Downward facing dog - one of my favourite yoga positions

I have not been in downward facing dog pose since I left UBS for my sabbatical back last August (at least outside of the bedroom that is).  I am not sure what it is about the position but I feel great when I am in it.  It really stretches out my hamstrings and calms me down.

Today I restarted my yoga classes at UBS.  The teacher is the same one as before and the people in the class were mostly the same ones I remember, although not as many of them now it seems.  The fitness class schedule is changing weekly at the moment, and some people may have forgotten when yoga had due to take place.  On the timetable last week, yoga was meant to be at 1pm, but I later found out it had been changed to 12.30pm and the timetable had not been updated.  Luckily there is a mailing list you can join to be informed of changes or cancellations and I have been added to this list now.  This week we were informed via the mailing list that the class had been changed to 12.45pm.

In spite of all the timetable changes, it was a lovely class and I was happy to be doing yoga again after such a long break.  I did several classes of hot yoga before I left to Morocco, but hot yoga and standard yoga are rather different.  Hot yoga is more of an intense workout but not as relaxing as standard yoga I find.  I would like to do both simultaneously and get the combined benefits.  The only issue with the hot yoga is that getting to the class is not as easy as attending the standard yoga at UBS.

In general I was able to stretch much further than I could last year, with the exception of my hamstrings.  The range of motion in my shoulders and back has increased (most likely through Pilates) and there are some moves where my belly used to get in the way before, where it no longer can (since I don't have a belly now).  The endurance factor is not quite there yet and there were times when I could not hold the poses for the full duration, and needed to rest.  That should come rather quickly from attending the sessions regularly from now on.  My body awareness has definitely increased.

Overall verdict: thumbs up!

How embarrassing it can be to do a one to one Pilates lesson when you have a dodgy stomach

It does not happen all the time, but sometimes my stomach gets a little gaseous.  That does not normally present much of a problem during day to day activities, but when doing a one to one Pilates lesson where you are very close to the instructor and you are having to strain hard as you tense up your powerhouse, it can lead to embarrassing moments.  I am sure the instructor is used to it, and it probably happens very often, but still, for me it is rather embarrassing to let one rip in front of her.

This afternoon my stomach was not feeling that great.  It may have been the mix of wasabi peanuts, goats milk, carrot juice, dates and greek salad that I had for lunch.  I am not quite sure, but I was a little concerned about how the Pilates lesson this evening would go.  I made sure to go to the toilet before I started, but part way through one of the exercises I had to excuse myself rather quickly and go to powder my nose yet again.  Luckily I got through the rest of the lesson without any further problems.

In the last few minutes of the lesson I got a chance to try out the foot corrector that I mentioned in a previous post.  Martha thinks that it will help me to toughen up my feet, ready for my next ultra in August.  She said that my foot currently moves in slightly strange ways and that she will try to correct that over the coming weeks.  I know for a start that I over-pronate, as I always used to wear support shoes.

In addition to introducing the foot corrector, she also stopped using the rubber pad on the foot bar of the reformer.  That makes it slightly more uncomfortable for my feet but she said that will help to toughen them up as well.

First Pilates class since the MDS finished, and my core is stronger than ever before

Good evening ladies and gentleman and distinguished members of the audience.  I just came back from a one to one Pilates class, and it is the first one I have done since the MDS finished.  I was worried that I would struggle a bit, partly because I haven't done any Pilates for over a month now, and partly because my body is still recovering from the MDS.  In fact I needn't have worried because my core felt stronger than ever before, and the teacher noticed that too.

I purchased an abo for 10 lessons so I have another 9 lessons left to help me prepare for the Ticino trail.  It will be hard to do it twice per week like I was when I wasn't working, and I think I will have to do it once per week now.  It might have been easier to do it twice per week if the studio was close to work, but it isn't.

My calves were aching a bit from the barefoot running in Irchelpark last night, but this didn't cause me any problems during the class.  My hamstrings nearly cramped up once though, as did the muscles in the arch of my right foot.  I was happy that my groin seems to be okay now and also my knee only clicks slightly from time to time and not loudly and regularly like it did a few weeks ago.  I am still going with my theory that tight quads caused the loud knee clicking, as post MDS my quads were extremely fatigued and tight.  With the gentle runs I have been doing the last week they have now loosened up.

