15 hours down and just 1 to go. We've been at Singapore Airport for what seems like an age. We had planned to go on one of the sightseeing tours but fell asleep and missed the last one!! At least we must have needed the sleep. Our flight for Cairo, via Dubai departs in just over an hour...at least all the hanging around has dampend the anxiety. See all our fellow competitiors and RTP staff bright and early tomorrow morning, we land at 0545 local time. Good news is my cold seems to be on the mend.

Well I managed to get my tooth sorted yesterday and my policy of avoiding my pack seems to be working, well thats until about 8.00pm tonight when all hell will break loose but my sore throat has turned into a bit of a cold! Oh good!!!! Plenty of time to get that sorted and I'm sure 30hrs of traveling will do it no end of good.......

Well my pack packing is looking better but I'm falling apart. Yesterday I broke a tooth and this morning I woke up with a sore throat....great! Today being a public holiday means a visit to the dentist will have to wait until tomorrow, so much for clearing my desk at work. I'd hoped for a pretty easy Tuesday and Wednsday but now it'll depend on where and when I can get my tooth fixed. I should be able to get away early on Wednesday so I can pack and unpack my pack a few more times. What do I risk putting in the check in luggage, why does this not get any easier????? Sal and I managed to book ourselves a pretty ordinary flight schedule to Cairo. We leave Perth at 0110hrs thursday and don't hit Cairo until 0515hrs local time friday. We have a 16hr stopover in Singapore on the way before changing flights again in Dubai. I'm not sure what we were thinking when we booked it, I'm sure it had something to do with cost, I know we got a pretty good deal. At least flying this way takes away the temptation of being naughty! Before Namibia we spent a week driving up from Capetown with our good friends James and Carolyn enjoying all the fine South African produce on the way, especially the bottled variety! Great preparation, at least we were well hydrated, err sort of. This time it'll be fly in, check in and start the race, no time for naughtiness....except for the little matter of 16hrs in Singapore.....

Great news! My pack (Macpac Amp Race 25) is the lightest it's been for any of the race's I've done so far! Bad news, there is as much gear outside the pack as there is inside!!!!!!!!! Now where did I leave my Osprey Tallon 33Ltr??????

I've always had mixed feelings about tapering before an event. The relief of not having to drag yourself out of bed for the long back to back runs mixed with the nagging doubt of not having done enough. It is now, for me at least, tha all the little niggling aches and pains seem to come to the surface. It's amazing how in tune with your body you become. Every little pain, real or imagined is magnified and new ones appear. There is a frantic rush to book physio and chiro appointments(more spending). I never get used to it, I just come to expect it, knowledge dispels fear. This maybe true but I am yet to see it. The fear is still there but maybe it's a little more controllable with practise.

I'm running the Rottnest Marathon on October 24th, just two weeks after Sahara finishes. So I'll treat Sahara as part of my taper for Rotto, maybe that'll make things easier......

Sal and I are heading in to our fourth RTP event and I reckon I spend as much on kit each time as I did on the first. On sunday, a visit to Paddy Pallins(our favourite outdoor shop) just to grab some dehydrated meals and I'm at it again. "Oh look something new and shiney, and it only weighs 260gm" then I looked at the price tag!!!!! The inflateable mat cost more than the new sleeping bag and most of the rest of my gear put together but it was 6cm thick and sooo light...I put it back on the shelf and took it off again about half a dozen times before convincing myself, at Sal's insistance that I really had to have it. So to celebrate my new purchase we went to the pub for lunch and a couple of pints! Yeehaah!!!

I had my first test packing of my pack last night and although there is still a pile of stuff on my dining table it's looking good. Snacks and gels got the axe taken to them and I still need to pack socks. I generally have a pair of injini's for each of the first 5 days and 2 pairs of over socks that usually get binned by the long day as my feet swell. I'm using a smaller pack than before and have been pleasantly surprised. I've gone from an Osprey Tallon 33 to a Mapac 25 something or other. It has forced me to cut down on lots of stuff but is still more than adequate. I love the Osprey but it allows me to squeeze too much in and if there is space there it needs to be filled! Generally with food! 

Not long now but still enough time for more spending!!!!!

