Sand, Sand and More Sand?

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blogs during December.  Due to an injury my mileage was down to zero, along with my motivation.  So to get me back into the right frame of mind I thought I'd search the internet for pictures of previous races and here's the result.

These two photo's represent for me and I guess many others, what the desert is like.  Rolling dunes going on for miles and miles, orange sands, blue skies and not a tree or bush in sight. In fact, take away the thousand or so nut-case runners and it looks like you'd struggle to find a single living creature.  However....

Camel spiders are not actually spiders but apparently more closely related to the scorpion family.  When the sun comes up in the morning, these lovely creatures scuttle for shade which you can imagine is relatively scarce, unless of course it's MdS week and all of a sudden there are lots of lovely shady tents, if you're prepared to share with 8 smelly runners.

From a bit more research I also found that the more likely terrain is going to be a rocky, uneven surface which is going to make it very difficult to run without twisting an ankle, tripping or stubbing a toe. In fact smooth rolling dunes only make up about 20% of the race surface, which in some ways is good, as running in sand goes a bit like this, two steps up, one slide down, two steps up, one slide down, one step up, one slide down, one lie down, repeat.

Just to make this extreme endurance race a little more difficult the race organisers quite often add a little extra something to make sure competitors sample all the delights of the desert.  Mountains (jebels) often feature along the course.  It has been reported that in 2013 we will climb three jebels in one day.  This makes me tired just thinking about it, I guess I better start working off all that Christmas excess.

Obviously, the result of all this running on such uneven ground is some very sore feet.  The heat alone makes most peoples feet swell up by two sizes.  There's not much I can say about these pictures except, ouch!

Three months to go until the start of the race and I've never felt so excited, nervous, hopeful, doubtful, enthusiastic, apprehensive, fired up and terrified, all at the same time.


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I'm running the MdS to support the British Heart Foundation. Please take a moment to visit my sponsorship page and donate whatever you can afford. Many, many thanks
www.justgiving.com/lauranicholls2013