Although it's not long now before my physical training preparations are finished (just 4 weeks, max, assuming I have a 3 week taper period) I think I'm starting to feel the common illness afflicting MdS entrants: training and preparation fatigue!
Because I've missed the cut-off dates for pretty much all the long distance events I was planning to do, all my training has been on my lonesome since the last LDWA Challenge event I did on New Year's Day.
In poor winter weather it does take some mental effort to get out of the door for up to 8 hours at a time.
In the summer and autumn of last year it was quite easy to get on to the LDWA's Challenge events that are open to runners: these give regular milestones to aim for with a sense that the training runs are being shared with others.
It's been nigh on impossible to get onto winter events at short notice, I guess because there are fewer of them but still enough people desperate to get out of the house. I would definitely recommend to future MdS entrants that they get those LDWA Challenge events entrance forms in early to make the winter training period a little easier!
Also the detailed planning and meticulous preparation required to stand a chance of actually completing the Marathon des Sables takes up a lot of time: in effect, it's a case of thinking through every minute of every day from the Admin Day (the day before Stage 1 of the MdS starts) to consider what I'll need and how I'm going to get it or use it: how many calories will I take for each stage? shall I take any spare clothes and, if so, what? what type of hat shall I wear? where can I shave off some grammes in weight to keep the overall rucksack weight down? etc. etc.
There are now just 48 days to go before I stand on the start line of Stage 1 and it can't come soon enough . . . ignoring for the moment the fact I haven't yet tried to put everything I'll need into my rucksack, or finished ordering it!
