MDS 2009 - Keith
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
So this is it!!
This is going to be my last blog before the race, not a training run or fundraiser or fitness test but the actual 24th Marathon Des Sable. Me and the Jimmys leave for Morocco tomorrow morning. I've spent the last three days packing and unpacking my kit trying to save weight at every opportunity, bottom line, the pack still seems to weigh a ton. Here are a few pics of the contents of my pack,
This is a view of my kit such as cup for boiling water, sleeping bag, MP3 player, water bottles, Tyvek paper suit for insulation in the evenings and picture of Caitlin to give me an inspiration boost.
This is a view of my prepacked food. The packages are labelled for each day. Every day has 3 packages, breakfast, snacks and evening meals. You can also see all the Isostar electrolyte tablets I've initialled "L" for lemon and "O" for orange.
This is the clothes I'll be wearing during the actual race, Sahara hat, cooling neck scarf, lightweight adventure shirt, lycra shorts, gaitors, trainers 2x pairs of socks and 2 x buffs. The buffs act as a sweat wipe and face mask if I'm caught in a sand storm.
The journey to this point has been absolutely amazing and to put the icing on the cake today we broke the £25,000 fundraising mark. All we need to do now is complete the race. My life has been so hectic up until tonight, on Sunday it's time to step up to the plate and make all of the effort, sacrifice and support worthwhile.
You have all given me the most amazing support none more so than my wife Fiona a huge thank you for that.
Only two days ago I received 26 good luck cards from the pupils at primary 6 Forthill Primary School where I gave a talk a few weeks back. If I needed any more encouragement and inspiration I got it, the cards were awesome!
It's time for me to repay you all and bring home a finishers medal. You have my guarantee that I will give it everything I have to achieve my goal.
Thank you all and I look forward to catching up with you after the race.
Remember all our race contact details are listed below or on our home page.
Cheers
Keith
Monday, March 16, 2009
Contact in the Desert.
I'm very aware that I've asked so much of so many of you up to this point, but what follows is probably the most important request of all.
All three of us would like as much communication from the outside world as possible. Basically, each night the UK rep for the MDS will circulate e-mails sent to the British competitors from friends and family. These e-mails have a huge impact on each competitors moral and can make the difference between quitting and making it to the end.
The e-mails sent from home must be made through the official event organisers website (address below). The official event website is in French and as such can be somewhat confusing. There are strict rules about the content of each mail, no smilies, pictures etc etc only text will be allowed.
The website is
www.darbaroud.com
You can get to the message page by selecting "Contact" on the top of screen menu bar then clicking on
"Ecrire un message à un concurrent"
That should take you to the message screen.
The messages must be sent to a competitor in a set order, the descriptions below are those that should be typed into the e-mail "subject" box.
544 ANDERSON Keith GB Hot Running 544
or
543 HUGHES James GB Hot Running 543
or
542 MYLES James GB Hot Running 542
As I said this is a French site, the message sending section only opens a day or so before the race starts so there's not much to see just now.
As far as outgoing e-mails are concerned there will be e-mail facilities at each campsite however only about 15 machines for 850 competitors and as such I don't think any of us intend queuing for hours in the sun to send home an e-mail. Please do not underestimate the value of your support.
There is also a facility on the French site to monitor our finishing times at the end of each stage. Usually they are a few hours behind in updating the times so don't panic if our names don't appear til the next day.
You can find that by going to the Darbaroud home page selecting the "Marathon Des Sables" menu from the top menu bar, highlighting the "En Direct" button and selecting "List des participants" this will open a new screen that you can type in our names and numbers to see our timings.
I'm aware that there is an English translation for this site but apparently it is temperamental as such it is safer to persevere with the French one.
Regards
Keith
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Inspiration!
Those of you who have followed our journey for the last two years will know that the three of us are highly motivated and enthusiastic when it comes to this project. However, I have to concede that since about November last year I have become increasingly more impatient with the length of time that our project has been going for. I just cannot wait to get to the desert and get on with it. So with the university projects finished, with all the ultra-marathon training completed and with the vast majority of my kit now purchased my motivation and enthusiasm was beginning to sag slightly.
That was until about 11:57 hrs on Friday 13th February 2009. In the blink of an eye my life was turned on it's head and my sense of pride, excitement, joy and elation was sent into orbit......
Welcome Caitlin Anderson!!!
Clearly I'm biased, but she is a beautiful, healthy, bouncing baby girl who at 8lbs 12oz is certainly a chip off the old block.
It's fair to say I haven't stopped smiling since, and if I needed a kick in the ass and a bit of motivation and inspiration, watching my wife go through the whole process and provide our family with such an amazing addition replenished my reserves and then some.
Since the end of the university tests, which have been invaluable, my training to say the least has been erratic obviously due to the distractions of our first born. I don't feel too concerned about this as the hard graft has been done and the only things left to do is to finalise my kit choice and keep my legs ticking over.
About a fortnight ago Seamus and I did our last long run, a marathon around Dundee with back packs on. We were travelling more at the MDS pace and stopped frequently to eat and drink, lomping round in 4hrs 45mins.
I've been for the compulsory Electrocardiogram, I've had Velcro attached to my trainers so I can attach my gaiters to them. I've decided on and purchased the majority of my food, and all that’s left is to see if I can shoe horn it all in to my back pack.
As an example of a days menu I'll be surviving on,
Breakfast :- Super noodles - 1 packet of noodles blitzed in a blender to powder with a lightly crushed packet of noodles added on top with added beef jerky.
Snacks while running :- Skittles, salt and pepper cashew nuts, pork scratchings, "Mule" energy bars.
Evening meal:- Expedition dried main meal(e.g. Chicken Korma, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Spicy Mince and Rice etc etc)
Snacks to supplement main meal:- Bovril cube drink, mixed flavour herbal T-bags, sachet of Cadburys hot chocolate.
Energy drinks etc :- Isostar energy drink for use while running.
Isostar recovery chocolate milk drink for use immediately after
running.
With this menu there are sufficient varieties of flavour options to give my palate something to think about.
It will total about 3000 calories per day, which seems a lot, however I'll probably burn in excess of 8000 calories on each stage!!!
I will shortly be posting details of how you, as our supporters, can send messages to us in the desert, please do not underestimate the value of these messages. There will be nothing more valuable to us in that environment than reading a message of support from our friends, family and loved ones each day. I'll mention now that the messages have to flow a very simple format and as such ONLY TEXT is allowed, no pictures/smilies/etc are permitted to be sent. However all the details will follow on a further blog.
I would like to draw your attention to our sponsor page on the Just Giving website. You will see that with one last push we are likely to reach our fundraising goal as well, absolutely amazing!!. So all that's left to do now is drag ourselves across 150miles of desert..... should be easy shouldn't it??