My Legendary Supporters!

Arizona Residents	Dan Klecker	J Swinglehurst
Traksbak	Chris Carmichael	Chris Vallis
Kaplan	R Byrne	John Bennett
BRIG D A HARGREAVES	Richard O'sullivan	Dale Nunn
Julie, Dave & Heidi Skuce	DR G C MITCHELL	Lina Eid
Hamza Kuraishi	Carl Shead	£4557.78
anonymous	Selina Austin
Adrian Williams	D Wilson
Robert Lydon	James W Pressly
Owen Finnie	Stephen Brennan
Susan & Al Carey	Adrian Campbell-Black
Al & Elana McDermott	Fred Matthews
Chris Flannery	Shayne Jackson
Dave Disi	Craig W Pond-Barrett
Matt Winn	Stuart Birkwood
John Robertson	Suzanne Longson
Samuel McElreavey	Peter Lewis
Robert J Murray	Emad
Paul Tolley	Ian & Rosie Orr
Peter Bush	Feet First
Christopher Watters	Pauline Harris
Sue & Al Carey	Damian Austin
Debbie Edgar	Chris Fogarty
Sarah Platt	David Hardy
Rachael Challiner	M Richardson
John Forster	Jim Hardy
J Clarke	Daniel Walker
Mr C F Hinton	MF Rowlinson
Michelle L Carey	Sally Baker

To maintain people's modesty; I have omitted individual donation amounts, but in recognition of the extremely generous; I have awarded Gold Silver and Bronze status to the biggest donors and sponsors. I am humbled by your generosity and hope to see more and more in the days running up to the event and hope that the blog posts I send from the race will motivate many more.

If you haven't already made a donation; please take the opportunity to click the donate button at the top right of the page and fill out the form with your credit card or Paypal details. There is an option at the foot of the form to support a particular event; choose either of the two that relate to my challenge.

If you've done your bit already or you want to do more; please forward the web address for this page to all of your email contacts and social networking 'friends' and give them some encouragement to donate too. Also if you work for a big company or know anyone big in business; send the details their way and see if you can net me some corporate love!

I also have outstanding collections from the employees of GMC in Haverhill, the wider Carey family in Harrogate, and the Riyadh Caledonian Society, which will send me over £5,000. I am also working in conjunction with 'The One-O-Four' restaurant in Yarm to put on a benefit event on 10 June, which should raise another £2,500 - details to follow.

Many thanks again to everyone that has given so far. This means a lot to Jim's friends and family as well as to me.

Last Hard Weekend



Warm up: get down there!

With Iain now back in the UK until MdS; would I be able to motivate myself to get out of the compound and hit the desert on my own? It took until about 2pm on the Thursday, but I got myself loaded up into the Landcruiser for a trip down to the Escarpment to the South of Riyadh. I have wanted to go for a run down there since spending a few days driving back and forth whilst observing acceptance tests for a new piece of Guard equipment, but could never talk any of my training partners into making the trip.

Mp3 player's down here somewhere



I drove off the motorway just as it starts to carve its way deep into the rock, and followed the track that runs across the top of the phenomenal feature for just under a kilometre and parked behind a man-made burm just a few yards from the edge of a huge re-entrant. On taking in the spectacular view I decided that the re-entrant was just about climbable and thought that it would make a good warm up. It was a cool day and dust caused visibility to be low, so I took the opportunity to try out my new Buff (sporting a nice St Andrews flag pattern, as I have been sponsored by the Riyadh Caledonian Society).

It took me 45 minutes to get down and back up, and I was certainly warm by the time I’d finished the ascent. The rock formations and views in all directions were beautiful and I had to resist the temptation to get the camera out every few steps. On getting back to the car I found that my mp3 player had gone missing in action, which means having to buy a new one, but more annoyingly; having to compile a whole new playlist.

Your friendly neighbourhood 'pest-man'

I set off along the top of the escarpment with an aim of running for about an hour around the edge and then heading back to the car by the shortest route along the track. The edge is by no means straight and there are many re-entrants and crags hidden from view, so there was a lot of direction changing and climbing involved, but it put some serious energy through my legs and toughened up my ankles somewhat. The ground was unimaginably rough, but I tried to run as much of it as possible, only falling over once (Iain would be amazed!). The panoramas just got better and better, with the dust adding to great effect.

