TRAINING


Several friends persuaded me that I should do this for a charity and I felt I could pick no better cause than the Marie Curie.

Training throughout 2005 consisted of regular long runs interspersed with as many half and full marathons as I could fit in. I did the London marathon in April and followed it 6 days later with Fort William marathon. I finished both in good times and this built up confidence in my recovery stamina.
In June, I did the fairly hilly Edinburgh marathon and got a PB of 3hrs 11min. In July I retired from the police and celebrated with a family holiday in South Africa where I managed to do a few runs in the heat.
August I completed my first ultra - the 35 mile two bridges race. This was a undulating mainly cross country route and was delighted to be able to run the whole thing under 5 hours and doing the first 26.2 miles in under 3hrs 30.

I attended a very useful MDS seminar in York in November.

I started driving a taxi and by doing this in the evenings I was left with the rest of the day for training.
After Christmas 2005 I concentrated on hill runs and began carrying the back pack gradually building up weight. I felt that steep hills would be similar to running up sand dunes. I also travelled down to the coast for the occasional run on the dunes.
I teamed up a few times with 2 other Scottish guys, Ron Logan, a farmer from Galashiels and Barry Duncan, an IT engineer from West Calder who were also entered for MDS. Both appeared impressively fit.

In February I entered the 54 mile Thames Meander which was billed as a training race for MDS. It was meant to replicate the long, day 4 stage as much as possible. We had to carry our packs for the race, mine weighing around 7kilos. The route started in Reading and basically followed the Thames into London. Somehow I managed to get a bit lost north of Maidenhead and ended up doing an extra three miles. (A tad concerning that if I couldn’t follow a path beside the Thames what chance would I have crossing the Sahara Desert). I managed to run for most of the first 40 miles but found the weight of the pack very tiring. I then went into a sort of run/walk for ten miles. By then it was dark, starting to rain and very demoralising. There was no way I could run another step and had to hobble the final 6 miles. There was only 6 weeks to go till MDS and I was terrified of causing an injury. Luckily I had teamed up with another guy and we managed to give each other a great deal of encouragement. I was pushing myself to finish in time for a few pints and a curry, but on reaching the school hall at the end I could only collapse on the floor and drink some soup. The following morning we attended a Sahara School with advice from previous MDS competitors. On leaving I had a great deal of difficulty in walking and realised that I had been using totally different muscles during the run/ walk carrying the weight as opposed to normal running. Overall though, the event had been a great confidence boost as I had completed it in just over 11 hours but felt I could have gone a bit faster. I realised that on the long day 4 stage I would be doing a lot of walking, particularly by the time that it got dark and that walking poles would be of great assistance in taking the pressure off your legs. I also discovered that it was very difficult to sleep on a hard floor when sober and that I would have to practice that before leaving for Morocco.

I read in several articles that you should try and acclimatise to the heat during the 6 weeks before. I managed to obtain sponsorship from Edinburgh Leisure who gave me the use of their sauna at Warrender swimming baths. I would run to the sauna and gradually build up my time as long as bearable before running home again. The theory being that your body would be used to sweating without losing vital salts. I think it worked in theory, but unfortunately in the race there wasn’t the water to replace lost fluid. The local newspaper picked up on this and published an article with pictures of me looking stupid, fully dressed in desert gear in the sauna. This generated a fair bit of sponsorship for my charity.

I had read every single article I could find on the event and everyone’s advice seemed different. Some said to harden the skin of your feet first yet others advised against this as the skin would crack when the feet began to swell. All said to get bigger sized shoes for the swelling. One size? 2 sizes? Cotton? Lycra? What sort of gaitors? Everybody had different views of what equipment and food to take. The more I read the more confused I became.

Various medical certificates had to be obtained and I had one minor panic when my ECG had to be referred for a second opinion as it was ‘abnormal’. I was later told that this was ‘athlete’s heart’ . I was assured it had no connection with athlete’s foot and was possibly due to my extra training! It sounded really impressive to me.


Six weeks before leaving I was devastated to discover that my mother was terminally ill with cancer, and it was not certain if she would survive over April. We had a heart to heart conversation and she convinced me to run no matter what as she was taking great pride in the race and would be supporting me every step of the way. It was uncanny that she would now be using the Marie Curie facilities herself. The day before leaving she assured me that she would see me finish and I promised her that I would be back with my finisher’s medal.