Wednesday 15 February 2012

Kit selection - food

I have just ordered all the freeze dried meals that I will be using during the MDS, and they should be arriving at my sister's house in the next few days, ready for me to collect them when I go to London for the Mencap team meeting on the 28th Feb.

I want to experiment a little with the various meals and brands, so I have ordered much more than I will need for the race itself.  The two brands that I went for were Mountain House Foods and Backpackers Pantry.  Both have been mentioned on other MDS blogs as being suitable for the race, and they also do a vegetarian range (which is very important for me of course).

The advantage of freeze dried foods are they are much lighter than the corresponding fresh foods, yet still tasty once they are rehydrated.  You normally use boiling water to rehydrate them, but since I have decided to reduce my kit weight by forgoing a stove and fuel, I will be using cold water.  It mentions that it is possible to use cold water for both brands but that the rehydration time will be longer as a result.

Once I have the foods in my hands I will start to try and assemble a selection, whose calorific content is a minimum of 14,000 calories.  This is the minimum requirement set by the MDS rules.  Since I am not a dainty little thing I will probably put some extra packets in on top of that.  I found out yesterday during my long run just how much better I do once I have some extra calories in my body.

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