Time to Get Serious

Yesterday was a landmark date in MdS preparations - exactly 6 months till we fly out to Morocco. With that in mind a structured training programme is now underway. Previously it had been fitting in a training run whenever I had a spot of spare time plus the odd marathon here and there. Now I must make time so it's a lot of early rises with training having to take place before work and weekend mornings so that I can still devote enough time to family life.

Although the race itself will be 150 miles in a week, I don't intend to go anywhere near that in training. 10 hours a week has been allocated for running and an hour for upper body weights. Only the long Sunday session will be with a pack. With early mornings over the next 6 months lacking in daylight and abundant in un-Sahara like weather, some running will be on the treadmill in the work's gym. I've provisionally been given permission to put heaters in there as well to get some form of acclimation training done.

Kit and menu wise I am now settled on what will be going so that is one less thing to take up time. A bit of fine tuning in the packing process is all that remains there.

The Marrakech trip at the beginning of March has now been booked so we are looking forward to 2 good, long training days there in the sort of environment we can expect one month later. The heat still won't be up in the 30s and 40s but we'll get a good idea of some of the kind of running surfaces we can expect to encounter in the event.

An article is due in The Daily Post in the next couple of days. We met up with their photographer yesterday who put us in all manner of embarrassing poses so it's with some trepidation that I look forward to seeing the article. If there's a web link I'll stick that on here in due course.

Fundraising is going well for the charity. I've almost made it to £700, which is 14% of the target. Corporate support on the other hand is still at £0. I'm very disappointed in the lack of interest in what is a global event. I'll have a good, hard look at the marketing techniques I've used and work out how I can do better and hopefully nail something before Christmas. Otherwise I'm going to have to get a paper round.

So now it's train, train, train and count down the days to the start. I'm looking forward to the training even if it is going to be cold and dark a lot of the time. It's unlikely that anyone will see me at that time in the morning but if you do, give us a wave!