 12 miles at <7 min/miles earlier in the week I thought 7:30 should be about right. The hills don’t help but the last lap did become more challenging and had to slow my pace, the last steep hill I dropped to almost a walk finished off about 7:50 min/miles average pace. I was hoping to do back to back days running this weekend but I am playing on the safe side with 2 weeks to go and my knees still playing up I decided on a core strength session, stretching and long sauna session. I don’t ache, so all good, I just need to sort out my dam knees.....

It is only 2 weeks to the start and there is very little I can do in terms of improving my fitness, I can continue to train in the hope I don’t hurt as much in the morning after the day before. My weight loss is going well I hate not being able to eat what I like but I have been good, now down to 69kg, looking a bit drawn in my face but I am not going out to the desert to look sexy. My diet is about as done as it can be so next week I start the carb loading cycle, the first week is not what you maybe imagining. I am carb starving, a week of effectively starving myself to trick my body into believing I am in a famine,  then the week I head out, my favourite part, the Carb loading, eat as much complex carbohydrate as I can, complex carbs, brown rice ect, aim for 5,000 cals per day.

It is also time to really ramp up the mental prep. Maybe even a bit of visualisation, it will be a challenge to imaging the conditions as I have next experienced them. I did have a boost to the mental prep today. As we move though life we all meet people that influence who we are, inspire us or help use through the challenges that life throws at us. Some remain firmly in our lives, other people can be taken from us, some prematurely. Some people we simply lose contact as our life moves on. At various points I have discussed how important that mentoring relationship is and why I feel so strongly about the value springboard adds. I have also talked about how lucky I was to have that through my education. After finishing Durham they closed my e-mail accounts and I lost all me e-mail addresses, loosing contact with various people.  One of those addresses was one of the most important and influential teachers in my development, helping me though some very difficult times which are not appropriate to discuss in a blog, but looking back, I was incredibly lucky to have her support and a great boost after so many years to receive an e-mail from her  after recieving an e-mail to the school from my father.

Time to sign off now and start dreaming of the desert. When we have such butiful sunsets in London, I can't wait to see what the Sahara has in store.

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My first New Paper artical....

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Full News Paper Story

Countdown Continues - 3 weeks to go....

If you are around Clapham and see someone displaying slightly strange behaviour, it is most likely to be me. With three weeks to go until the Marathon Des Sable, my kit sorted and my bag packed it is time to start the final preparation.

How do you make final preparations for to 155 mile run in 55 deg heat across a sandy desert? To be totally honest, I am not quite sure.

I have a few cunning ideas. Firstly, I am going on a diet, I want to be 8kg lighter than the London UntraMarathon in Feb and 6kg lighter than when I ran the Berlin Marathon in September, 6kg is the weight of my kit, so loosing the weight in my mind balances things out.  Fat will also acts as insulation and increase my core temperature so a 5-6% body fat would be grand. I love eating and love my cakes; this is going to require some self discipline when the custard slices and donuts stare at me in Sainsbury at lunch time.

I have started moisturising my feet, I could only find face moisturiser, is there any difference? I going to run up and down my road bare foot. I could use surgical spirit to harden them. Not convinced by this, it hardens the top liar of skin, keeps then blisters way for the first day, but when they do come, they come deeper and bigger. I am going for an expensive leather effect, tough but soft. 80-90% of competitors will get blisters so they will come, but the aim is to minimise the severity. The videos and pictures are not pleasant, the worst are blusters under the toe nails, drained with pins through the nail or the blisters under the soles of the feet, I have had pretty bad blisters on my hands from rowing, but nothing that compares, I had to turn away watching James Cracknels “Toughest Foot Race on Earth”.

I have had the most odd looks from squatting in the sauna, the jury is most definably out on the value of using a sauna to acclimatise to the heat, it is not the same heat and short bursts will have a negligible impact, but I have decided to go for it anyway. If nothing else, doing exercise in extreme heat will give me a bit of a mental advantage.

 

The runner’s knee I managed to get form over training is improving, I picked up the pace on a 10 mile run this evening to 7min/mile. It was not hard on the cardio side but I wanted to make sure I stay sensible, I seem to be kicking the injuries and don’t want to pick a new one up this close to the event.

Following my blog on my trip to Grantham I had an appreciated tweet form another entrant in the MDS 2012, telling me to go for it. So this week I have been looking a bit more at the numbers from past events, I like numbers, they do tend to say a lot, it does not seem that the Abandonments are linked to going off too hard early on. I am going to hold on to my original aim of top 20% if I get this, I will be really happy, if I got into the elite  top 50 for day 4, 56mile stage, I would be ecstatic and finishing is enough to  make me smile.

A smile is a step forward, throughout the last few months of writing this blog, I have  explored more about myself, what makes me so competitive, how this linked back to my dyslexia and having to prove myself, just been more aware of this, thinking about it, has allowed me to relax a bit more. Apologies for my long rambling posts and thanks for staying tuned in through the journey. I hope you have found some of them interesting, only 4 more to go.

It just makes me appreciate even more how important the work Springboard does in providing early intervention to address Childrens literacy problems and provide them with a mentor. These are really great kids and deserve a chance in life to reach their potential. The volunteers that give up their time are absolute heroes and I hope they understand the true value of their work.