Have to admit; it gave me the willies walking over that!

I wanted to get across to the most prominent outcrop within view, but the hidden re-entrants meant having to box out a considerable distance, and even then I had to go out further and climb up and down some cheeky valleys. Eventually I made it around and was rewarded with a stunning walk across a bridge of rock, to what felt like a floating island that had 300 metre drop-offs 300° around. Running back was somewhat less interesting!

After enjoying a night of the ‘Red Hot Chilli Pipers’ at Salwa Compound, I awoke for another day’s outdoor training on the South side of Ban Ban Sands off the Qassim Road. I had the honour of training with Mo; Riyadh Road Runners' superstar, and MdS veteran (placing 59^th). We ran around 14km to the East across fairly flat and uninteresting plain, Mo will have covered a much greater distance as he was having to do ‘runaways’ to keep his engine firing, as my pace wasn’t quite cutting it for him! Our destination was the ‘Mountain of Madness’, a sombre looking lone sand dune that erupts from the otherwise flat plain. This feature is used by Red Bull for its extreme hill-climbing events, where customised off-road vehicles are thrashed up the steepest of slopes to try and reach the summit. The sand was still damp from some rare rain that had fallen in the previous days. Mo and I tackled the dune along its western ridge, which was a mistake, as our feet slipped off either side – lesson learned; always head up a face if possible.

Some of my SANGCOM friends were on the area, and Gary hitched a lift to the top of the dune on a local’s quad bike so that he could photograph my torture. Getting down was eminently more fun and took a whole lot less time. At the bottom we had a chat, and I decided that I’d already done too much this weekend, when I was supposed to be tapering down my training; so I headed off with the gang for some desert driving, leaving Mo to run back to his car on his lonesome (in significantly less time than it took us to get there).

It’s been a fairly slow week for training; concentrated mostly on leg strength with weights and an overload circuit courtesy of ex-PT Corps James. I have been putting some extra effort into the sponsorship chase recently and things are starting to happen. Kaplan Open Learning, with whom I am studying for my online Business Leadership and Management Degree, have agreed to donate £300 in return for a small banner ad on the blog (to follow). My boss has donated £250 to the trust (thank you very much Sir), and the Riyadh Caledonian Society have pledge somewhere over SR2000 (£333) for me to wear a St Andrew’s Buff during the sandstorm, and a small pin badge throughout the race.

Tim singing and Helen having a boogies in 'the Cave' at Arizona Compound

Most unexpectedly though was the generosity of my fellow Arizona Compound residents. My friend Tim and his band; the ‘Black Cherry Jammers’ gave a performance in the compound’s Cave venue, and Tim offered me the chance to give a 2 minute chat about the MdS and the Trust. Whilst the band played two beautiful ladies paraded my running pack to through the crowd to demonstrate the weight I’ll be carrying and took donations for the cause. By the end of the night they had collected SR3555 (£592.50). I was staggered by the kindness of those present, which only numbered around 80 individuals. Most of the crowd were US citizens, and obviously very supportive of such a good cause with strong links to the services – that is one thing you cannot take away from the American people; their loyalty to those that fight for their country. We have started to see the same kind of feelings from some of the British public with the huge success of Help For Heroes and I hope this trend continues.

Sharing the Desert Knowledge

This week I asked Sarah from ‘Best of Morocco’, who organises the UK race entrants, to email out a message asking people to have a look at the blog and get in touch so I’d be able to get to know a few people before arriving at Gatwick. I have had a tremendous response, had lots of interesting, friendly correspondence, and enough interest in the blog to push hits over 2000. Many of the competitors whom emailed me had questions on the desert conditions, so I thought I’d collate my answers, thoughts and opinions into an article that may be of some help to ‘desert virgins’:

Sand type – You might think that sand is sand at varying angles of incline or decline. There are actually lots of types, ranging from dry, soft, dragging, deep stuff that saps your energy, to moist, compacted hard sand that can support your weight and allow you to push off it like it were firm soil. There is crunchy sand, that feels like it will take your weight, but then crumbles again just as you push off, which poses a real threat to the integrity of your groin muscles. The types of sand can be consistent for kilometres at a time, or change every few yards. It is the change in type that causes the dramas, as your running/walking stride panics to adjust to it. The way to avoid the surprise is to keep an eye on the footprints left by the runners in front. If you can see the grip pattern; the sand will be firm enough to run fairly normally on, when the treads disappear and turn into indistinguishable dimples; you know the grip is about to disappear and you need to brace yourself to work hard and allow your feet to stop slipping before you push off for the next step.