I was using the Pilates class tonight as a tester to see if I have recovered enough to start the yoga classes again.  With a big thumbs up I am going to restart yoga next week.  I will try to do one normal yoga class on Tuesday lunchtime at UBS and one hot yoga class during the week at the Bikram School of Yoga.

My weekly training program will now incorporate the following:

1 class of standard yoga
1 class of hot yoga
1 Pilates class (one to one)
2 track sessions (one with Jeff Grant of Hillseeker Fitness and one with TV Unterstrass running club)
+ a variety of weekly solo runs (some in my Newton Sir Isaac guidance trainers, some in my Vibram FiverFingers and some completely barefoot)

If I manage all that and still have a little energy left over I will try to do one weights session per week in the UBS gym.

My Pilates teacher is going to help me with my aim of toughening up my feet by training me on a special piece of apparatus called a foot corrector http://pilates.about.com/od/pilatesequipment/tp/Pilates-Equipment-For-Foot-Exercises.htm.  She will also help me to strength my groin muscles further, so I don't have any more problems with groin strain during the Ticino Trail like I did during the MDS.

On my final closing note I just wanted to let you know that Anny purchased a pair of Vibram FiveFingers in New York, so we can have a lot of fun training together in VFFs.  I am happy that I was able to inspire her to try something new like minimalistic running.  I am also well aware that she will have to ease into them gradually due to her recent entry into the world of sport.

2 hours of walking in the dunes

Firstly I want to apologise for the lack of photos in my posts as of late.  I have been taking some nice photos here in Merzouga, but the problem is I forgot to bring my SD card reader with me and the laptop I am using does not have one built in.  Therefore I will have to update my posts with the photos when I get back to Zurich, unless I can find someone who I can borrow a card reader from.

Anyway, now to the main point.  I wanted to spend longer in the sun today so I decided that a walk would be more appropriate than a run.  The temperature according to the weather report is 27C, and it is nice and sunny with no clouds in sight.  Perfect for a spot of heat acclimatisation.

I headed off into the dunes for just over 1 hour, then turned round and headed back.  I took a couple of stops en route to get some good photos, but on the whole I was medium to fast walking the whole way.  When I had to climb a slope that was very steep I ran up it, as I have found this to be an easier way of getting to the top than walking up.  If you can work up enough forward momentum you tend to slip back less with each step.

The total time for my dune hike was 2 hours and in this time I covered 7.62km.  Allowing for the fact that in the MDS I would not be stopping to take photos, and I reckon I could expect to cover 4km/h walking in the dunes (although I have no intention of walking in them if at all possible).

As you might have expected by now (it is kind of a daily routine at the moment), at 5pm I am off to the sauna to continue my heat acclimatisation.  I may even just lie down the whole time I am in the sauna today, since I am happy to have got 2 hours of bright sunshine and warm temperatures whilst I was hiking.

No balmy 60C (140F) sauna today. A stifling 90C (194F) one instead

Well it seems my disappointment with the balmy 60C (140F) starting temperature of the sauna yesterday evening was taken to heart by the staff in the spa.  This evening when I enquired as to the temperature in the sauna they told me it was already at 80C (176F).  However, by the time I undressed and stepped inside, the thermometer was reading 90C (194F).

I coudn't believe it and thought that I would never be able to last a  full 30 minutes in that heat and doing light exercises.  I was wrong and I did manage to last it out.  I lasted a full 32 minutes in fact.  Granted that the exercises were a little lighter than yesterday evening.  Today they consisted of lying on the top bench and raising my legs and lowering them one at a time (to simulate walking), some periodic stomach crunches, air punching in slow motion and then in the final minute or two some jogging on the spot.  All this was interspersed with breaks where I just lay there and rested.  I left the jogging on the spot till last just to ensure that I could last out the session.

To be honest I cannot say that it was easy, but I am happy that I was able to cope with that temperature for that long.  This time I didn't put the towel under the door as I certainly didn't want it any hotter.  In fact the temperature was decreasing gradually whilst I was in there, so whilst I started the session at 90C (194F) I finished it at 80C (176F).

No headache or nausea in sight, so mission successful, job done, time to go home.

