Thank you all for reading this blog over the last week and persisting with my often illiterate and disjointed writing. The race is now effectively finished with only a 2km trot around the pyramids left to do tomorrow morning before we go back to Cairo and lay waste to their food and water pressure. Yesterday was by a long way the hardest day of my life, the race until then had been hard but manageable and i had always felt like there was a fair amount left in the tanks. Yesterday was 56 miles through more sand and heat, with a cutoff time of 28 hours it was set to be a tough one. My relative inexperience over these distances, having run over 24 miles only once, worried me and my feet were still suffering from swelling making the various frayed tendons more painful. However i woke up feeling good and decided to see what i was capable of, after setting off at a good speed i maintained a strong pace through the heat of the day, flirting dangerously close to exhaustion around 29 miles in. As the sun set I kicked again, gaining places on those overcome by the heat, and i tried to maintain this as long as possible. Feeling good at the checkpoint at 68km i decided to keep pushing hard; every stride was maximised and i kept searching for the perfect sand. My knees were shot through with pain and my hips ached, the pack became heavier and my mind wearier. The last 20km were the hardest i have ever run, the mental fortitude needed to keep shuffling along is huge and several times i was close to despair-the emotional roller coaster of running for 10+ hours through the desert is manic and intense, i have never experienced such euphoric highs and terrible lows. I kept going as the sun set with only a few miles to go, constantly turning around to check where those behind me were and worrying that they had turned their light off to catch me out. Finally the lights of Cairo suburbs and then the final camp came into view, i kicked again to make sure my position was assured, determined not to relinquish anything in the final part. I arrived across the line in 9th place with a time of 11hr 40mins. The feelings i had expected would appear for 10 months never arrived, left dejected and hurting like never before with an intense mental indifference-i neither cried nor celebrated. Running these distances is hard, racing them is truly brutal and incredibly hard on the mind, the respect i have for the guys doing this week in week out is enormous. I cant thank you enough for all your support, i drew upon it all when times got tough yesterday and it constantly drove me on, determined not to let my friends down. The next update will be from civilisation, thank you very much and remember keep donating please!!!

Having slept outside the tent to escape spiderman's snoring, i woke up from about an hour's sleep in a less than fair mood. It is hard to sleep anymore than about 5 hours a night but the toll of the past few days exacerbated this and i slept terribly. Nonetheless today was billed as an easier day than the previous two and the temperature was a crisp 33 degrees which was a nice respite from the oven-like heat. Fairly boring day scenery wise and I suffered with a very sore hip and my swollen feet (apparently i have frayed tendons in each foot which makes any forward motion pretty tough). Came in 29th having been pipped at the line but just happy to make it over the line with some in reserve for tomorrow-this is the day where a lot of time can be made up and lost; With my muscles still in fairly good shape im going to attempt to make good time during the day and then grit it out until the line appears. The knowledge that the longest journey of my life will be over soon is very comforting and I have been dreaming of the finish line for many months. However, before that can happen i have to cover over 50 miles through the desert! Thank you all so much for your support, got ridiculous numbers of e-mails coming in and feeling very lucky to have this, it is a HUGE boost mentally and really spurs you on mentally when there are low points (there are quite a few, rice pudding for breakfast has become a worringly frequent one!). For those of you interested in my hat: first of all i congratulate you on sharing this incredible fashion sense, secondly i can assure you that they are not all for show and that they are incredibly functional. I will of course be auctioning mine off after the race. Hopefully i can report back late tomorrow night that i have crossed the line, after which 2km round the pyramids is all that stands in the way between me and a finisher's medal! thank you all and keep donating!

Today was being billed as being one of the hardest stage, with lots of soft sand and some long valley floor stretches (these are by far the hardest with soft sand and no wind). The first 20km went by quickly and the normally fierce heat was being subdued by some nice winds. The dunes caused some aggravation of my blisters as the camber and sliding are a lethal combo. However once out of the dunes there were some steep climbs and then long, breathless exposed parts along the valley-there is no shade anywhere on the course apart from the tent at camp each night but these windless sections are by far the hardest, the 40 degree heat saps your strength and will so quickly. It also limits the speed you can run at so a shuffle, imagine a footballer going up and down the sidelines warming up; thisis the fastest speed possible. My fast start and good walking meant i came in 16th today but my feet swelled up a lot, along with my hands, due to the heat and it caused considerable pain to walk, running was more bearable. My feet will be the biggest issue in the coming two days, i hope to make good time tomorrow but recover for the long stage on thursday where the most time can be won or lost- you cannot win the race before but you can certainly lose it. Thank you all for kind messages, please keep the e-mails coming they are the best support i could wish for and i will need them as much as possible before the long stage as this is when motivation is likely to wane, 86km is a long way on your own. Please also keep donating, i try and remember my amazing fortune when things are tough that i have an uninjured (just about) body and also the incredible things that our injured troops are doing-if they can run, cycle and swim across continents, oceans and the world i can certainly keep plodding along. A few amusing facts from camp life; we have a japanese comedian with film crew (think eddie izzard esque) and a pro japanese wrestler who races everyday dressed as spiderman in our tent. A certain laugh when they arrive back at camp. Once again cheers for reading and keep the support coming, the next few days will only be tougher.

Hello again! thank you very much for all your kind messages, the support is pretty overwhelming and greatly appreciated....although dont make them too good as its fairly emotional reading them which doesnt fit in with the week's motto of show no pain. Today was a very hard stage with towering sand dunes and searing heat (42 degrees) but i raced sensibly and looked after my hydration well so i ended 26th - i raced no harder than yesterday but went harder until the midday sun struck and then fast marched to the line. The scenery here is unreal and it is a fantastic priviledge to be out here racing in such untouched landscape and with some incredible athletes. Everytime my motivation wanes i think of all the support back home and the excellent charity for which i am raising money, it spurs me on the crest another hill, trudge through more sand and swallow another salt tablet. Thank you so much and lets hope my feet remain relatively intact. Please keep the messages coming, it is a huge boost to read them and store them in mind, to be released when the time comes.