Salt replacement - The Xtreme caffeine tablets listed on my spreadsheet give me everything I need on the run and keep me aware. The race will require us to sustain salt intake at a much higher level if we are to avoid cramps in the latter stages. We will be issued 120 0.5g salt tablets by the race organisers. I’ve been told that if you religiously take two of these tablets at each checkpoint; you will dramatically reduce the chances of getting cramps.

Water bottles – Make sure that the water bottles you use don't go soft in warm conditions! I got a nice light weight one from Sports Direct, which didn't leak at all in cool conditions, but it went soft in the desert and the lid kept popping off every time I squeezed it! The blue 'Nuun' ones available on Likeys are best.

Sun tan lotion – Sun tan lotion is heavy, as it contains a lot of water. If you can find factor 50 ‘lipstick style’ smear on sun tan lotion you will save weight and be able to apply it without getting that sticky, gloopy mess all over your hands, this becomes very annoying if you need to scramble on all fours up a dune and you get a thick layer of sand stuck in the lotion. I am having trouble locating such protection in Saudi, so if anyone can find a high factor ‘sun tan stick’ – please pick one up for me and I’ll gladly reimburse you in Morocco.



The hare and the tortoise!



Shirt/clothing - I'm wearing an under armour heat gear white long sleeve shirt (£22 from ebay). It arrived on Tuesday and is silky enough to let the pack move without chaffing and negates the need for lots of sun tan lotion. I wear cycling shorts and ‘Skins’ compression stockings; so end up looking like a right pest! I'll be taking a light weight fleece and tracksuit bottoms, but if our first night under canvas is warm; I'll be ditching them into the suitcase before they are taken to the hotel.

Front pouch maintenance – As Mark Hines identifies in his book; race packs and equipment are designed to be as light as possible and do not stand up to a lot of rough training. I like to train with the kit I’m going to use and have fallen foul of the poor durability of the Raidlight kit. If you are using the front pouch, as I am, I recommend stitching in a few extra threads along the bottom edge of the belt loops. Today I noticed the belt loops themselves were starting to give way and may need a small repair job before Morocco.

Shoes/footcare – My feet have always been a bit soft, but MdS training is the first time that more than one toe nail has come off! I wear innov8 roclite 315s, usually a 10, but strangely my race shoes are 9s. They are over-sized and my feet have plenty of room (most of the damage to my toes was done in my road running shoes). Roclite are brilliant shoes, but not the most comfortable, though I've heard that most of the xtrail/fell-running type shoes aren't. Resorting to zinc oxide tape and thicker socks have to be the way forward, and Gehwol cream (see my Amazon Associates shop on the blog) on hotspots, as it is bloody magic stuff!. My feet haven't swelled at all yet, though temperatures are still only up to 35 degrees and I’ve only done up to 25 miles off road.

Pace - The sand is a real drain, but if you forget about pace as soon as you hit it and just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other; you soon get through it. People will have different strategies for the sand, and from what I’ve heard from veterans; even the elite chose to walk on dune inclines. Using a heart rate monitor to keep within your optimal zone should help prevent you over-doing it.

Things you need to hand – There is obviously a lot of room and plenty of pockets in most race packs, but you really need to prioritise what goes into the pouches and compartments that you can reach. Forget the first aid kit and anything that involves taking your shoes off, make sure you can reach your snacks, drink additives, spare water, sunglasses cloth, sun tan lotion, salt tablets and camera if you’re taking one. I have stitched my mp3 and solar charger into my pack, so have made sure that there are no crap songs on it at all! The Pico Freeloader Solar Charger keeps my mp3 player fully charged all day and only weighs in at 49g; well worth it for constant music.

