The gravity of the situation dawns on me!

It’s 7 (& a half) weeks to go until Kalahari Augrabies Extreme Marathon, and I’ve fallen off the wagon. I could blame work, actually I will blame work as I was cracking along great guns until this whole help out in Edinburgh for a few weeks turned permanent move came up; and that has thrown a spanner in the works. Really, it has! Longer hours, mentally & physically challenging and draining and extended travel by train has caused my weekly mileage to plummet. I was working up well to maintain 60-70 mile weeks, ready to start pushing that to the 100 mark a few times, but now over the last 3 weeks I’ve been lucky to hit 40! Not ideal preparations. I have signed up for crossfit, and I’ve been 3 times (over 3 weeks)….the problem with a new form of exercise is the serious muscle pain afterwards (DOMS). Last week after a monster ‘Leg O’clock’ session of squats I couldn’t move for 3 days! I think I’m thorough the worst of it now though. I did manage to get a couple of runs in and even enthusiastically went via Morrison’s to stock up on 5kg of rice for some weighted bag training (finished with 2 miles if that which was a real killer). I also managed to get into the steam room for one session, 10 mins followed by 5 mins, which was long enough to reduce me to a sweating, trembling mess.  I’ve had a nice relaxing bank holiday weekend, getting in a 15 miler and a 6 miler in Formby through the sand dunes (which was a wake up call in itself), so feeling ready and raring to go. The final purchases have been made for the event, including food. Thanks Mountain House and Expedition Foods for your sponsorship discounts, it certainly helped, and look forward to giving some feedback on the products soon. The backpack (Raidlight Runner-R-Light 30L from Racekit) can be filled once this all arrives this week and we can start practising with our ‘dry’ pack weight on. I’ve tried out my new New Balance Leadville’s, see my review here, ready for the big event and all my clothing is tried & tested too. I’m scared, I’m worried and very mindful that 7 weeks is not long, but still long enough. It’s now or never. I’ve got a great level of fitness, but I need to push on now for a good 5-6 weeks, getting back to LSR (long slow runs) and B2B’s (back to backs) regardless of time constraints or energy levels, there’s nothing wrong with running late into the night or getting up extra early right? The Kalahari desert won’t forgive! And back to better eating, get into my crossfit for my 2 sessions each week, and start up this dreaded Bikram Yoga. I say dreaded as for one I’m not a yoga fan and two, the heat element! My slackness in training has meant I had nothing to blog about, hence the nervous, panicky blog today! I promise to you and myself that I will be better!