This weekend was supposed to be an easy one running wise and it was distance wise at least. I had planned 20km Sat and 20km Sunday. Saturday afternoon saw me heading south from Trigg beach to run 20km of sand along the Indian Ocean. At 5km I was ready to turn around, not a happy camper! I was running like a three toed tree slothe with a dodgy hamstring and there wasn't a keg of Guinness or big screen anywhere to be seen. I managed to talk my self into carrying on for at least another 2.5km and avoid the temptation of the firm sand at the waters edge. After turning around and emptying the sand from my shoes I plugged on with my mood and form steadily declining. There is a footpath a mere 100 meters from the beach, just the other side of the dunes and it's lure was strong indeed. I managed with what can only be described as superhuman will power to ignore the bitumen's pull, until there was just 2.5km to go. I can justify this with the fact that I needed a pit stop and once on the path it would be pointless turning back as there was only 2 and a bit km to go, and it was threatening to rain. So with a clear conscience I finished off the run on the surface that I usually avoid running on if at all possible. I know there will be footpaths in the Sahara won't there???? A lazy start sunday morning condemned me to 20km on the bitumen again. I started off not feeling too bad but after about 10km my slothful gait from Saturday had returned. I was running a 14km loop from home then picking up Buster, my Blue Heeler and Michael my son and finishing off the 20km with a lap of Craigie Bushland Reserve. As usual Michael took off like a bull at a gate and left Buster and I in his wake. As we got the the gate into the reserve he was stretching his hammys before taking off again this time with Buster who was obviously bored with my pre Sahara shuffle. The lap was uneventful except for the stairclimb Michael decided we should do, just what my aching body needed but if he did it I had to. We made it home, I stuffed my face with cereal and watched the news, thought about stretching and going back to bed. Shower and stretching won in the end. Now it's time for a coffee. There will be coffee shops in The Sahara right???

In all the RTP events I have done I'm always impressed with how the keep us up to date and informed. An email came in from Alina this morning but I'm not sure that everyone got the same one as me so I'll post the missing bit here so that we are all reading from the same page..


Special Provisions

At the request of Steve McGrath a competitor from Australia. There will be a keg of Guinness at various check points throughout the course(11 in total). At these checkpoints there will also be bar snacks and musical entertainment provided (Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello, The Clash and various Reggae artists). There will also be replays of the 1975 and 1980 FA Cup Finals shown on a big screen. Any competitior heard mentioning West Ham United's current form and Premier League standing will be immediatley disqualified......

Well we did head out to the Hills as planned Friday night but our plans came unstuck due to a technical failure. Despite both putting new batteries(or so we thought) into our headlamps, Sal's decided it didn't want to play. We were about 12km into our planned 50km when it satarted to dim. At the time we were on a nice flat dirt road but in only a few K's time we would be hitting some technical single track. It was a moonless night so we would get no help from above. Our plan was to get to camp by about 2am, eat and grab a few hours kip. We had to be back at the car for 10am as Sal's daughter was playing in a basketball Semi Final that day. The 20KM from the camp to the car would be the toughest and most technical of the run so we were allowing 3hrs. With only one headlamp and 35km to travel, at 15km we decided to turn around and head back to the car. We still got in a solid 30km run and 2am saw us tucked up in bed, after a feast of cheese on toast instead of a dehydrated meal in a chilly wooden hut.

Sal's daughter won the semi, we ran an easy 5km with the dogs went out Saturday night and ran 41km on sunday. So all in all we had a great weekend....

The Perth Hills will be alive with the sound of music tonight as Sal and I head out for a long overnighter. Singing and chattering teeth, looking at the weather forecast. We'll be heading out after work with the aim of covering about 50km before making camp having a feed and trying to grab a few hours sleep before heading back to the car hopefully by 10am Saturday. The return trip will be about 20km or so, of some pretty undulating technical trails. The last time we ran over this section of the Bibbulmun Track( our favourite training ground) it was 43C and we covered 40km after doing 30KM the previous evening. Tommorrow we will be lucky if it get to 15C by the time we finish.

Starting our weekend long runs on Friday evenings started in January of this year while we were training for the ill fated "Libyan Challenge"(cancelled the day before we flew out). For those that don't know the "Libyan Challenge" is a 205km non stop desert race with a 72hour cut off time, no set stages you just go as you feel. The temperature in Perth was great for preparing for a desert race, all of our long runs were done in 30-40C+ temps. We're not so lucky at this time of year however. Starting long runs late, after working all day got our bodies used to running tired and it also kept us out of the pub friday nights!

Does anyone know if there is Guinness on tap in Cairo?????

Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time,
I feel alive and the worls it's turning inside out Yeah!
I'm floating around in ecstasy
So don't stop me now don't stop me now
'Cause I'm having a good time having a good time...

What have Freddie and the boys got to do with the Sahara race you ask and well you might.
Well my partner Sally and I have adopted this classic Queen song as our desert anthem. When the going gets tough and morale starts to waiver, Sal's own human MP3 (me) will burst into song. It all started while we were preparing for Atacama 07. It seemed that every long traing run we went on, in the hills around our home town of Perth Western Australia, it would pour with rain. Most of our training was done during the Perth winter and it seemed to be a particularly wet one in 07. Being cold and wet was starting to become somewhat tiresome and at about the 50km mark of what turned out to be a 77km run, thouroughly wet and miserable I burst into song and the Anthem was born.

So if you happen across a somewhat deshevlled odd couple wandering aimlessly through the desert belting out Queen classic and or any other number of tune,s( not nescessarily in tune) dont be too alarmed it's probably just me a Sal.......