Trying to Excel

As anyone that reads my blog regularly (Hi Sam) will know I try to have a vague theme for each of my posts. Something that has started to figure more and more in my preparation is spreadsheets, hence the blog title (if you are viewing this on an iPad or if you use Open Office it may have been lost on you - sorry, its a Microsoft thing). I will say very quickly thisisn'tanarticleaboutspreadsheets. hopefully that was quickly enough to avoid losing readers - I don't have enough of you to lose any this early in the ramble. However my training, my body weight and my equipment list - including food - is now all on various spreadsheets.

My main preoccupation at the moment is weight - mine and my pack's. Why am I interested in weight? Well as I may have mentioned in a previous blog (or I may not - can't remember) the rule of thumb is 1 kcal/km/kg of body weight. We have been told that this years MdS will be over 224 km of Saharan splendour ( also we've been told - 'the first stages will be surprising in terms of difficulty and distance' but we'll worry about that later). So every kilo I'm overweight is 224 kcal more I'm going to need. I think its fair to assume the same applies to my pack weight so every kilo I pack over the maximum is another 224 kcal I'm going to consume. If we look at it the other way round it gets even worse. My target calorific density for my food is a minimum of 3.5 kcal/g. This will make each days food weight 571 g. At 3.5 kcal/g every kg I carry in excess flab or unnecessary kit could be 3500 kcal of food - that's a a lot of food!

While we are talking about food, my food plans are probably the least formed part of my preparation. I've tried the original plan of a 'Peperami and cereal bar' diet and I've come to the conclusion (which everyone probably arrived at when I first suggested it) that, whilst I could survive on it, the lack of variety would probably seriously curtail my appetite and lead to a rapid decline and possibly a DNF. DNF (Did Not Finish, if you were wondering) is not an option and so food plans are changing. I still don't want to take a stove but I have been told that freeze dried (not dehydrated) food can be rehydrated in lukewarm water and heated in the sun. As I often eat food when its lukewarm (or even cold the following morning) I think this may be more palatable than processed meat and compressed rabbit food. However I will admit that the two freeze dried meals I've bought to experiment with remain unopened in the cupboard...

Apart from food and weights I also have a spreadsheet with my training plan on it. So far I haven't really had a plan as such, just some vague idea that doing a bit of running was a good idea. The reason for a plan is two fold, firstly it allows me to keep track of the amount and type of training I'm doing each week. This should help avoid over-training and (more likely) stop me from slacking off too much. For each week I have the planned activity and the actual. I don't really mind if they don't match day to day but it keeps track of the amount and type of training each week and the total mileage. My current 'plan' has two 'effort' sessions per week - one tempo run and one hill session, two long runs - with rucksack, on consecutive days, and a couple of easy runs. This gives me one day off per week. Every third week is similar but the long runs are shorter, possibly have two days off, and the total mileage is less. A 'standard' week is aiming for around 60-70 miles, down to 30-40 on an 'easy' week. The second reason for having a plan over Christmas is that I can rearrange it to fit in Christmas events while still making sure I do the required training.

Now its time to worry about 'the first stages will be surprising in terms of difficulty and distance'. I've done a few long runs with around 6 kg of pack weight and its hard - its also over 2 kg less than my pack is likely to be on the start line (6.5 kg minimum pack weight, 1.5 kg of water and a flare). In the past the first stage of the MdS has often been a relatively (compared to later stages anyway) gentle introduction to the Desert. Earlier in the blog I suggested I'd have something over 500g of food per day so by Day 2 my pack weight will already be reduced. If its going to be 'surprising' from Day 1 I really don't want to be carrying any excess weight, either on me or the pack. The only exception is the camera - sorry all you ultra-minimalists but I want photos!

My method of weighing my pack is to weigh myself with and without the pack and work out the difference. The reason for doing it this way is that it avoids trying to balance the pack on the bathroom scales. It also showed me that with a 6 kg pack at the end of my run I was 70 kg. Its only a few years ago since I was running at that body weight so why is it so much harder with a pack? I guess the reason is that when its body weight you 'train' with it all day every day, whereas the pack is an occasional addition and hence my muscles aren't used to it - maybe I should put on 8 kilos and then crash diet just before the MdS - although that may be the worst training plan ever invented... 

Speaking of madcap training ideas - another one of Rory Coleman's suggestions at the Druids' Challenge was to do a mini-MdS of 5 consecutive 20 mile days over the Christmas break. A truly ludicrous idea - so why have I entered 'The Festive Frolic' a 30 mile navigational extravaganza on the 27th of December with four 20 mile days pencilled in afterwards on my training plan?... Spreadsheets, nothing but trouble...

Anyway in case this is my last blog entry before Christmas I would like to wish you all a very, very happy Christmas and hope you will rejoin my adventures in a few weeks time as the Big Day draws ever closer...