The Marathon des Sables

With barely days to go one of the main questions people are asking is “Are you nervous?", and honestly, without hesitation the answer is that I am not. With around two years of mental & physical preperation behind me I honestly couldn’t be any more ready, I will never have done as many miles as I had wished and I am sure I could have honed my training a little more but that will almost always be the case. I anticpate my answer will be different when stood at the start line next Sunday.

Unfortunately, I am also sat here with a sore throat and severe earache … in fact, I don’t think I can even hear out of my right ear. At least the throat is subsiding and these things usually clear up after a day or two so I’ll just have to ride it out.

So, I’m just going to relax, get some sleep, check & recheck my kit and hope this passes quickly, in the mean time I am off for another mega hot bath to raise my core temperature.

The good folk at my old primary school, North Ferriby Primary School, accepted my offer of talking to the pupils about the MdS and the equipment I will be using during the run.
With Miss Goforth firmly at the helm still the school was, in many ways, much as I expected it just a lot, well, smaller than it was when I left! It was great to be back as I have many fond memories of the school (even if the giant hall had shrunk a little).

With little prepared other than a stack of ideas and lots of unusual equipment, the pupils were placed neatly in the hall and I was left to speak about the delights of running across the desert. The following produced sharp inhalations and some gasping …

“So, can anyone tell me where the Sahara is”
“It’s in North Africa”
“Excellent, and what can you tell me about the Sahara”
“It’s very hot and the largest desert”
“Well done, so, what is the last thing you think of doing in the Sahara”
“Run?”
“Yes! And that’s what I am going to do … ”

During the rest of the 20 minutes or so it was great to see the enthusiasm of the children with plenty of willing volunteers the most stressful part was choosing one! Dressed up wearing a silly hat, examining the food and modelling the gaiters it was all good fun, but possibly more importantly all of this elicited some excellent questions from across all ages. Questions about doctors, people, prizes and even about the mat on my backpack that I missed talking about!

Almost more importantly I had excellent fun and hope to go back and tell them all about the race.
A big thank you to all the teachers there and all the volunteers and children who were a pleasure to present too and in the case of two of teachers, catch up with after a long time!

I am looking forward to a repeat performance at Tilbury Primary school on Monday morning.

There have been some comments on the complete lack of calories I am taking and it’s true, there really isn’t a lot. But this is OK, we can dip into some of the amazing mechanisms that evolution has provided us with, and in this instance it’s body fat reserves.

If you have 15% body fat (’average’ for a male) you have enough energy stored in your body to run at marathon pace for 3 days straight … everything else would give up long before you ran out of energy! This energy store was of course to help people when times were lean.

So, how do I work out what I need?

Firstly I worked out my Basal Metabolic Rate using the Harris-Benedict Equation, using the heavy excercise factor I my BMR is normally

3394 = 1.752 * (66+(6.23*180)+(12.7*73)-(6.8*26))

For the purposes of this I am going to use the average factor (moderate excercise) and add the estimated use on, the BMR is now a nearly average
3003.

Lets add the excercise on to that. Running on the road with no pack burns approx’ 1cal/kg/km. So, 1*82kg*250kg = 20500 cals for the weeks running effort, lets conservatively add 40% to that to account for sand/backpack/hills, thats 28700cals for the running. Lets add the daily BMR for the 7 days (7*3003), 21021, so total calorie consumption is 49721.

So I need to find approx’ a whopping 33000 calories from me…

In terms of energy stored body fat holds around 3500 per lb, which means I need at least 9.2lbs of body fat to serve my needs during the race. 9.2lb = 4.2kgs. 4.2kg is about 5% of my body mass. So provided I have the base level of around 4% & and extra 5% body fat I should be fine.

Realistically, total energy consumption could be even higher so here is hoping I have at least 9% body fat, because although there will likely be a little bit, muscle catabolism is painful and inefficient!

Isn’t the human body amazing?

I have today ordered my food (finally, I hear you say!) from be-well.co.uk. They came up with a programme for me after a chat over the phone.
Be-well manufacture freeze dried foods and related products, the list of althetes they supply is very impressive.

The final food programme I have gives approx 2360cals/day and each day consists of the following:

• 2 * Breakfasts @ 1395 calories
• 1 * Main Meal @ 450-550 calories
• 1 * Pudding @ 450 calories
• 1 * Recovery Drink
• 1 * Flapjack

To add to the breakfast I will use a Chocolate Honey Stinger gel to sweeten it up (as I have opted out of having the fruit in there) but this is optional and I could have it later on.

In addition I am planning on taking some SIS Go powder sachets and powerbar blackcurrent caffeine gels. Be-well do a range of drinks which I will try out at somepoint, unfortunatley I feel it’s too late to switch to something new.

All in all, if you are planning on an expedition then these guys are worth chatting too. I will of course report on how it all was after the big event, which is suprisingly close …

When you are used to doing a lot of events and chucking in the occasional big mileage week and you drop right back to almost nothing you can really feel the waiting game kick in.
Though, don’t be fooled by the lack of posting, I have been very busy indeed sorting out the last bits that… well… need sorting.

Tonight, I have been sorting out the gaiters and getting the velcro stuck down to my shoes (a pictorial guide coming soon!) and along the inside rim of the gaiters. I have spent the past two hours snipping, cutting, holding, glueing and trying not to stick myself to the floor with Araldite and excessive amounts of Velcro. Some of the final bit’s of kit arrived today and there is BIG news in the fundraising department. Don’t forget to sponsor!

With less than two weeks to go, just one question? Am I ready?