The Final Countdown...

Before I go any further with this blog entry I will apologise in advance if its even less coherent than usual. Hopefully you will understand that with barely a week to go until I fly to Morocco I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment! however given the level of support I've had from some of the readers of my blog I feel it would be wrong to simply abandon you now - anyway I promised I'd tell you about Fuerteventura...

So what is there to tell about Fuerteventura? Well the journey there went fairly smoothly - apart from having to queue up twice to drop our bags off as we were 'too early' the first time! You can book an airport lounge for three hours but Easyjet won't take your bag until two and a half hours before the flight departs... Anyway as we'd been to Feurteventura before we knew exactly what we were doing and where we were going this time - which is why it only took two attempts to get out of the airport car park. We had asked the hotel for a room a near as possible to the same as the one we stayed in before - they obliged by giving us the room next door to the one we stayed in before. This was only slightly disconcerting as it was identical but a mirror image. However we coped and even more surprisingly didn't ever try and get in the wrong room.

As I like to be prepared for the 'worst case scenario' I decided I would try my full MdS kit on the sand dunes on day one. The reasoning being that if I injured myself, contracted the plague or got arrested and didn't run again then at least I would have fulfilled one aim of the trip (I'm not calling it a holiday - no matter how many cocktails I had). A 16 mile run over the dunes left me with no sand in my shoes and, whilst I still wasn't sure it was worth the money, the X-bionic clothing seemed to be comfortable and wicked sweat away very competently. I did get a blister on the arch of my foot due to my new shoes needing a little wearing in however it was annoying rather than debilitating so I still considered the test an unqualified success.

 Whilst looking for running routes in Fuerteventura on the web, I had discovered that there was an allegedly well marked path from Corralejo (where we were staying) all the way down the island to Morro Jable in the south. It also passed through the volcanoes near Corralejo, which we hadn't got round to visiting on our previous trip. So for the day two  run a jog out to the volcanoes, a bit of a walk/jog around and up them, and around the general area for a bit of a sightseeing expedition all sounded like quite a nice idea. Sharon wisely decided she would go back to the hotel after this and leave me to improvise a slightly longer run. I followed GR131 (the path) to the next town, Lajares, and - rather than turn round and go back - I had this vague idea that I could run to the next town on the coast, El Cortillo, from where I had run to Corralejo on my previous trip. This was a fine idea except that El Cortillo was further away than I expected it to be and hence by the time I returned to the hotel I had run 33 miles since I'd left it that morning. As a result I decided that a quick 10 miles before breakfast would do for the next day and I'd have the rest of the day off.

The trip to the volcanoes and on to Lajares, had shown me that there was another way back to Corralejo round the other side of the volcanoes, which opened up the possibility of if not a circular route then at least one that wasn't simply there and back. By being a bit vague about how far it was and with the promise of a Coke when we got to Lajares I persuaded Sharon that we were going to run this together. I really enjoyed it, Sharon enjoyed the Coke and she didn't kill me so I think she was secretly very pleased to find she could run 17 miles in a day and actually enjoy at least some of it!

By now I had slightly revised my training plan and thought I was going to start reducing the mileage as the trip progressed, however I still had 3 fairly hard runs planned...

The first plan was to follow GR131 a bit further. As I'd run the section to Lajares a couple of times Sharon dropped me there and agreed to pick me up a few hours later at Tefia, around 18 miles further down the trail. Obviously I got lost but it wasn't entirely my fault - in my eyes anyway. I was very keen to avoid three large dogs that were barking at me noisily - so keen in fact that I didn't stop to wonder if the path they were on was the one I should have taken... 

Anyway after an unscheduled tour of Villa Verde I found the road to La Oliva where I was able to pick up GR131 again. The second detour doesn't count as lost because I knew I was going the wrong way, it was just that the arrow painted on the lamppost could be construed as pointing in any direction but the one I was meant to go. On my third trip back to said lamppost a helpful local pointed me in the right direction (and told me how to pronounce Tefia - Te-FEE-a, apparently).

From there on it was all fairly straightforward, I had some incredible open countryside between the mountains to run in, often without any sign (apart from the trail) of civilisation. I only had one dog incident on the way and met up with Sharon about half an hour later than I said I would in Tefia - which doesn't even appear to have a shop. Twenty miles for the day and one of the best days running I've had in a long while.

