At first glance this seemed to me like a pretty harmless question, one not to get worried about at all and certainly not one that when I answered with “nothing” would lead me to being signed up to trudge around the desert, up and down sand dunes in the searing Saharan heat, with every single thing that I need for the week in either a rucksack on my back or fashionable and functional bumbag on my front. Nevertheless, somehow this is exactly what myself, my 3 team mates and about 1,300 other competitors will be doing from April 8th until April 18th next year.
Since signing up for the toughest foot race on earth and having never run a marathon before, or for that matter anything further than about 1500m when at school, I have been frantically scouring the internet for any and all information that will help us through it. The first thing that I discovered is that most competitors in the Marathon des Sables weigh about half of each of us... Given that it is fair to say that 3 out of the 4 of us are definitely built for comfort, not speed and certainly not endurance we are, over the course of the next 8 months, going to have to shift some serious timber in order to get ourselves “race ready”. With that being said training has commenced. Although when I say training what I really mean is shopping as the first thing we have all done is head down to our local running shop, http://www.profeet.co.uk/, and spend a small fortune on new kit so that while none of us can really claim to be runners, we will at least look the part!
And so now down to the real business. None of us are under any illusions on how tough this is going to be but we are all really excited about the challenges ahead and are sure that we will have more than our fair share of tales to tell by the time we cross the finish line! So with that being said it’s time for me to strap on my new wheels and plod my way back home.
On your marks, get set, GO!!!
