Onwards through August

August has been another good month building on July's efforts. The 10 minute run/1 minute walk strategy is working well, though towards the end this becomes more like 5 and 5 or 8 and 2.

The week's mileages have been:

- 27.25 miles (including a 17.25 mile run (3h42m));
- 25.5 miles (including a 18.5 mile run (3h32m));
- 32 miles (including a 20 mile run (3h49m));
- 7.5 miles.

Each long run has included the rucksack with a couple of kilos. Some tightness and pain between the shoulder blades that I've had the last couple of months has gradually eased off. Running with the rucksack with 2-3kgs doesn't affect me as much now (though keeping the speed up proves a challenge).

Increasing long runs through July and August show I'm going to have to make some changes to kit and food.

On each of my long runs I've been trying different types of energy gels, about 2 per hour. After a couple of hours though I start feeling nauseous from energy gel overload and I feel the need for something more solid. On a more practical level I'll be out on each stage of the Marathon des Sables for anywhere between 3 and 5, 6 or more hours and it's not realistic to carry 2 packs of energy gels per hour for each of the 6 stages! I will need to find a product which packs a lot of the right combination of calories into a low weight.

On the kit front there have been some MdS-specific purchases this month.

I've been finding that after a couple of hours I start suffering from (how do I put this?!) chaffing in one's undercarriage! While I can put up with it for those couple of hours and not too much damage is done clearly I need a solution for longer outings.

What I've found are Nike Dri-Fit lycra shorts with flatlock seams (to remove the chaffing from standard seams) which are tight enough to prevent loose fabric chaffing. These didn't give me any problems at all on the 20-miler I did this month and seemed to help in scaring the farm animals away as I approached them (or maybe they were running away laughing).

I didn't much like the Foreign Legionnaires-style hat I bought (the Mammut Nubian cap): on a couple of runs in Portugal on holiday in the low-30Cs I found the cap didn't give enough head ventilation while running; the neck and shoulder flap also simply flew around in the breeze; and the neoprene beak isn't long enough to keep the sun out of the eyes without also wearing sunglasses. So back to the drawing board there.

For the rucksack, and thanks to the forums on this extremely useful MdS website, I've gone for shoulder-mounted Raidlight bottle holders to thread onto the shoulder straps of the OMM32 rucksack. The rucksack does have bottle holding mesh on the sides but I've found them too awkward to get to them easily while out on the trails, and stopping to take the rucksack off to get to them is just a time-wasting faff.

The pure difficulty of this challenge is also coming home as time ploughs on: 20-odd miles or more day after day for a week in 30C to 50C temperatures! The last couple of months I've usually been running in a maximum of the mid-20Cs yet dripping with sweat so how I'll cope in the Sahara is anyone's guess (training through a British winter is why the British contingent traditionally fares the worst on the MdS!).

This emphasises the need to get used to taking on water while training together with a suitable electrolyte replacement.

After a couple of months of trying them Nuun electrolyte tablets aren't agreeing with me. The effervescence they cause in a water bottle has an unfortunate side effect: when pulling up the tab on my water bottle, having shaken the contents for several miles, the bottle explodes berry-flavoured Nuun over my face! I've started trialling instead Elete Tablytes, simply dissolving them in water: tasteless and no fizziness.

There's an awful lot more planning and testing to do.

The plan for September is to see how I get on in a marathon, my first since the Ironman I did in 2005.

Orthotics working!

We're on a family holiday in Portugal. I went out for a hilly run for about 4 miles in the high 20Cs, my second trip in the new orthotics.

No pain or any tightness at all in my Achilles tendons throughout the run (a couple of twinges in the heel as my feet get used to them).

This is a significant improvement and hopefully will allow me now to keep building the frequency of the long runs without causing problems.

New orthotics

I've bitten the bullet and seen a podiatrist today to see whether I need orthotics. The sports massage and heel drop exercises have helped get me mobile but there is some Achilles soreness after a short while, almost as if the Achilles tendons are twisting as a I run.

The assessment is that while I'm walking there's no adverse Achilles reaction. It's when I start running my Achilles start twisting.

In next to no time the podiatrist had knocked up a pair of orthotics for me to wear in my running shoes. He asked me to run up and down outside and I was amazed: no twisting action equalled no pain!

I went out for a 4 mile easy run this evening and felt nothing at all in my Achilles until half hour or so had passed. I'll obviously need to allow some time for these to bed in but this looks promising and gives me some confidence that I might get to the Marathon des Sables start line injury-free.