The next day was back to the dunes for the ultimate kit test! I had been running so far with my pack slightly weighted with two litres of water (which came in very handy on my 33 mile run!). Today I was going with 6 litres for a total pack weight of around 7kg plus a litre and a half of water in my drinking bottles. This was about what I expect my starting weight on Day One of the MdS to be. Full MdS clothing was worn and a 16 mile dune and beach run undertaken to really test out my equipment and get a feel for what I was in for on the MdS. The result of this run was that I may need to consider putting some tape on my back to avoid  rucksack rubbing - although better weight distribution may help - its hard to 'distribute' three bottles of water in a pack. It also made me more determined than ever that my pack will be as light as I can make it...

The last big 'effort' run would be a jog/stagger/walk to the top of Pico de la Zarza, the highest point on Fuerteventura. This was a challenging day, although the biggest challenge was finding the start of the path! Eventually we found our way to the start and set off up. The climb varied from 'joggable' to 'I'm going to walk this bit' and took a fairly long route to the summit through far more greenery than is found on the more northerly parts of Fuerteventura. All in all a nice climb - even if the top was in cloud and so we had no views. Predictably the trip down was quite a bit quicker and we had time to see the sights of Morro Jable before we went back to Corralejo. For anyone that remembers my blog post about my previous Fuerteventura trip, yes, some of those sights were German sausage!

My final runs were along the coast to El Cortillo and another early morning run so we could relax on our last day. In nine days I ran nearly 147 miles, got a sun tan and gained a lot of confidence in my kit.

Since then I've not run too much as I managed to bring a cold back with me - I still reckon its a better souvenir than a wicker donkey though. The last of my food should arrive tomorrow, I'm intending to pay a visit to the lovely people at Racekit over the weekend for a few last odds and ends and then I should be ready! My main preoccupation at the moment is heat acclimatisation - the general consensus is that  it is a very good thing. I don't have the time to go to a proper heat chamber, however a few heaters and an exercise bike have allowed me to turn the bathroom into a forty degree plus torture chamber that should serve the purpose and allow me to get nicely acclimatised.

So here we are! Barely a week to go until I leave. Hopefully I will have time to write one last short entry before I go but for now I'm off to decide how much toilet paper I will need....

St. Peter's Way Ultra

Those of you that have followed my journey since last October will know my first ultra-marathon was an epic two day affair around the coast of Essex, the Saltmarsh 75. It seemed appropriate then that my final ultra-marathon before the MdS would also be in Essex. The event was to be the St. Peter's Way Ultra (you might have guessed that from the title of the blog post), which finishes at St. Peter's Chapel near Bradwell-on-Sea. This was also nice too as the Saltmarsh 75 passed St. Peter's Chapel and it was at this point that I entered new territory in terms of running distance on the Saltmarsh as I went past 26.2 miles.

The St. Peter's Way Ultra would also be my longest ever single run, as it was claimed to be 45 miles. The main reason for me running this event was as a practice run for the MdS 'Long Day' and so I decided to do it as close to MdS style as possible, I took my own food based on my current MdS food list for Day 4 - including a sachet of the infamous 'Peronin' - and weighted my pack to 4.5kg, roughly what I would expect it to weigh by that point in the MdS. Of course there were some things I couldn't quite simulate - early March in Essex was always going to be colder than early April in the Sahara, and it wasn't quite as dry underfoot as I'm expecting in Morocco either. However on the plus side the mud would at least give my legs a good workout and help prepare them for trudging through the sand dunes.

Anyway Ian Brazier, who first appeared in my blog as the anonymous 'Tent Man' on Day One of the Saltmarsh 75, was 'tail running' for the event. For those that don't know it means it was his job - along with Darren Coates, who used to have a reputation as the most often lost ultra-runner in Essex until I took up ultras - to run at the back of the field to keep everyone inside the cut-off time and make sure that no one is unaccounted for. It's actually quite a tough job as you can't run at your pace and it was fairly certain they would finish well after dark. People like me that just go out and run ultras should be very grateful to people like Ian and Darren and all the checkpoint crews and marshals as they are usually volunteers that have given up their time so we can have a bit of fun - and I am, which is why I always try and give them a mention in my blogs. Ian had kindly agreed a to give me a lift to the start in Chipping Ongar and so at 6:30 on a Sunday morning I piled myself, my pack and some clean clothes for the end into his car and soon found myself in slightly damp car park next to Chipping Ongar library. I registered, put the tag on my drop bag and pinned my number on. At XNRG events I pin my number onto my pack but Challenge Running - the organisers of the SPW Ultra - prefer you to have your number on your front to make life a bit easier for the marshals as you come into checkpoints. My philosophy is simple, if you don't like the rules don't enter the event and so I had no problem with the concept of putting my number on my front. The practice was slightly more challenging... I didn't want to put pins through my waterproof obviously, I didn't want to pin it to my top because then I'd have to open my jacket at each checkpoint which would involve undoing my pack straps, so I went for the popular option of pinning it to my running tights. By the third attempt it was the right way up and not pinned to my leg so I decided to quit while I was ahead.

