All The Gear and No Idea?

Naturally, the first thing I did when I decided to take up running seriously was go shopping.

Having heard that compression clothing was the latest thing, I ordered a pair of Under Armour Core X Coldgear Tight Running Pants to try. The words tight running pants (a.k.a tights) should have been my first clue and of course what looked like a delicate pink on screen turned out to be fluro pink. Oh well nevermind, I thought trying them on in the privacy of own my living room. They felt great and fitted like a glove.

My second purchase was a gorgeous wind-stopper jacket from Brian at RunTru.

Pearl Izumi in brand and extremely lightweight, the shell I chose was fluorescent yellow or screaming yellow as described on their website. Thus it became apparent on my first outing in my new gear, that I must have envisaged running in the dark, when nobody would see me.

I’ve always said that if I marry an American I’m going to do so in Vegas dressed as an alien – green face, friends wearing foil hats… now a pair of compression tights with fluro pink threading and a screaming yellow shell may be all that’s needed to complete the scene. In the meantime, I will continue to run around Falmouth, thankful that I am not quite the slowest runner in the world and that if people are commenting I’m not hanging about to hear it!

The good news about compression tights is that they wrap around my shins and calves, quadriceps and hamstrings and make my legs feel less like legs and more like leg machinery. This may sound very odd, which of course it is, but if you follow my logic – if they feel less like legs, then I can pretend that they’re not my legs! ‘Come on legs!’ I can say as if they are outside of my will – the pathetic will that obviously wants to slow down and preferably stop. This is all part of the training. My legs need to learn to transport my upper body around 6 times per week, so that when they stop they feel like they are intended to keep going, up dunes, down dunes…

Like an athlete, a long distance runner
On a track meet spring, fall, winter, summer

(chorus)

No alcohol, no weed
No cigarettes, no E’s
No milk, no cheese
No eggs, no meat
Just meditation and peace
Red lentils, chick peas
Good workout, good sleep
Mo’ sunshine, light breeze…

Finally I have started wearing a backpack, not intentionally mind you, but because the gym closes at 9pm. Strapped into my backpack I feel like a superhero with a jet pack. I feel invincible and fast. ‘Yes!’ I say to myself. ‘I can do anything.’ I swing my arms forward, left then right. Then I look down and my legs are moving impossibly slowly and I chuckle in comic despair. ‘How am I ever going to run across the Sahara?’

Years of Amazon training may be required…

Sauna training?

Lying on the top rack of the sauna at the Falmouth Beach Hotel spa yesterday evening, I closed my eyes and imagined I was in the middle of the Sahara, running.

Yep, something like that!

Except that I wasn’t actually running, I was sitting still. I was sitting still and melting like a lollypop. I was losing the feeling of definition to my body. I was turning into liquid, my senses teased by beads of perspiration that tickled on my upper arm, right thigh and down my left breast, but not in a good way.

With my mouth closed, I could feel cool water on the roof of my mouth, condensed water. When I opened my mouth, the hot air invaded, permeated, hot air now being inside and out of me. My heart rate increased. My head seemed to expand and contract, pressure building, until my brain pounded with blood that thumped loudly in my ears. A low guttural feeling came next, of panic rising, I wanted to get out of there.

I pulled myself back to the middle of the Sahara desert.

There is no getting out of there

I calm down. I relax and the physiological symptoms disappear.

*

Back home, I threw the words ‘sauna training’ and ‘marathon’ into Google. Et voilà! I found this article by an 8-time-finisher of the (appropriately titled) Badwater Ultramarathon, which is a non-stop, 3-day, 135 mile, team event through some of the wildest terrain in Western United States in 130 degree (F) heat. 

In his article, our 8-man Arthur Webb states that the sauna serves two extremely important functions:

1. It prepares the body to deal with the blistering heat
2. It gets the body used to drinking and processing the large volume of liquids needed for survival.

Webb advocates sauna training every day, which I think is fantastic news!

When you get unexpected goose bumps at work/home or when it’s 100-degrees but feels like eighty, you are acclimated.

Perhaps training for the ‘Marathon des Sables’ isn’t going to be all pain, after all.

*

Sample four-week sauna training:

Day	Minutes in Sauna	Temperature
01	15	160
02	15	160
03	15	160
04	15	160
05	20	160
06	20	160
07	20	110 (steam)
08	25	160
09	25	160
10	25	110 (steam)
11	25	160
12	30	160
13	30	160
14	30	160
15	35	160
16	35	160
17	40	160
18	40	160
19	40	160
20	30	110 (steam)
21	45	160
22	30	170
23	40	170
24	45	170
25	30	180
26	35	110 (steam)
27	40	180
28	45	180

Check out the first 50 seconds of this video, by 2009 MdS competitor Adam CJ Park. I think ‘Fort Minor’ by Remember the Name, just became my favourite song of the day…

[Mike]
You ready? Lets go!
Yeah, for those of you who want to know what we`re all about
It`s like this y`all (c`mon!)