The masochist's mission

Today my mission was simple.  Wait until the sun decided to reveal itself from behind those conniving clouds, wait until it was sufficiently hot to make the sweat drip from my brow and run into my eyes, and then go stomping off in the sand dunes and try to cover a decent distance within my self imposed time limit of one hour.

The sun finally decided to come out in all its glory at around 2pm and that was it, I was off without a minute to spare, for those clouds have got the better of me too many times the last couple of days.  Even whilst I was leaving the hotel they were playing tricks on me, making bright sunny patches appear on the sand several hundred metres ahead of me and then causing those sunny patches to move relentlessly forward as I began to reach them.  Finally I managed to catch up with them and then I was in the hot baking sun much to my masochistic relief.

I started off at my usual pace but there was a spring in my step today so I pushed a little harder.  Soon I was chugging along like a trusty old steam train, building up speed and momentum as my engine heated up.  I realised that my previous yomps around the dunes had been pathetically slow and that I had not been testing myself to see what I was really capable of.  The pace I managed today was a pace that I would like to do during the race itself.  I was pushing myself, but at a pace that I felt I could maintain for a while.  When I looked down at my heart rate it was around 142 beats per minute, so this gives me a good idea of what I should be looking for during the race.

Now for the juicy part.  How many kilometres did I cover in those undulating dunes in the baking sun, carrying all my equipment and at my perceived race pace you may ask.  Well I can tell you with some sense of pride my friends that I covered 8.5km (5.28 miles).  Even if I don't manage that speed in the dunes on dune day, I am no longer afraid of those dunes.  Those damn dunes have a habit of striking fear into the hearts of us mortal runners who don't live next to a beach or a place where there is sand to run on.  I have run on them enough days in a row now though to appreciate that they can be conquered.  Yes they do sap your energy and yes they do cause you to run slower than normal, but put into perspective they are just another challenge in the many challenges that must be faced in the mighty battle of the MDS.

35 minutes of sauna time

Good evening mes amis.  Yesterday as you know I spent 30 minutes in the sauna doing light exercises, and struggled a little.  I was only planning on doing 30 minutes again today, but I felt fine so I increased the time to 35 minutes.  Yesterdays struggle may have been due in part to the ridulously high humidity that I created by throwing water on the rocks every few minutes, and I am after all training for a race in the desert and not the jungle so it wasn't really appropriate.

The starting temperature once again was pretty low.  A balmy 60C.  But I repeated my trick of putting the towel under the door and the temperature started to rise.  By the end of my session it was just touching 80C.  This time I didn't throw any water on the rocks at all, and it was only once the temperature hit 70C that I was really starting to feel the heat.

In terms of sauna exercises I opted for lying on my back and pretending I ws cycling with my legs.  I also did some stomach crunches.  This allowed me to remain on the top bench where it was a little hotter.  In the last few minutes of the session I stood up and did some jogging on the spot.  I wasn't exercising the whole time though as I didn't want to make my abs suffer that much or to overexert myself.

I drank about 1 litre of water whilst I was in the sauna, and now I am drinking some water with added electrolytes.  The goods new is that I don't have a headache or feel nauseous yet again.  Is it that my body is starting to adapt?  I measured my pulse very roughly whilst I was lying on the top bench for a few minutes and it semeed to be around 80 beats per minute.  I have nothing to compare that with however.

The plan tomorrow is a 1 hour jog in the heat of the day followed by another sauna session in the evening.  I have asked the staff to have the sauna ready at 70C when I arrive.  I had asked them for that yesterday too, but it seems my request was lost in translation.  Hopefully the weather tomorrow will be hot and sunny and not rainy and cloudy like today.

A big thank you to Talentis Solutions AG

Talentis Solutions AG just donated £100 towards my fundraising campaign, which is really great news.  As you know I was already over my minimum target of £9,500, but I am still happy to receive more donations.  The more that Mencap receive, the more they can do to fight hate crimes against people with learning disabilities, which is one of their current campaigns.

Talentis is, and has been, my employer for several years now, whilst I have been working physically at UBS in Opfikon.  Talentis is a major Swiss solutions provider specialised in the areas of banking, finance and insurance.  All the staff are friendly and we have several social gatherings per year.  James is the person you are most likely to deal with, and he answers your questions quickly and efficiently and puts your mind at ease.  In terms of payments they are always on time each month, and I have not had a single complaint the whole time I have been with them.  You can check out their website at http://www.talentis.biz/.

