I have managed to bring the 4th lightest backpack as far as i know from the checkin this morning with 6.75kg. Although i have to take my hat off to the person who managed 5.5kg. I do feel alot better after the majority of people have about 10kg or more, with the largest backpack being 15.5kg.
 
It was a long 7 hour ride out to camp with the occasional bribing of border people who weren`t letting us through. But we got there in the end.
 
I am now stuffed full of food and energy drinks and ready for the race to begin tomorrow morning. I will be back with a full account of the first day tomorrow and hopefully there will be no major problems.

The time has now come.

I will be leaving London for Cairo tomorrow morning and weirdly i can't wait for Sunday come around and the event to begin. Although i am sure i will be saying something completely different on Tuesday or Wednesday.

It has been a long road getting here with the large amount of training. The few injuries that have set me back along the way. But i think that the injuries have helped me learn to be more cautious and give me a greater chance of finishing the event.

I finished packing my race pack last night and i have managed to stay close to my original goal of a 6 - 6.5kg pack without water. I am currently sitting around 6.5 - 6.75kg but i will find out the exact weight on Saturday when i have finalised my pack and got it weighed.

Below is a picture of my pack items layed out.



In the top left of the picutre is my food supply minus the pepperami. It consists of freeze dried food, a mix of nuts, pepperami and protein/energy drnk mix.

I am actually a bit worried about the last item as trying to take 1/2kg of brown powder wrapped tightly in plastic bags through an airport is quite questionable. Lets hope the customs/security people don't get the wrong idea.

The questionable brown powder in its packaging



Hopefully i will be making another blog posting before the race in Egypt. Otherwise i will have completed Day 1 and will probably be say why the hell am i doing this.

Hello readers

 

I have been telling myself that i should start this blog for the past few months but for some reason i have never gotten round to it until now. Although thankfully my training has had a bit more motivation than my blog writing.

I started running a bit over 2 years ago and even then i didn't really do that much. It wasn't until a little bit over a year ago that i had the stupid idea around Christmas time of suggesting to a friend of mine a event called the Jurassic Coastal Challange in 2007. This was a hilly 3 day 75 mile race along the Jurassic Coastline in Dorset England, which was fine apart from the fact that i had never run a marathon before. I somehow managed to complete 2 days before injuring my foot and having to pull out the last day. After that i gave distance running a little break over the summer due to knee injuries.

The story then picks up again at Christmas the year after where i am again stupidly suggesting to the same friend that we do a race called the TringToTown which involves 2 40 mile ultras over the weekend. I then did the Jurassic Coastal Challange 2008 7 weeks later where i ran into a fellow Sahara 4Deserts competitor Cleo. All was going well this year apart from the severe weather warning during day 2 and my achilies packing its bags and going home without me 13 miles into day 3. Not wanting to fail the Jurassic for a 2nd time in a row i speed marched/hobbled the last 13 miles.

I have tried a few different types of training routine over the past year. Previosly i have concentrated on running as my main source of training, but i found this didn't work too well for me. I would be able to run 20 miles and then do it again the next day but my speed wasn't improving and my knees took quite a bit of punishment.

Currently i do circuit training around 5 times a week at the moment with British Military Fitness, where the classes involves intensive upper, lower, core and running work. I also cycle or run the 6 miles each way to, from work during the week and do a long run or mountain biking at the weekend. This type of training seems to be working for me as my speed is improving and i feel that the risk of injury is lower from my older training style as i am not doing as much repetitive running.

I have also been buying and planning out my kit list and trying to figure out what weight my backpack is roughly going to be. I have also tried out some freeze dried food and found a few flavours that i can actually stand while at home so in the desert they should be luxury. Currently i have:

• Thermarest Short 3 Seasons Sleeping Mat
• PHDesign Mimus Sleeping Bag
• Raidlight Evo2 Backpack
• Some Freeze Dried Food Packs

My plan when buying the ever so small Raidlight Evo2 backpack was that i wouldn't be able to take too many extra items to weigh the thing down. Although i did wonder when it arrived if i had bought something a bit too small. Cleo also commented during the Jurassic that i would never be able to fit a weeks worth of stuff into it which got me wondering if it was actually going to be big enough. But i have sat down a couple of times and filled it up with some clothes, food packs and other stuff to try and simulate the size of things that i am going to take and i am beginning to convince myself that i wil fit everything onto the backpack. Because of its small size my pack weight should only be about 7.5 to 9 kg with water included and with the Evo2 having front and back packs the weight should be distributed evenly which will help reduce the stress on my back and core mussles.

Thats it for my first ramble but i will be back for another.