Crossing a giant plain on the long day of the Marathon des Sables

The 52 mile long day on the Marathon des Sables  was when things really came together for some people and utterly fell apart for others.  I bashed through it with very little drama ( except a thirsty bit after the Jebel) . Part of what helped me finish when some were wiped out at CP3 and CP4 was the series of ‘Controlled Failures’ I had done in training so that I was better prepared mentally to cope with problems as they arose.

I believe that the correct kit , training and mental attitude play equal roles in success or failure in long distance multi day events ……. and about 10% luck .  By now your training should be nearly finished and you will have assembled the bulk of the kit / food and bag set up you are likely to use,  so in this short blog I’d like to challenge you to strengthen your mental resolve , Recognise when you are near the edge and feel confident to handle anything the Sahara can throw at you.

So what do I mean by ‘Controlled Failures ‘ ?

• The long day WILL involve walking / running through the night and a 50 mile yomp. I cannot stress enough how useful it is to have run through the night and experienced the zig zags at 4am.  If you have never run from dusk until dawn you must consider this in the next few weeks. If you can do the full 50 miles great , if not don’t worry , you can walk from dusk until dawn , or even walk for less distance and set off after a tiring day at work. My point here is to do a controlled failure in a safe environment , if things go badly you can call home and get picked up .  You’ll notice that the 60 lumens headtorch you chose to save weight is woefully inadequate for night running , you’ll notice a super bright headtorch helps trick your brain into keeping awake. You’ll notice that around 4am to 6am the demons in your brain try to make you quit when by sunrise everything is fine.  Its cold in the desert at night , the perfect time to tap out some decent mileage. Unless you are seriously in a bad way I dont think anyone should sleep on the course on the long day , not only do you massively affect your ranking you also sleep when its cool and move the next day in the heat , the worst of both situations.

• Go for run when you are really really tired. After a hard day at work . When you absolutely don’t want to.

• Go for a run without any water and run/walk thirsty for an hour or up to 90 mins. Dont be too far from home or water just incase , or even run thirsty with bottles of water but set yourself the challenge of not drinking from them for as long as you can .

Raidlight Gaiters lasted less than 2 hours before the zip broke in testing.

• Test your kit to the maximum. You must do 150 miles in total on your shoes to be confident they will survive the race , do a few runs with the gaiters on  , check and run in all your gear a lot so it it breaks ( and I broke a lot of gear in training) it happens in Surrey not the Sahara.  Don’t be afraid to modify gear to YOUR needs.  I broke loads of gear that I think wasn’t up to scratch in training …but as a result had zero kit dramas out there.

Raidlight Olmo bag lasted 5 days before coming apart in testing

• Do some multi day running / walking / distance and get used to running / walking day after day. If you havent done marathon distance yet then set yourself the goal to do it at least walking. If you havent done 50 miles yet but have done a marathon set yourself a goal of 35 miles walking or 50 miles.  Do it in a controlled way , so if things start to hurt you can pull out easily without any major injury.  I cant stress how tough it is for people that have never done a marathon to tackle a 52 mile long day after doing 3 days of heavy distance prior. Its during this distance session you will learn what breaks on you first , it could be your knees , your legs or your sanity. The point is next time you can pre emptively wear a knee support.

• Your MdS bag needs to be like your baby for the next 6 weeks. take it everywhere with 6.5kgs in it . Wear it whenever you can . I noticed  fit people on the MdS with abdominal strains and pains, thats their core not used to wearing the weight of the bag.  Your posture changes when running with a bag with weight in and your body needs time to adjust . As you wear it more it will become part of you and feel totally normal . Get to learn where you will put rubbish , deploy poles without taking the bag off, where you snacks will be , where your salt tabs will be etc etc until its all muscle memory and second nature.  where is your head torch ? can you change batterys in the dark on it ? etc etc  We do this in diving all the time with emergency drills.  I review the top three bags here http://airlandandsea.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/ultimate-direction-fastpack-25-review.html

• Do far more power walking than you think is necessary. it will still not be enough

• sleep on your kitchen floor in your sleeping bag and mat.  even better do it after a long run.

• use that stove you plan to cook with , make up some of the meals you are planning to eat . I made hideously funny errors last year in February including putting three times too much water in a rehydrated meal . make the errors at home not at camp.

• Think about your personal aspects of the race that you feel concerned about and devise some safe near your house ways of testing you .

Lee-Stuart Evans doing heat chamber work at Kingston Uni

• About 2 weeks from the MdS look to get some acclimatisation training done BUT and I cant stress this enough ..IT IS NOT ABOUT RUNNING LIKE AN IDIOT IN A SAUNA. Whilst this is really epic and makes for a great video for your mates on youtube its utterly pointless. Heat Acclimatisation only needs to occur in a few weeks leading up to the MdS , you only need an hour a day for it to be effective and anything above 45C is dangerous even in a controlled climate like a heat chamber at a University.   If your local heat chamber is fully booked see if you can share a session with someone else on the group by posting you are looking , sharing the session means sharing hte cost too ! .  I did , and interestingly saw someone get pulled on the first day in a heat chamber within minutes for overheating , the next day he came back with loose fitting clothing instead and made it through the whole session. Again this was a great controlled failure in a safe environment .