I also found out today that I will have a job at UBS to return to once I finish the Marathon des Sables.  That really puts my mind at ease in terms of where my next pay cheque will come from.  My next challenge will have to be on a slightly smaller scale though, since I will have the usual working week to contend with.  In fact I have already decided what the next challenge will be. I am going to try to do a sub 3 hour marathon.  With my current marathon prediction at around 3 hours and 4 minutes and my best marathon to date at around 3 hours and 29 minutes I am going to have some work to do, but it should be achievable.  In the meantime I can relax knowing I have a secure job to return to, and focus myself 100% on the Marathon des Sables next week.  Thanks again Talentis.

Resting heart rate of 38 beats per minute

I have been saying for some time that I believe my resting heart rate in the high 30s or low 40s, so this morning when I woke up I decided to measure it.  Luckily my heart rate monitor and chest strap were right next to the bed, so I didn't have to get out of bed in order to get them.

After attaching the chest strap I put the watch in training mode and waited a few seconds for the heart rate to be displayed.  At first it was showing 42, most likely caused by the slight exertion of reaching over to get the watch and chest strap, but after a few seconds it started going down.

For quite a while it hovered around 39, and then a couple of times it went down to 38.  A resting heart beat of 38 beats per minute is pretty damn low, but it is not the only time in my life this has ever happened.  I recall once before having a VO2 max and resting heart rate similar to now.  I was much younger back then though, so it is great to see that so far I have defied the effects of ageing through my training.  Don't tell that to the hair on my head though, which decided to start taking flight a few years ago now.

30 minutes of light exercise in the sauna

Hello again.  I just came back from the sauna at the hotel down the road.  They only turn the sauna on when someone wants to use it, so I had to wait a while for it to get up to temperature.  When I first got into the sauna it was only a balmy 60C, but at least that way I was able to adjust to it gradually as the mercury started to rise.  It was a Finnish sauna so there was the possibility of increasing the humidity by pouring water onto the hot rocks.  I figured that since the temperature at the start of my session was not that high, I would ramp up the humidity to make it feel a lot hotter.

I started to do some light exercise whilst it was still heating up.  To start with I did some stretches and then I started jogging on the spot.  Since I was the only one in there I didn't look like a crazy fool.  By the time the 15 minute timer had to be turned over and started again, the temperature was 70C.  That was more like it.  Then I noticed that there was a gap under the door where a draught was coming in, so I stuck a towel under the door to make it even hotter.  Now I was starting to feel it.  My breathing started to increase and I was feeling a little dizzy.  I chugged down a decent amount of water and stayed with it.  For a few minutes I had to just sit down and recollect myself.  It was now 80C and incredibly humid owing to my generous splashing of water on the rocks.  I saw that there were about 8 minutes left so I just sat down with my head bowed and splashed water over my head.

In the final few minutes I got to my feet once again and started jogging on the spot.  I had done it.  I had survived my first 30 minute session in the sauna without escaping to get a breather.  For tomorrow I have asked the staff to have the sauna ready for me at 5pm, and for it to be at a starting temperature of 80C.  That will be a little bit tougher to endure but Insa'Allah I will manage it and even manage to throw in a bit of jogging on the spot for good measure too.

100 minutes in the baking sun

Good afternoon.  I just came back from my heat acclimatisation run.  I set off at noon so that I would get the highest temperatures possible.  Unfortunately it is still only 27C at the moment, but later in the week it should climb over 30C.  The good thing is that there are hardly any clouds in the sky, so at least the sun cannot hide from me.

I was concerned that the temperature was a little low for my training so I put on an extra Tshirt underneath my Railriders top. That must have added a few degrees or more, and I came back with a drenched Tshirt much to my liking.

The first hour I headed off into the dunes.  The pace was comfortable but I also wanted to try to achieve a higher average speed than I did the previous days in the dunes.  In the end I managed 6.78km in an hour so 6.78km/h.  I am definitely starting to get more used to running in the sand and also at picking a better route through the dunes.

