All set...

Hi Everyone, Michelle here. I have taken the liberty of a quick blog post on Ian's behalf whilst he is out of contact during the pre-race admin time. I am feeling more stressed about the responsibility of the blog than he is about the race! He sent a text to say he had arrived in Morroco safely. After one night in a hotel the group have moved to bivouac's in the desert, meals are provided today but the competitors are self sufficient from tomorrow. The race route and stage lengths have now been published on the website (after being kept secret to prevent any competitor gaining an advantage): Sunday 33.8 km Monday 38.5 km Tuesday 35 km Wednesday/Thursday 81.5 km Friday 42.2 km Saturday 15.5 km The website www.darbaroud.com has live webcam footage during the race, an option to send an email to athletes (Ian is number 415) and lots of other information about the race so I would recommend taking a look! There should be 20 mins /day of tv footage summarising the days race - I have emailed to see if it will be broadcast in the uk - will keep you posted.... All that is left to say now is good luck to Ian, Jess and I are so proud of you and love you very much.

To add to Michelle's on the ball comments:
The hotel we were put up in was gorgeous and the food was plentiful. We embarked on the coach ride from hell with a group of insane drivers that thought nothing of overtaking on blind bends and making some pretty shoddy old buses go faster than they probably should have.

The pre-race admin was tiresome and occasionally not too joined up, however it has to be said they had it cracked better than the British Army would have managed! Small mis-communications caused some of the dramas, which would have been avoided if we had all the decency to learn French.  Alighting the coaches after about four hours to get into the backs of cargo trucks with all of our kit was entertaining and a good leg-stretch.  That short journey took us to bivouac one for a period of acclimatisation and queuing in the sun for various things such as registration, kit check, emergency kit issue, food, shops, luggage drop off etc.

Selection of tent buddies was a little political, as our little group of Royal Signals Officers met up and all wanted to fill the tent with the other buddies that we had made on our journeys - I had been with a chap from Israel since getting on the coach at Heathrow to Gatwick.  It turned out the Ben and Adam had a couple of mates Dan and John that both had Para Regt background, so they were quickly welcomed into what soon became known as the 'naughty boys tent'.

My choice of sleeping bag was unpopular with Ben and Adam (who had been following the blog), but not as bad as unpopular as Dan's selection of sleeping mat, which was very expensive, and Dan's was leaking on the first night out - Jon's laughter was soon thwarted as his went down about 20 minutes after going to sleep the same night.

no-one knew how much food to put into their packs, and most of us ended up taking too much.  I took a spare pair of gaiters, as the home-stitching was starting to come out of my modifications, I also had to buy another hat,as mine went missing somewhere between Riyadh and Morocco.

I'm not sure I've ever been so nervous as I was on the start line, but it was a good nervous