A couple of weeks ago we got to spend the day at the Royal Institute of Great Britain at this years MdS Expo, and cannot recommend the event enough. We paid a £50 deposit when we booked it back in the summer, whcih was refunded to us when we signed in at the event...so it was effectively free. On top of that we got to listen to some incredible speakers like James Cracknell, Rory Coleman and Patrick Bauer, pick up some kit at a few of the stalls, sample the ration pack food and hydration tablets, as well as a FREE official WAA MdS backpack worth £250 (which you can see modelled by myself and Zac here).
We started with an intro to the race from the Race Director Patrick Bauer, the MdS is his brain child and hearing his passion for the event and the thought and effort that goes into planning, mapping and organising a race of this magniture was pretty humbling. But also terrifying as it dawned on us quickly that we aren't far away from D-Day.
Looking around the room we were comforted by the fact that the room wasn't full of professional Ultrarunners, most people looked at a similar level of fitness and on a similar training path (i.e. slightly overweight still). We heard James Cracknell speak about a few of his adventures then some of this top tips for the MdS, including home made gaiters! I think the audience pushed their luck with the Q&A as he was eventually dragged off as he over ran by about 15 minutes. We then got to sample 800kcals of Expedition Foods chicken curry, which we decided we'll probably take with us on the race.
In between talks we had time to satisfy our urge to buy some kit, the organisers obviously being well aware that a runner and his money are easily parted when there is some shiny new kit around. There were stalls selling hydration tabs, official MdS sleeping bags, Compressport kit, legionnaire hats (Zac, right), solar chargers, head torches, the lot. We pulled ourselves away in time to listen to MdS veteran Rory Coleman share his wealth of knowledge in training tips and race advice, you could see some people panicking that their training plan was maybe not quite up to his standards!
We could go on and on about the merits of this Expo, for a first timer it is an absolute must. The speakers that you have access to is really impressive, and pretty inspiring, and we also found time to share a pint with some other runners we met on the day and hopefully found ourselves a couple of tent mates for the race. Overall well worth the £0 fee, and gave us all a bit of focus with lots to think about over the festive training period, as the countdown to race day ticks down to a terrifying 16 weeks.
(race director Patrick Bauer)