At the end of the hour I was back at the hotel and I quickly went to my room to change my shoes.  I didn't want to risk tearing my gaiters on the sharp stones of the hemada before I even start the MDS, so I used my spare running shoes.  Once they were on I headed straight back out to do some running on the rocky hemada that surrounds Merzouga and the dunes.  I found running on the hemada much easier than on the dunes, although you still need to pay careful attention where you are stepping so that you don't twist an ankle.  Some of the rocks were fist sized and it was impossible to avoid rolling your ankles slightly, but my ankes seemed not to object.  In my training back home in Zurich I  managed quite a few off road runs on dirt, gravel and snow, and that probably strengthened my ankles somewhat.

I ran for 40 minutes on the hemada and covered 6.49km, so in total I ran for 100 minutes and covered a total distance on sand and hemada of 13.27km.  The good news is that I have now been back at the hotel for over half an hour and there still seems to be no hint of a post exercise headache like the last 2 days.  Is my body finally starting to get used to the heat or was it because I added electrolytes to my water and consumed a power gel during my run?  Who knows, but if I can follow this same routine and avoid the headaches I most definitely will.

Now I can relax for a few hours and then later I will head to the neighbouring hotel for a sauna, to bump up my heat acclimatisation.  It is not as though I have much else to do out here.  Enjoy your day folks.

Incorporating the sauna into my heat acclimatisation routine

Good morning people.  Last night I went for a little wander and found that the hotel down the road has a sauna.  I have decided each day to go to the hotel and take a sauna after I have completed my 100 minutes of running in the heat.  Why on earth would I do that you may be asking.  Is 100 minutes of running in the midday heat not enough?  Well I want to be sure that I am properly heat acclimatised, and as I mentioned it has not always been that hot here since I arrived.  Despite being in the desert, there are often clouds and occasional rain showers.  I would find it tough if the temperature suddenly rockets once the race starts, and all I have experienced before that are mediocre temperatures (30C so far).

The sauna is not the ideal way to acclimatise for running in the desert, but combining it with my runs on the actual terrain and in the actual solar conditions I will experience during the race, and I am guaranteed to acclimatise well.  30 minutes of sauna time should be sufficient and I can do some stretching whilst I am in there.  Most of my UK compatriots are using either saunas or Bikram yoga to acclimatise. The richer ones may be able to afford sessions in a heat chamber at Silverstone, but for that price they could also have had a weekend in Egypt or Morocco running in the desert.  There are also some who choose to acclimatise by dressing up like the Michelin man before going out to run.  Some may even be lucky enough to get away without heat acclimatising beforehand, but a sensitive soul like me who gets headaches very easily needs to do some careful preparation to avoid feeling like crap throughout the whole race.

3 more days of sand dune running

Hi folks.  I have only just managed to get internet access again.  The tour agent was kind enough to lend me his laptop as the Wifi feature of my Iphone doesn't work anymore.  As you know I am in Merzouga and came here to do some heat acclimatisation and sand dune running.  True to my aim I have been out running in the dunes every single day.

The first day, which I already covered in my previous post, I ran 4.9km in the dunes.  That was the 23rd of March.  On the 24th of March I ran 10.61km in the dunes and then later in the day I ran another 10km on stony ground.  On the 25th March I ran 10km in the dunes and then walked for 3km in the dunes.  Finally today I managed to run 15km in the dunes and then I walked for 1.64km in the dunes.

As you can see from the above, I have been building up the distances gradually.  Each day I have tried to go out running during the hottest part of the day to get some heat acclimatisation.  The first couple of days it was not that hot, but thankfully yesterday and today it was pretty hot.  That is probably the reason why I had a headache and felt nauseous after my runs yesterday and today.  I drank the same amount of water that I will be supplied with during the MDS i.e. 1.5 litres every 10km, so it does worry me slightly that I am going to have a constant headache throughout the MDS.  I am hoping that as my body gets used to the heat more, the headaches will cease.

Running in the sand as you can imagine is pretty tough.  That is another reason for building up the distance that I run in the dunes gradually.  Your ankles and knees twist and turn in all kinds of directions, and you can never predict when the sand will give way underfoot, and in which direction it will give way.  When you are running fast down the dunes you have to be careful not to hyperextend your knee when the sand goes from soft to hard and you don't get the foot sinking that you had anticipated.