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Marathon Des Sables Kit

The very last mail order item is due to arrive on Monday. Over the last 2 months the Royal Mail van has visited the house nearly every day, I really wish I was joking, I have spent an absolute fortune, and I have a cupboard full of kit I am not taking. When you look at my kit laid out, here is actually nothing there; I take more to work in my laptop bag every day I have to survive for a week.

The all important question: was it worth the money and effort to find things with double uses or am I still going to be feeling like I am carrying a brick? I feel like I have become obsessed with kit, I am sure my housemates would tell me I feel that way, because I have, I spent 2 days this week in a mood because my trainers with Gaiters attached had not arrived when I expected them. I have tried to think about every which way I can shave off a few more grams (I am still looking). I was more excited today about packing my bag than I the excitement I felt as a child at Christmas, believe me, that is a lot of excitement. Yes, I am sad.

Each item has been weighed individually, ticked off against my Marathon Des Sables kit list and a few more items discarded along the way.

The total weight, with food, minus energy products and water = 4.9kg on the scales. Maximum additional weight will be 1kg; maximum weight will be 6kg (minus water). That is 1.5kg lighter than my target weight.

My race kit is sorted, don’t judge, but I will have one top and one pair of compression shorts for the week, my clothing to sleep in will also be suitable for racing should anything go wrong.

A few people have asked if I will be staying in a hotel overnight, or if there will be showers at the camp site, to both, unless I pack these items in my bag, no, most of the event is spent in the middle of the desert, I will be caring everything. For personal hygiene I am allowing myself the luxury of a tooth brush and a Wemmi, a tinny compressed baby dry baby whip.   My pillow will be my porridge and muesli food packs in my sleeping bag case and my sleeping mat doubles as the back support in my rucksack. Just about everything else is compulsory kit.

My food is all freeze dried, it is not at all nice but high cal for the weight and made for this type of event. I am going to sneak in a packet of Jelly babies for the 56mile stage as a special treat at the half way stage.

The theory goes that the Marathon Des Sables  is 70% mental, 30% physical, with no luxuries to keep me going, the one thing I will be taking is a postcard I received in the post this week just to remind me why I signed up to this in the first place.

If I had not had the support I did though my early years of school, it is very unlikely I would have had any GCSE’s or a career, I was a very trying child, hated school and was incredibly disruptive, my parents went though some difficult years with me but their determination to address the cause and not just right me off as an unruly child as others had done meant I did re-engage with learning and changed the course of my life. Early intervention in cases where children have basic literacy problems is vital to re-engage them with education, to give them stability and aspirations. 'Springboard for Children' has and will continue to change lives.

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4 Weeks today I will be stood on the start line of the ‘Worlds toughest foot race’ ready to put myself through what is likely to be one of the most difficult physical and mental challenge I will face. No amount of running or time in the sauna will prepare me for what I am going to embark on, which is a good job really as training has not exactly gone to plan as you have probably picked up by now. Injury has leant itself more too time in the sauna than running. But there is still plenty of time before the Marathon Des Sables to get lots more distance in my legs and with a good base fitness I can hope it will be enough physical to get me though. On the mental side, most people think I am a bit mental so no problems there.

Yesterday (Saturday) I jumped on a train to Stevenage to attend a seminar on the MDS, about 40 of this year’s entrants turned up, one thing that struck me walking into the room was it was not yuppies running this because they where board at work as someone had told me, but people of all ages and sizes, taking to them over lunch, one thing they all had in common was they had put there entries in 3 years ago when entries first opened and have been planning for even longer. It also became clear that for most people, this is not about position but about finishing, just getting though the Marathon Des Sables will be a lifetime achievement and getting wrapped up in positions will just get in the way of the experience.  This is something that I do really need to take on board, I entered for position, to be one of the top UK finishers and in the top 20%, something that may have been possible if I had got through with 4 months of solid training, if I now continue down the position route I will undervalue the experience and possibly not even finish.

I have talked in previous posts why I am so competitive, and maybe why rowing appealed so much. Every outing whatever level in the squad was about fighting for a place in a boat higher than you were in last outing, land training was all recorded and erg tests are about beating your friends, crewmates, to secure that position, once you were in a set crew, it was then about beating the crews around you. Taking part for fun was rear, competitive sport is not about finishing but where you finish, I need to break this mentality for the MDS and just concentrate on finishing, if I get a good position, what a bonus.  It is rear to walk into a room of athletes and talk about just finishing, it feels odd, but when you look at the size of the challenge ahead it does start to make more sense.  I am sure most people in the room at Stevenage just thought I was an arrogant prick who won’t make it past the second day never mind finish in the top 20%; signing up only 3 months ago looking back was a mistake, to do this justice I should have given myself at least a year to prepare, I am a month away, £4,500 worse off and really starting to get excited, there is no turning back now.

In addition to being shown very gory pictures of mangled feet, which I was told will be inevitable and nothing you can really do about it apart from cut my toe nails, I had my medical and ECG which was part of the requirements of entry. I passed the ECG although it is not normal; I have a few abnormalities, Sinus  Bradycardia and right bundle branch block, typically seen in about 40% of elite athletes (despite never being an elite athlete, the computer said so, so it must be true).

Its now time for bed, hopefully I don’t have any more injuries or sickness and I can really pack in the training this week.

P.S keep your eyes peeled for my debuted appearance in a news papers over the coming weeks and don’t forget to donate online at www.justgiving.com/steven-artistMdS