The Marathon des Sables

A fairly standard week has been had with an enjoyable, if not getting chilly, 100 miles on the bike.
With family things firmly on the agenda after the exam and weekends ultra I have got wet at Hull Fair (a test in itself) I have only been out for one run. Currently I am sat listening to the Disney Princess CD with Megs…

Thankfully the run on Wednesday with the club was a corker, I really pushed my pace in a good tempo session. I wouldn’t have expected to feel so comfortable with even a decent pace after the Grantham canal run, but it did feel comfortable and when it feels so good, why not go with it?

Tomorrows task is to set off at silly o clock (6am) to spend 4 hours on the train to Didcot, via London, and pick a car up. It must be done but means I miss out on a good Saturday run! With Sunday’s attendance of the Brid half marathon looking shaky with my neighbours band Bad Dog playing in Beverely. It’s garuanteed to be a late one and may leave me with a bit of a thick head Sunday morning. Still I haven’t had a post exam blow out yet!

To continue my testing of the Engo patches I will certainly be going out for a run at some point on Sunday and continuing my “Say No To Socks” experiment. I am hoping to make progress next week with the main part of the site and get the fundraising kicked off in earnest.

It’s not that socks are bad, in fact, I quite like socks really … they keep your toes warm and stop your shoes rubbing, but, therein lies an issue. Next year is going to be hell on my feet, they haven’t experienced anything on the scale of next year. So I am doing the best I can to mitigate against any problems, at the very least I want an idea of where the problems are going to lie so I can take preventative measures. Without socks I’ll find out much more quickly where the problems with my feet are going to lie.

Yesterday was my first run without socks, it was nothing epic, just 4.5 miles. Nonetheless I just chucked my unkempt feet straight into my stinky old trainers and set off. I got back to find two tiny blisters on my right foor, one on the bridge and one on the heel at the top of the shoe.

Today, run number two was done in much the same way except for using a good coating of Gehwol Foot cream , the results are encouraging, the existing remains (no skin didn’t cause any discomfort and only when I could feel the rim of the shoe did I remember I was sockless. Even when my feet got wet on the pastures.

At this stage, although encouraging, the experimentation is a bit less than scientific and I won’t know until a number more runs and more miles have been completed what works, what doesn’t and where my complete list of blister prone slots are.