In terms of speed I have realised that dune running is pretty slow.  I have been averaging around 5 or 6km/h at best.  It obviously depends on how hard or soft the sand is, and how much up and down you have to do to get from A to B.  Here in the dunes of Merzouga there is no way to get from A to B without going constantly up and down, and some of the dunes are 150 metres high.  A flat route simply does not exist.  When I gave my average speed above, that is a pace that I can maintain with some degree of comfort.  I am sure I could cover more ground per hour if I was actually racing.

I want to try to get to the stage where I am running 21km in the dunes during the hottest part of the day.  Once I achieve that I will not try to increase the distance any further, as we are within 2 weeks of the start of the MDS and I should be starting to taper for the race.  The optimum amount of time performing moderate exercise in the heat to achieve good heat acclimatisation is 100 minutes according to the research I was reading.  Any more than that and you do not get any additional gain.

Running in the sand dunes of Erg Chebbi

Hi everyone.  I am now in Merzouga, Morocco.  I arrived here yesterday afternoon after one and a half days of driving through the desert on MDS like terrain.  The hotel is just a few hundred metres from the Erg Chebbi sand dunes, and I had my first taste of them yesterday afternoon.

After kitting up I set off in the direction of the highest sand dune I could see on the immediate horizon.  Running on the smaller sand dunes was not that tough, but as the sand dunes got higher so did the intensity of my effort.  The first kilometre took me 7 minutes but the second took me much longer.  As the slope increased it was one step forward and half a step back.  Finally on the highest sand dune I had to use both my hands and feet to scramble to the top.  I dug both hands into the sand and then moved each foot in turn.

Once at the top it was very easy to get back to the village.  Running down the sand dunes was no problem.  You just have to let your momentum carry you down and try not to fall over.  Even running on the flat was not that difficult as the sand was fairly compact.  In total I covered 4.9km in around 45 minutes.  It would have been much faster had I not tackled the highest sand dune in sight.

In terms of heat acclimatisation I am not getting the chance to do that at the moment.  Yesterday the weather was overcast with occasional showers, and today it is much the same.  The temperature is not much above 20C at a rough guess.  I really want the mercury to increase so I can experience running in the extreme heat.  If the MDS experiences weather like we are experiencing here at the moment, heat exhaustion will not be an issue.  Saying that I am sure it is going to get much hotter in the next 2 weeks.  The ideal situation for me would be crazily high temperatures before the race and lower temperatures during the race. That way my body would be able to handle the heat with ease.  So please please Lord give me some extreme heat in these coming days before the race.

Morocco here I come

Hi everyone.  Tomorrow morning I am off to Morocco.  I am taking the TGV to Paris and then from Paris  I am flying to Ouarzazate via Casablanca.  I will arrive there late evening and stay in Ouarzazate overnight.  The following day the tour agent will show me the type of terrain that will be covered in the MDS.  We will stop overnight somewhere along the way, en route to Merzouga.  After that I will be based 2 weeks in Merzouga by myself, training on the Erg Chebbi sand dunes.

I just googled the temperature in Merzouga and apparently today it is 20C.  It should be getting hotter as the week goes on.  For my own benefit I hope it gets hotter while I am there than it does during the MDS itself.

I am currently packing everything that I will need for the race and for the 2 weeks of training beforehand.  I really hope I don't forget anything, as some things would be really difficult to get once I am out there.  Probably the best idea is that I lay it all out on the bed and then go through it all again later and see if I can remember anything else I may need.

I am very excited that it is now so close, having been preparing for this for over a year now in one way or another.  In fact I have been preparing for it ever since I created this blog.  There is no going back now - Morocco here I come.

100 miles (160km) run this week

When I woke up today I knew that I only had to run 18km to achieve my goal, which was to run 100 miles (160km) this week.  I could have tried this weeks ago, but I wanted to get my base fitness as high as possible to minimise the risk of injuring myself.  In fact I did try it some time back if you recall, but towards the end of the week I was struggling and felt it was not a good idea to continue to pursue it.  I have never felt stronger than I do now though, and achieving it this week was not really a problem at all.

I ran slowly, using it as a recovery jog from my 71km run on Friday.  If anything I will feel better tomorrow rather than worse for having gone out, as it was good to get the blood flowing around and to loosen up the muscles again.  The first 10km Anny was running with me.  It is the longest she has run so far and she did very well.  Negrita was also with us, but not enjoying the run due to the fact that it started raining.  After Anny had completed her 10km, she took the bus back to the apartment with Negrita.  I then ran back to complete my 18km target.  As I was reaching the apartment I realised I would be ever so slightly short of 18km so I just did a quick loop around the nearby streets to bring the total to exactly 18km.