Meals - We need 7 breakfasts and 6 main meals (and 6 deserts!). I highly recommend you buy a copy of Mark Hines' book (see link on my blog); it's like the bible of MdS and has all food and kit requirements annexed at the back.

Snacks - I'm considering dumping some of the supplements for dates and cereal bars, as they are a slower energy release and a bit more interesting to consume. At the moment Ambrosia 'custard covered banana pieces' or Yu 'yogurt covered fruit pieces', both available from Tescos on their healthy eating shelf, are favourite. You need to break them out of the silly little bags and put them into a re-sealable, but they are really good. They get stuck in your teeth too, so you get the flavour and a bit of sugar for half an hour or so after eating. My friend Iain recommends Haribo - stick one under your tongue and it lasts for 20 minutes and gives you a little boost.


Eyes - I suffer from getting a lot of sweat salt, dust and occassionally a smear of sun tan lotion in my eyes, this is painful and turns into a crust by the morning that you have to rub out, trying not to get any in you eyes in the process. My Wife suggested I try the eye drops that she puts in to settle her eyes when her contact lenses are playing up. They work a treat; flushing all the crap out, and the bonus is - they practically nothing.

I hope this has been helpful, use the comments box below if you have any questions or better ideas!

Two Burst Condoms!

One of only 2 locals we saw on the 25 mile run

The weekend that I’d been looking forward to since first meeting Iain at the Riyadh Road Runners’ 10 miler had arrived. The plan was to meet Iain and his friend Carl at Salwa compound Thursday morning, head into the desert, park up and run for five to six hours, camp out, trying our race rations, then meet Dave (another of Iain’s colleagues) at the dunes and run for two hours over the sand. As I’ve learned in the Army; no plan survives contact with the enemy, and this was no exception.

I met up with Iain as planned, but Carl couldn’t make it, so it was a romantic trip for two into the wilderness. We loaded up my Landcruiser and set off for an area about 25km to the North of Ban Ban Sands. As a race veteran; Dave had told Iain that this area was ideal for training for MdS, and had all the ingredients for helping us to prepare. We parked up in a valley that offered a cover with a few trees, but found a rather interesting smell greeted us upon opening the vehicle doors. We prepped our running gear, including my newly sewn in ‘Pico Freeloader’ Solar Charger, and set off along the valley floor.

The terrain varied from gravelly track, desert plain and patches of sand, to what resembled the lunar surface or the edge of a volcano. For most of the improvised route, which Iain planned on the hoof using a hand-held GPS, we were able to run at a fairly steady rate, and we managed to maintain a pace similar to what I achieved in last week’s marathon. The rougher ground had us hopping and skipping and prevented running completely at times. The sweat was pouring off me and was in my eyes mixed with sun tan lotion, preventing me from affectively focusing on the ground and I ended up taking a few tumbles, opening up a nice wound on the palm of my hand in the process.

We ran for four and a half hours, with few breaks and estimated that we covered something like a marathon distance. I used seven or eight 600ml bottles of water and put my ‘Xtreme’ caffeine tabs in most of them. I started with about 11kg in my pack and finished with 7.5kg, doing the maths from my water consumption doesn’t work out until you open the pack to find that my warm kit had soaked up the balance. Water-proofing will definitely be necessary.

On the approach to the vehicle, we observed where the strange smell was coming from – a dead camel was laid in the ‘dead ground’ North of our proposed campsite, this was quickly un-proposed. We moved a feet hundred metres along the valley and put up the tent and laid out the desert carpet. We collected some fire wood and settled into routine of post-run admin, cooking and playing with fire (Iain seemed very keen on the latter!). The freeze-dried rations were very tasty, we tried chicken korma and beef hotpot and later enjoyed chocolate pudding, which was like lumpy chocolate milkshake with sand in it (glad I ordered more of the cinnamon ones).

