The heat is unreal. I thought I would stop writing about the heat because frankly it’s getting a bit tedious, but today was the hottest day yet and the temperature was up at 56C in the sun. It was hot enough to heat our water bottles to an unpleasant lukewarm temperature. There were moments where we genuinely thought about quitting, but we managed to push through. 

18 hours to the start line. We finally made it to Walvis Bay, Namibia after a missed flight connection yesterday. It actually worked out well as we had a very pleasant 24 hour detour in Johannesburg — getting in a last gym workout, finalising race packs, and consuming a few last real meals at my favourite old haunts. 

After meticulously weighing and calorie counting our race meals, we have arrived at our lightest pack ever. Full pack (ex-water) coming in at 8.0kg, of which 3.4kg is 15,500 calories of food for the 7 days. 

We’ve changed up our meal plan this year to improve the balance of our calories away from heavy reliance on sweet protein bars, which were awful to consume. For each day, I’m carrying: 

• Mix of freeze dried porridge (65g) + paleo granola (25g)
• Spicy Biltong (40g)
• Salted nut mix (35g)
• Recovery shake (50g)
• KIND nut bars (2 x 30g)
• Freeze dried dinners from Expedition Foods (150g)
• Freeze dried apple crumble dessert (80g) 
• Nescafé instant cappuccino (8g) - our little desert luxury
• Nuun rehydration tablets (56g)

For the long march (double marathon) on Day 5, I’m anticipating needing some extra motivation and have packed some Reese’s chocolate peanut butter cups as a special treat and some emergency tomato soup and bouillon stock cube. I learned from last time that it’s hard to stomach a freeze dried meal after the long march and some plain broth is the best cure.

I’m getting excited for the start — pre-race butterflies are fluttering inside me now. I’ve driven through much of the race terrain before, but it’ll be a completely different experience and perspective to cross it on foot. I’m looking forward to spending the next week making our way across the desert under the vast Namibia sky. Here we go!     

Last day before we fly out to Namibia tomorrow. We've been training hard for the last 4 months and we're ready to go!

That said, there's still a lot to prep before we get to the start line. Last night Adam and I were up until the wee hours glueing on our sand gaiters and stitching on our race patches. And we'll still need to repack all our dehydrated meals from their industrial packaging into ziploc bags after we land in Namibia - border control don't like unidentified powder substances in plastic bags. We hope this strategy will save us some weight (~20g per meal) and also pack down better. 

Mentally, this race is also different from Georgia in 2021. We're leaving our almost 2 year old at home with his grandparents for 2 weeks. Going off grid is going to be harder than it was 3 years ago, but hopefully we're come home with some epic stories to share with him!