Anny was wearing my Suunto t3d heart rate monitor and my Suunto Food Pod Mini, whilst I was wearing my Garmin GPS watch, as I wanted to see how accurately the food pod measures the distance.  I haven't yet calibrated the device so Suunto claim that in this state it is 95% accurate.  When my Garmin GPS watch read 10km the Suunto watch was reading 10.43km so it seems that Suunto are correct in their claim.  By the time I have calibrated it, it will serve its purpose well in the MDS.

Now that I have achieved all my targets this week in terms of my longest run and my highest mileage week, I can start to taper for the race.

I just purchased the Suunto Food Pod Mini so I can know how far I have run during the MDS

Hello again everyone.  I just went out to purchase the Suunto Foot Pod Mini to go along with my Suunto heart rate monitor.  I have been a bit worried about how I was going to pace myself without knowing the distance covered and the distance left each day in the MDS.

The problem with most GPS devices is that they drain the batteries really quickly, so there is no way they would last the duration of the MDS without taking tons of spare batteries or a solar charger (which some people mentioned didn't work that well), and of course that adds extra weight to the pack.

The Suunto Foot Pod Mini on the other hand uses an accelerometer to measure the speed/ distance and hence the batteries last much longer.  The packaging states that they last for 400 hours when the Foot Pod Mini is in use.  I was wondering about the accuracy of such a device, but I read several reviews where people said that the distances are fairly accurate when they compared them with the distances shown on their GPS devices.

Again, the packaging claims that without calibration the device is 95% accurate and with calibration it is 98% accurate.  98% is good enough for me.  It doesn't have to be exact after all, but it would be helpful to know for instance that the finish line is still 10km away when it appears like it is only 2km away.  I know from the Salt flats of Uyuni in Bolivia that distances can sometimes be very deceptive.  Despite the island in the middle of the flats looking like it was only a few kilometres away it was actual over 30km away.  Imagine thinking the finish line is only 2km away and really going for it, only to discover that it is 10km away and you have no energy left and end up walking the last 8km.

I can't really think of any outstanding points that are worrying me now.  In terms of equipment I have managed to:
1) get my pack weight down to something reasonable (around 8.5kg)
2) carry extra calories than the minimum requirement in case I feel I need them for recovery
3) carry sufficient warm clothes in case I get cold at night
4) have a means to measure my heart rate and speed/ distance
5) test out the food and gels during my training

In terms of training I have managed to:
1) consistently run around 100km per week since the beginning of January, and this week I will have covered 160km
2) gain the necessary core strength for carrying the pack through a combination of Pilates and yoga
3) run both on and off road
4) run on snow (to simulate running on sand) and have 2 weeks in Morocco to run on actual sand
5) run a marathon in under 3:30 to prove to myself I can run fairly fast for long distances when need be
6) run 71km continuously without stopping
7) start the process of heat acclimatisation and have 2 weeks in Morocco before the race starts to continue the process
8) run long distances multiple days in a row
9) run with a pack containing the actual gear I will be using in the race for the last month

The remainder now is probably going to come down to mental strength and my ability to push through the pain when I have blisters and my whole body is aching and crying out for me to stop.  This is one aspect that is hard to train in advance without actually experiencing the race conditions.  I am glad at least that I have had some chance to know what it is like to have to fight not to give up, in the Marmotte cyclosportive and during my cycle trip in South America.

Last Marmotte for instance my knee was really sore (and I mean REALLY sore) early on in the race and then my cleats came lose and I didn't have the tools to put them back on.  It would have been so easy to stop right there and then, but I struggled on to the end (10 hours in total) with my feet constantly slipping around on the pedals and aggravating my knee even more.

