Must walk more!

I rested the first two weeks of December having had a good previous three week build up. My aim for December was simply to rest up (well, comparatively speaking) and recover, enjoy Christmas and positively stuff myself in preparation for the famine ahead!

Up until Christmas Day I did a few short runs, including a 7.5 miler with a 8.9kg rucksack, and two longs. As this was the heaviest weight to date that I've carried I used a 5 minute run/5 minute walk strategy for this session and felt strong throughout.

The rucksack felt comfortable and my upper back only started getting sore towards the very end. I've been wearing the rucksack for several months now with a gradually increasing weight so getting used to it from an early stage seems to have paid off.

The two long runs/walks included an off-road marathon: 26.2 miles in 6h14m, with 2645 foot of ascent and a 5.5kg rucksack (and 3175 calories burnt that need replacing!).

This marathon was an early start in the semi-darkness and it was a good half hour before it was fully light. A freezing cold winter's morning saw a hard, icy crust on the ground which was manageable for a while but as the temperature rose a little the consequent swampy conditions made it tough under foot: this was very tiring on the legs after a couple of hours.

I used my new Asics Trabuco GTX off-road trainers which actually weren't too great for the day's very muddy terrain; being a Gore-Tex waterproof shoe they won't be my shoe of choice for the MdS as I don't fancy getting trench-foot in the desert! These shoes were effective in keeping the water and mud out . . . as long as it didn't come over the top of the shoe. When that happened (quite often) the Gore-Tex liner prevented the water and mud being squeezed out, which would normally happen through the mesh you have on ordinary trainers. The result was freezing cold, wet feet after 6 hours.

There were no threatening bulls or cows during the marathon effort but three deer ran across my path in Stainburn Forest, their white tails bobbing across the plantation.  In one small field I found myself getting a little worried about 50 or so sheep and rams making a baa-ing racket as they galloped to surround me from the front, rear and side to pin me up against the stone wall to my left. I quickened the pace here.

It was a relief to finally finish this session: my legs were cramping over the stiles towards the end and the thick, slippy mud had sapped my legs of their strength. It became a case of simply forcing one leg in front of the other to finish.

With realistically only the top 100 MdS entrants running the whole thing the rest of the field is walking to some degree. So for this marathon I wanted to introduce some longer period of walking to start getting the muscles used to it and so pretty much walked the last three hours (after having spent the first three hours with a run/walk strategy).

I'm glad I did. I can see why long walk training is vital for the MdS and I will need to do more of it to prevent getting too trashed. By the end of the marathon I was tired and my hamstrings and feet really felt the very different gait action (which isn't helped by a weighted rucksack). This was a very different feeling from a session of mostly running. Apparently most hobbling MdS injury victims are a result of a lack of long distance walking in training as competitors are finally forced to walk after a couple of days when the muscles simply aren't used to it.

Five days after the marathon I did a 22.5 mile stint (4h57m), with the obligatory weighted rucksack: more of the muddy slipperiness which really gets to you after a while as it's impossible to maintain any consistent speed!

Again I walked pretty much the last couple of hours of this session and felt it in the hamstrings, feet and knees. Worryingly the knee pain I've picked up recently doesn't seem to be easing off permanently. The cold bath treatment (for the purposes of blog amusement I stuck the thermometer in and I can tell you it was 5C!) followed by a hot bath helped a lot to ease the legs.

My sports massage the day after the 22.5 miler showed that my leg muscles are still surprisingly loose (apart from my quads, which might be causing the knee problem).

Christmas goodies!

The main disadvantage of training up for the MdS in April of each year is having to train through the misery of a cold, wet British winter. As I've said previously, this is traditionally why the British contingent as a whole doesn't fare too well on the MdS.

The big advantage is that Santa comes about three months before the event, which can mean MdS goodies on Christmas Day!

Having been very good over the year I've now got my first piece of compulsory kit: the compass.

But this is not any ordinary compass: to meet MdS regulations (failure of which means being shot at dawn by the French Foreign Legion (the organiser of the MdS is a chap called Patrick Bauer, a former Legionnaire)) the compass must have 1 or 2 degrees of measurement accuracy.

So I now have the Recta DO 390 compass, so I can get lost in the Sahara to within 2 degrees of accuracy of where I'm not sure I am. But hopefully not as lost as Mauro Prosperi, the Italian policeman who, in the 1994 edition of the race, got lost in a sandstorm. He was discovered 9 days later, having covered a few hundred kilometres into a hospital in neighbouring Algeria, having just survived on his own urine and dead bats.

I've also now got a couple of pairs of the Nike Dri-Fit running shorts with flatlock seams to prevent chaffing. There are as many discussions about the ideal type of undergarment for hot desert conditions as there are the different types and combinations of undergarment available.

For me, and in my better weather sessions, I've found these tight-fitting lycra shorts (loose-fitting = friction = chaffing) don't give me chaffing problems, as long as the seams are in the right place, which is the case with the Nike Dri-Fits.

The low humidity and high heat conditions in the desert should evaporate away any sweat so, hopefully, there should be no chaffing caused by moisture from sweat.

I've also got my first sample dehydrated foods to test. I have to get this right: there are numerous stories of competitors' races ruined because of getting the food wrong (the stomach doesn't always take kindly to a diet of dehydrated or freeze-dried food), let alone the D&V that spreads through camp like wildfire after a couple of days . . .