Earlier in the week I had had some communication via Facebook with a couple of fellow MdS'ers that would be at SPW. I decided to seek them out - quite easy as they had the 'official' MdS pack made by WAA. Ollie and Rory turned out to be a couple of students at Edinburgh University  but from the Essex/Suffolk area. They are really nice enthusiastic guys and very excited as this was their first ultra. They also had a combined age less than mine...

After a short briefing and pep talk we were off! After a little while I found myself running in a group of very entertaining people, none of whose names I caught apart from Ollie and Rory. Slightly ahead I spotted a man carrying a very full Raidlight pack with twin water bottles on the front. I caught up with him and, as my almost Sherlock Holmes-like powers of deduction had lead me to surmise, he confirmed he too was running MdS 2014 and he was called Scott. I should make it clear I had only deduced the MdS bit, Sherlock Holmes may have been able to work out he was called Scott but that's beyond me, I only do elementary deduction. We all trailed through the mud together and most of us mostly went the right way.

At Checkpoint Two, Rory and Ollie decided to have a five minute stop. I decided to break out the Peronin and see what that tasted like. With the help of one of the many very helpful marshals I managed to get it into my bottle and she even shook it up for me. As I was ready to leave I set out on my own - possibly a mistake as I was now entirely responsible for my own navigation and regular readers will know that's not a good thing... Actually I quite enjoyed having to find my own way and even stopped to photograph mud, a quick 'selfie' and a vineyard. Of course navigation was helped by the fact that Kevin, another great member of the ultra-running community, had sent me a link to the GPS file from his previous years run after I had failed to download the one provided by the organisers to my watch - a combination of my ineptitude and an old GPS device I think, nothing actually wrong with the organisers file. Anyway the main thing was that I now had no excuse for straying off course...

By now I was quite enjoying myself, the weather was good, my feet couldn't get any more wet and muddy so that was OK, and even the Peronin wasn't too revolting - in fact the nutrition was working out fairly well.  By checkpoint 4 with over 30 miles done I was feeling quietly confident - I wasn't going to get a great time as 4.5kg on my back and an often slippery running surface (did I mention it was muddy?) would prevent that, but I was confident of finishing in fairly good order. I was even happier when I was told I only had 8.2 miles to go! After correcting for the section where I'd accidentally switched my watch off this meant that according to me I'd cover less than 43 miles - the first time I've ever done less than the advertised distance for an ultra. I was so impressed I tried to eat a bar to celebrate. Numb fingers and plastic wrappers don't really go together so once again I was grateful for the assistance of one of the marshals who kindly unwrapped said bar for me - at least cold fingers shouldn't be a problem on the MdS.

Of course I couldn't complete an ultra with no diversions, even with a GPS route, and this one was no exception. The instructions were to run across the field and go down the left hand side of the ditch. The GPS did tell me I was off course but I ignored it as obviously there is some leeway simply crossing a field - until you realise you have ended up at the other side very much on the right hand side of the ditch, which is also now in front of you. New instruction to self - run back following ditch until you can get onto the other side of it...

After that however even I couldn't get lost as it was a run down to the sea wall and a revisit of a very small part of the Saltmarsh 75 route up to St. Peter's Chapel and the finish. This part of the run was fantastic as I could see the finish and had a very strong tailwind pushing me along. I completed the event in 8 hours 50 minutes and ran 42.5 miles, which got me 37th place. I did it with my MdS pack fuelled by my MdS food,  and so all in all a good run and a good confidence boost. I was also very pleased to see Scott come in only 10 minutes behind me (and he had 7kg in his pack) followed by Ollie and Rory a further 20 minutes behind - a good day for all the 2014 MdS'ers I think!

As I said earlier I like to acknowledge the efforts of the organisers and the volunteers at these events so I'd like to say thanks to Lindley Chambers and all at Challenge Running plus the army of volunteers for a very well organised and extremely friendly event. Challenge Running specialise in events around Hertfordshire and Essex so I hope to run some more of their races after the MdS, speaking of which....

It's less than 5 weeks until I get onto the plane to Morocco! Am I ready? I think I am! I've got my kit, I'm in good shape and I've got 10 days in Fuerteventura to check everything out in some sand and hopefully start acclimatising. My next blog entry will tell you how I get on in Fuerteventura and may well be the last chapter of my journey...