There was also one day during the Vuelta Sudamerica bike tour when there was a ridiculously strong head wind (so much so in fact that a tent was blown right away with a sleeping bag inside it, and never seen again) and I was out front on my own with no-one to spur me on and no pack to draft from.  That day we climbed to over 4,000m high and the road was often broken and jarring my body and making my butt hurt like hell (to the point where I could barely put my weight on the saddle).  The distance was over one hundred kilometres and there were also sandy sections where it was a struggle to keep moving and where sand was being blow constantly into my face.  Less than half the group finished that stage and it would have been really easy to give up, especially when the truck came alongside me with others in it and they were trying to tempt me to give up and join them (how mean).  But I didn't give up - I was determined to complete that stage, and I did.  I hope I find this same strength of mind when I need it in the MDS in a few weeks time.

8 hours of continuous running and 71.09 kilometres (44.17 miles) covered

The aim of today was to do my longest run so far, and then from now tomorrow on to start tapering towards the race.  The furthest I had run continuously before was 50 kilometres.  The furthest that I had run/ walked was around 70 kilometres and half of that was running and half was walking.

I decided a lap of the Zurichsee was the best route to take as I knew the distance already, so if my GPS ran out of battery it would have been easy enough to calculate the remaining distance.  One lap of the Zurichsee is approximately 65km and add to that the distance from the apartment to the lake and back and you have 71km in total.

I wanted to show myself that I could run 80km (50 miles) in around 10 hours or less i.e. averaging 8km/h.  That meant each 10km needed to take me an hour and a quarter or less in order to stay on track.  I soon realised after 20km that I had set myself a very realistic target.  I didn't stop except for pee stops, to grab some water from the water fountains and once to get a bottle of water out of my backpack.  Yes I forgot to mention that I had my backpack with me.  I looked up the format of the MDS and it seems the long stage is usually on day 4, so I took some food out of my rucksack to simulate being on the fourth day of the MDS and having eaten 3 days supply of food.

In terms of sustenance I used only energy gels to keep me going.  I ate 1 Gu Roctane sachet before leaving and then at 10km, 30km and 50km I ate a normal Gu sachet and at 20km, 40km and 60km I ate 2 sachets of gel (1 Gu Roctane and 1 normal Gu).  My Garmin watch seems to think I burnt over 6,000 calories, but the energy contained in all the gels I consumed is only 1,000 calories.  My body is probably therefore in a serious calorie deficit at the moment and I should eat very soon, as well as take a generous helping of whey protein powder.

I definitely felt the limiting factor for my speed today was my muscles and not my cardiovascular system.  If I had more muscular endurance I could have pushed my heart much harder.  That may be a good thing, as in the heat my heart will be working much harder than usual, so at least I know that I have the extra capacity to handle that.  I was holding myself back a bit too, as I didn't want to get any injuries this late in the game, and I don't want to race in training.  The only niggle was in my left knee and it wasn't anything more than that i.e. a niggle.  Oh yes and in the first 20km my left calf muscle felt very tight but that loosened up later on.

All in all I am very happy with how the run went, and although the long stage in the MDS is never going to be easy at least I know it should be possible.  I could have run further today had I needed to.

Last but not least, in the last 7 days I have covered a total of 147.09km (91.4 miles).

How to follow my progress during the Marathon des Sables

Some of you have been asking how you can follow my progress throughout the MDS.  Well here goes.

On the Darbaroud website http://www.darbaroud.com/uk/html/general/aoi/uk_aoi.php there is a section entitled "LIVE".  Clicking on that will reveal a drop down menu containing the word "POSY".  If you click on that you will be shown the current results.  My race number or "dossard" will be 446.

It is also possible to send messages to me during the race that will be read out to me.  I would really appreciate this and it would really help to boost my morale.  There is information about how to do this on www.darbaroud.com/uk/indexuk.html in the section entitled "Telecommunications during MDS".

Hot yoga at a breathtaking 50C

I just finished what is if I am correct my fifth hot yoga session.  I was saying last time that my body is starting to get used to the heat and that I wasn't having any dizzy moments at all.  That changed today, but when I looked at the wall I saw a thermometer that was reading just a shade under 50C.  It definitely felt hotter than the last time.  I thought that hot yoga was done at around 40C, but 50C is very hot indeed, and I am not that likely to face higher temperatures than that in the MDS itself.

I noticed quite a lot of people in the room were finding it tough, and it is no wonder at that temperature.  Next time I am in the class I will take a look again at the thermometer and see if the room is always that hot or if it varies from class to class.  Other than that the class went well though, and now I am back at home ready to get some food and liquid inside me, take a rest and then head out for a run if I still have enough energy left.