Hello everyone, thank you for reading, apologies in advance for terrible spelling and lack of creativity the computers are lvery small and proving tricky for my sausage fingers. Just finished the first stage unscathed, arriving into tonight's camp around 30th.It is very refreshing to be finally out here and putting to good use the hours spent training, eating and scouring poorly written blogs (i doubt this is much better), however the desert is a very different place to what i had anticipated. It is very hot (38 C) and very sandy. Whilst this may strike you as being obvious, the scale of both are somewhat overwhelming. Apart from a blister scare 4km in this morning, today was fairly uneventful but i have realised that my patience and maturity will be tested more than my fitness - The heat is the greatest leveller and will strike anyone, regardless of fitness. Thank you all so much for your kind donations and emails, the support has been overwhelming and makes me look seriously popular so please keep those emails and comments coming! Tomorrow has been billed as difficult as opposed to moderate; the organisers are budding commedians and have even had the cheek to put in the notes 'lots of sand'. Aiming to start strong then back off as it warms up, been told that if you plan to race then race on stage 5 only. Please keep the donations coming!

It is now only 9 days until the start of the race and a week till I leave for warmer climes so I thought it was time for a final blog post. Thank you very much for reading and donating, you are making a real difference the lives of phenomenal people and allowing them to do extraordinary thing. On a more selfish note the support and donations have made the training and preparations that much easier-the constant and unwavering support I have received from friends and strangers alike has been very moving and has helped spur me on through the hard times (once the "Are you mad" question has been answered). In the 10 months since I signed up to this race I have experienced a plethora of emotions and events, some expected and some not so; I expected to have injuries (it is almost impossible not to when running long distances), I didn

It has been a tumultuous period since my last post on this blog; blisters have been popped, thighs chafed and all manner of things have been strained (huge thanks are due to my mother who has dutifully stood by me and dealt with mountains of washing) as my mood has fluctuated with my setbacks and injuries. I have had several injuries, the most serious of all a long-term gut problem which stopped me training for 3 weeks, tempers have exploded and then been exhausted from the pressure of working full-time and training twice a day. However I have managed to get the miles in, the legs have been brutalised on treadmills, strengthened by thousands of squats and my mind has endured suffering in a manner that I had not foreseen. It is often said (apparently) in ultra-running circles that running will consume you and part of the experience is completely giving yourself to the task at hand, I can say that I have given as much of me as I am willing. Final preparations are truly underway, rucksacs are being gutted of any superfluous features such as labels, freeze-dried meals are being test-driven and clothing strategy determined. My plan of running the whole race has somewhat disintegrated and I now aim to run until the midday-heat strikes, then to fast-march and resuming a run/'sahara shuffle' to the finish line. My freeze dried meals have put my own cooking to shame rather embarrassingly and I hope that they will provide an extra incentive to reach camp each night, along with many other things! I have found myself mentally tested to a far greater degree than I ever anticipated, not by the training as much as the preparations and set-backs; It seems like 'everything but the training' is the greatest stressor, exacerbated by my stomach issues which threatened to de-rail my race entirely. I have hit several metaphorical walls in this, I have made a long journey and have grown in character from when I first entered this race, I am not afraid to admit that I am scared by the race and my self-critical nature feeds off this. However enough about me, thanks are also due to all those things that have doubted and hindered me: your actions have only sought to galvanise my spirit and strengthen my resolve and for this I will be forever indebted to you, it has truly been the most vital aspect of my training. Thank you for reading and I leave you with a captivating quote from Pema Chodron which has resided at the back of my mind for past few months, I hope it can offer you the perspective it has given to me. "Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found."

Hello and thank you for reading, i apologise in advance for my somewhat inept blogging, I hope that it improves as the race creeps closer, and will likely be my only point of contact once out there in the desert!! Please feel free to spread the word and share this page, and also to comment on any post. Having secured my entry for this year's Sahara Race my training has taken on a new, more serious tone andI am currently training 13 sessions a week ranging from Yoga to hardcore strength sessions....and thankfully my body is beginning to vaguely resemble that of a runner. Training 6 days a week and up to 3 times a day has certainly meant that my social life has taken a bit of a dive with my main worries now being whether i have achieved my desired training effect for each day or whether i have got the required calories onboard rather than where i am meant to be going or who i am meeting that night! However there are benefits as well and my times are slowly improving (I am recording everything i do meticulously on my laptop from heart rate to weight) and i feel fitter than ever before, not to mention the gargantuan amounts i am having to eat to sustain my daily activities. I am finding that my motivation can waver at times but my 'fear of failure' is keeping me going at the moment..... as someone mentioned recently, i do not want to be standing at the start of the race feeling i could have done more, although i hope that that fear will gradually be replaced by my need to achieve. Trying to picture myself out in the desert and imagining the conditions is proving somewhat hard when there is torrential rain and snow in Yorkshire. The race is now sufficiently close that i have also donned my equipment geek hat and am now spending every spare moment perusing the internet for the latest and greatest kit that i hope will ease my journey to ultramarathon nirvana. Thank you very much for reading, i am in the process of creating a website and justgiving page, any details will be posted here. As this website reminds me, there are only 203 days until the start of the race and to coin Benjamin Franklin " Fail to prepare, prepare to fail".