We were testing out our race sleeping systems, which are rated down to zero degrees, but my vehicle display read 18 degrees and it was quite chilly. I took a tip from Mark Hines’ book and took condoms (much to Iain’s concern) to make improvised inflatable pillows, using the sleeping bag stuff sack as a pillow case. My first attempt was a failure, as I over inflated the Jonny so a big bulge was sticking out the end of the sack, and every time I put my head on it – all the air pushed out into the bulge. That condom burst as I tried to get it out of the sack. I blew the second one up to the correct size and managed to get it to stay inside the sack, but as soon as I went to sleep and my head became a dead weight – the bloody thing popped! The rest of the night was uncomfortable and cold, and every time I put my injured palm on my T-shirt; the sweat salt gave me a nasty shock.

Morning routine was fairly slick, but breakfasts were quite disappointing; strawberry porridge was okay, but the hot sultana cereal was pretty inedible. We packed up the tent, loaded up the car, and set off back towards Ban Ban, then headed past it to the North-West. We met up with Dave and Carl and set off on a plod up, down, across and between some fairly impressive dunes. Iain went off weaving his own route to add some distance to the main pack, and I felt brave enough to follow him on a few jaunts, including a hell of a climb up a real monster slope, which I kind of regretted half way up! I cut away and headed back to the car after about an hour, as I was expecting a friend to arrive in Riyadh that morning and had to get back to the flat.

The weekend was a big confidence boost for both; Iain and me. I was hugely relieved that I could actually run on the second day, and Iain was hugely relieved that the condoms were used as pillows!

Marathon at Dirab Golf Course

The weekend started with some of the hardest training I’ve done yet. I left work on Wednesday afternoon at 1430hrs (our weekends are Thursday/Friday over here and we get an early knock off Wednesdays) and headed for Ban Ban Sands. Ban Ban is a great area for desert driving and has some serious dune contours. I parked up at the North-West corner of the area I know best from the driving trips and set about running a 10km loop. I’d left a route trace with our duty officer and sent him a text just prior to setting off. I kept away from the areas popular with the locals for their driving exploits, as they are not known for their safe practice on the sand (or road for that matter); so I felt I’d mitigated any real dangers.

There’s really nothing like running on sand to drain the strength from your legs. It feels like running uphill when on flat, and uphill feels like running in tar. I would normally walk on the uphill, but this was a short training run and I wanted to try and run as much as I could. Even so, I had to resort to walking on the big uphills as I wouldn’t have made it round. I had chosen to wear thin socks and not put on any lubricating cream on my feet, as I wanted to know exactly where the hotspots were with my race shoes. I could tell whilst running, my right heel was suffering and the outside of my big toes were rubbing quite badly – blister plasters and new socks please!

Where's Wally?!

This was a good leg stretch for the Riyadh Road Runners’ Marathon at Dirab Golf Course on the Friday. Six laps of a 7km route that took in 2km of the half marathon course followed by 1.5km in an ‘L’ shaped loop. The race was open to individuals and teams, with team members doing one or more of the laps each. Doing six laps was reminiscent of the SANGCOM Half, which was a rather dull lap of a housing compound, so six laps with some lovely rocky scenery to look at made things pass relatively quickly, even though my MP3 player packed up on the first lap!

Start of the second lap

I was running with Chris and we had agreed to keep a steady pace, but he was suffering from an injury and dropped back after two laps, stopping after three. I reached the half marathon distance at 1hr 57mins, which I was quite happy with; having chopped 4 minutes off my best weighted effort. Unfortunately the sun was well up and things were about to slow down. Chris had taken some pain-killers and got going again over a lap behind me. The final two laps were quite painful and the hard tarmac road had taken its toll on my legs. I finished in just under 4hrs 16mins. Chris soldiered on, clearly in pain, now in a fairly powerful dust storm, but made the finish with his usual burst of energy, that he normally drops me with on the home straight!

Looking better than I felt at the finish!

I didn’t eat anything on the way round, but drank five x 750ml bottles of water, four of which had a ‘Zero x'treme caffeine stimulant’ drink tab in. These seem to give me a little boost, with enough glucose to make the drink isotonic, plenty of salts, and caffeine to revive me a touch.

I got a lot of encouragement from the other runners when word had spread about why I was running with weight, and one other runner was kind enough to hand over a cash donation on the spot (thank you Tony Caskey). I’d like to thank Chris Denison from Riyadh Road Runners for doing such a good job of organising the race and everyone there who helped build the inclusive atmosphere.