As you may remember from the last blog entry I wasn't too happy with my Day One performance. As a result I had a bit of a word with myself overnight and got myself sorted out ready to try and do better on Day Two. Now I know that all in all my Day One performance couldn't really be described as bad and you may wonder why I gave myself such a hard time about it. I think generally in life no-one gives me quite as hard a time as I give myself. The reason is that for me its not just the end result, it's how I get there that matters. Day One wasn't a disaster, realistically I had lost 15 - 30 minutes over where I felt I 'should' have been, which is nothing over an MDS. However I'd made errors that I should have been able to avoid and that's when I get annoyed with myself.
Anyway on to Day Two. Day Two had a fair amount of sand but we had already realised that sand was going to figure more prominently than usual in the 2016 MDS so that wasn't a surprise, however the road book suggested there was a fair amount of terrain that should be quite runnable.
The day started with a few dunes but I had decided today I would pay much more attention to my heart rate. This seemed sensible as the buckle on the strap of the monitor was wearing a hole in my back and it seemed a shame to let that happen for no benefit, so I switched my watch away from pace and distance to heart rate. I decided to keep it below 160 beats per minute which some may think of as a little fast but I was fairly happy that that was good for me in the conditions I was in. After the dunes there was some fairly flat ground which was only really interesting for its vast flatness but it allowed me to run at a reasonable pace, still monitoring my heart rate.
After CP1 and some more flattish stuff for the first time I saw camels on the MDS. Fortunately they were wild (OK they may not have been wild but they were at least peeved - although that does seem to be a camel's natural expression) and not the MDS sweeper camels. I was actually some significant distance ahead of the 'official' camels, so far ahead in fact that I caught up with Darren shortly after CP2. This worried me somewhat as he had had a great day on Day One and I thought he must be in trouble as I'd caught up with him. However nothing could be further from the truth, I was just having a much better day than my first one. We kind of ran together, our run/walk strategies were different but basically we were both doing the same overall pace. We continued together to CP3 and even stopped for a couple of pictures at the top of the El Abeth jebel shortly after the checkpoint. Very shortly after that Eric caught us up and the three of us ran together towards the finish. I was glad of the company as I wasn't feeling at my best by this point and having two of my tent mates with me kept me going faster and more consistently than I would probably have managed on my own.
We didn't quite arrive together as Darren couldn't resist a last minute sprint to pass someone he saw walking ahead of us. I definitely didn't have a sprint left in me so Eric and me crossed the line together about 30 seconds after Darren. We all went for the mint tea together and I reflected on how much better today had gone than yesterday.
I finished Day Two in 105th place moving me up to around 160th overall. It was now impossible for me to say for sure I'd lost time on Day One since if I'd run Day One faster I would quite possibly have been slower on Day Two. That's the thing about multi-day stage racing, you can't go through the results and try and add up all the time you lost to come up with the position you 'should' have finished, if you were quicker over the bit you 'should' have run faster you may well have been slower elsewhere.
Anyway I was back to where I wanted to be and most importantly I'd had a good day, could I keep that going for Day Three?...
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