[Chorus]
This is ten percent luck,
Twenty percent skill,
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will,
Five percent pleasure,
Fifty percent pain,
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name!

The Deadline for Entries

I received various messages throughout the day, since today is the last day for confirming a place in the Marathon des Sables 2013.  ‘So?’ ‘What did you decide?’ Readers asked.

A competitor 2 years ago told Steve, one of the MdS organizers (after begging Steve to take his race number off him at check-point 2 on Day 3 – needless to say he didn’t!) after finishing the MdS, that he had worked it out. He said;

The MdS is 90% mental,

Steve nodded in acknowledgement of this sudden wisdom. The competitor then said,

I have also worked out what the other 10% is.

After a perfect comic pause he continued,

The other 10% is mental.

Well, Thomas A. Edison did say that ‘genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration!’ And if you haven’t guessed already, I’m going RUNNING!

Let us live so that when we die, even the undertaker will be sorry.

Mark Twain would be proud that I have been offered a place in the Marathon des Sables 2013 (that 156 miles, 6 day, running jolly across the sandpit of Northern Africa I mentioned in an earlier blog). Now all I have to do is accept the place, places being oversubscribed and in demand as they are and by Thursday, the deadline for joining the throng being the day after tomorrow.

While, according to marathon nutritionist Sunny Blende,

ultras are just eating and drinking contests with a little exercise and scenery thrown in,

the best ‘you-might-die, it’s-going-to-be-hell’ video, is this:

I recently read the bestseller ‘Born to Run’ by Christopher McDougall, which is a thoroughly good read, for runners and non-runners alike. (McDougall also has an excellent blog.)

Set in the Copper Canyon in Mexico, the book’s main character is a quasi-mythical white American, Caballo Blanco, who lives among the Tarahumara Running People. In his quest to discover the secret of long-distance running, McDougall who writes for Men’s Health magazine, became an ultra-running aficionado himself. So, how hard can it be?

“Don’t fight the trail.” Caballo called back over his shoulder. “Take what it gives you. If you have a choice between one step or two between rocks, take three.”

“Lesson two.” Caballo called. “Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don’t give a shit how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go. When you’ve practiced that so long that you forget you’re practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won’t have to worry about the last one – you get those three and you’ll be fast.”

But perhaps the best answer to my dilemma is presented in the Charles Bukowski  poem, ‘Roll the Dice,’ read here by Bono:

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.

And on that inspiring note, I’m off out for a jog. Let’s call it a little 10k taster…

They call it the toughest foot-race on earth…

Call it a fit of madness or simply mad fitness; I am becoming obsessed with a 150 miles, 6-day, cross-Sahara, ultra-marathon called the ‘Marathon des Sables.’

The Marathon des Sables UK website calls it “the equivalent of running from London to Dover, deciding not to go to France after all and running back again. In 120 degree heat. With a back pack on. And voices in your head, talking about ice cold beer.” In case the gravity of what the MdS entails, has yet to sink in, the MdS website converts miles into their bigger number sister.

The distance is about 156 miles. That’s 254 Km.
The longest stage is about 55 miles. That’s 91 Km.

But frankly, the organizers are right when they say:

” You will struggle to explain to people why you would want to do this.”

In theory, 6 days of up to 20 hours a day of running should be nothing after 73 days of 12 hours a day of rowing, but that was the Atlantic and this is the Sahara. Somehow the addition of sand makes it seem less enticing. Which would you choose, (if you had to choose) between running a desert and rowing an ocean? As Eddie Izzard would say, Cake or Death? 

Alarmingly (for me, anyway) drop-out places have become available for the 2012 race beginning in early April. Fortunately I am safe, for now. I have other commitments. I am doing an MA in Professional Writing at the University of Falmouth and early April isn’t quite the Easter holidays.

Fun facts from the MdS website:

The organisation comprises of:

100 volunteers on the course itself
• 400 support staff overall
• 120 000 liters of mineral water
• 270 Berber and Saharan tents
• 100 all-terrain vehicles
• 2 “Ecureuil” helicopter and 1 “Cessna” plane
• 3 mountain bikes
• 6 “MDS special” commercial planes
• 23 buses
• 4 camels
• 1 incinerator lorry for burning waste
• 4 quads to ensure environment and safety on race
• 52 members of medical team
• 6,5 kms of Elastoplast, 2 700 Compeed, 19 000 compresses
• 6 000 painkillers, 150 liters of disinfectant
• 1 editing bus, 5 cameras, 1 satellite image station
• 6 satellite telephones, 15 computers, fax and internet

Demographic:

30 % Previous MdS competitors
25 % UK & Ireland entrants
30 % French entrants
14 % Women
45 % Veterans
30 % In teams of three or more
10 % Walkers
90 % Alternate walking and running
14 km/hr: average maximum speed
3 km/hr: average minimum speed
Age of youngest competitor: 16
Age of oldest competitor: 78