About Marathon Des Sables

The Marathon Des Sables (MdS) is known as the toughest footrace on Earth. The distance covered is 243km's in the Sahara desert, run in 49 degrees Celsius heat while every athlete carries his or her own equipment, food etc. weighing in at around 9-13kg's.

This blog is aimed at telling my story. I will record my preparation for the MdS 2013 in detail in the hope that it will help my fellow runners.

Saturday, 25 February 2012

Running Update




Wow, it was a great running week. I clocked 61km’s (28 miles) for the week with a 23km (37,7%) long run on Friday. I added weight this week and run my long run with 4.5kg’s which is close to half the anticipated MdS weight. I was able to maintain an average of 8.3km/h with the weight during the long run. I will maintain this weight for the next six weeks, aiming to build enough strength to increase my speed to between 8.7 and 9.0km/h.

I finalised my major runs for the year with the first one coming up being the Washie 100 miler (160kms) run on the 27th of July 2012. My good old running partner, Hendrik, will be my second and will assist me along the way.


My Washie will be different to the normal Washie runs; I will be doing it with between 7 and 9kg’s of kit in preparation for the MdS. At 9kg’s the weigh is close to the MdS anticipated kit weight and this 160kms will definitely highlight areas in my training that needs some improvement. The cut off-time for the race is 26 hours which means that an average speed of 6.1km/h must be maintained. My goal is to average no less than 7.5km/h placing me at a run time of 21:25:00. There is some serious preparation that needs to be done between now and then, so hold thumbs that everything goes according to plan.

At present, I use no supplements, gels or special diets but will start to add this to my training program within the next two months. My aim is to start introducing additional energy and protein supplements, some rehydration aids and endurance foods by the time a reach a 100km (62miles) per week.

When people hear that I am doing the MdS they all ask the same question, why are you doing it? I set out to answer this very simple question which resulted in much personal reflection and lots of philosophical discussions with my wife. I decided to tell my story with this blog, and will answer that simple question, during next week.

Thank you for visiting my blog and remember to check-in to see why I am doing the MdS.

Genis

No comments:

Post a Comment