'Gucci' bits of kit

After a couple of weeks of fairly full on training; I decided to give my legs a bit of a rest whilst back in the UK with my girls for the Christmas break. I have moved my efforts towards researching and purchasing the equipment and food. I have had little success getting free donations of the specialist desert racing kit from racekit.co.uk and up and running in Harrogate, as almost all of their customers compete in support of some charity or another. I paid a visit to Cotswold in Harrogate and was delighted to find that the manager, Stephen Metcalf, was able to provide support. Stephen offered answers and advice to many of my questions and was particularly knowledgeable on food supplements. I left the Cotswold store with Inov8 315 trail running shoes, a ¾ length Multimat self-inflating air mattress (320 gram and compresses to well under the compression sack/packaging size), 4 large sachets of energy replacement powders (mountain fuel range) and did not pay a penny! Stephen also gave me a tube of Outwell Seam Guard to test as an adhesive for attaching the Velcro for my gaiters to my new trainers – I will let you know how well this works, early indications are good, but it will need testing out on the ground in the sand. Needless to say I was extremely happy to receive Cotswold’s support, and Stephen also offered to add a link to this blog on the Harrogate store’s Facebook page. Many thanks to Stephen, his staff and Cotswold.

The meal packs that Cotswold offered were not the freeze dried variety. Hydrated meals are too heavy for the MdS, so I have had to look elsewhere for main rations. Expedition Foods have an 800cal range of freeze-dried meals which are all between 160 and 210 grams. I have filled in an application form online for sponsorship (see link in essential URLs) and hope that they will have a fresh sponsorship budget for the new year!

I spent a long time researching sleeping bags, hoping to find the holy grail of a 400 gram, 1 season bag, but was unsuccessful. I did find a 2 season bag; Gelert X-Treme Lite 600, as now advertised in my Amazon Associates link, below right. This bag offers a bit more comfort, should temperatures fall below the predicted 14 Celsius.

I've got nearly all of the mandatory items from the specified kit list, just need to find a venom pump and a mirrored piece of card!