Preparing for the Marathon Des Sables

I was recently asked to write a piece for the Ultrarunning website Running Monkey (if you haven't seen the site check it out using the link on the right of this page) theres some great articles and reviews by some of the best Ultrarunners in the country. Here is my article..

I’m currently studying MSc Exercise for Health, having learnt that I’m about to run the Marathon Des Sable a lecturer recently asked me “how do you train for a desert Ultra? You can’t run for six hours at a time can you?” The answer is yes and no I replied. So how do I prepare for a desert Ultra? I focus on three principle areas, aerobic fitness, fat loss and strength and conditioning. I’m a believer in quality of training over just grinding out massive mileage, lets face it training already takes up a large amount of time, efficiency has to be the order of the day.
I build into my schedule a long run (26.2 miles) usually on a Sunday, and alternate this every other week with a 20 miler to build aerobic fitness and to get used to time on my feet. This run is usually around the 11 min mile mark and I run with a full Camelbak to get used to the feel of a light-weight on my back. The next day I go for a light 5 mile recovery run to flush out the lactate relieving the delayed onset muscle soreness. Three times a week I also hit the gym doing weights and core building exercises to develop muscle strength. When running with a backpack over distance it’s important to maintain a strong core, if it’s weak then you will eventually loose form and your breathing will be negatively effected. Some runners fixate on inhalation but in fact it’s exhalation, which removes the carbon dioxide from your lungs that allows you to reduce the build up of lactate in your muscles. If you slump when running due to a weak core you’re breathing is likely to be less efficient, which in an endurance event will have a direct effect on the performance of your muscles and how quickly you begin to feel muscle fatigue.
My gym workouts are designed to let me get into the gym, do what I have to do and get out again in one hour. On days when I have a gym session and a run I may do them one in the morning and one in the evening but my work didn’t allow for that when I was training for the Namibia Ultra and so I’d do back to back sessions which was tiring and time consuming but still got the results. During the build up to the Marathon Des Sables (MdS) until the final month all my weekday runs are no more than 7 miles. These runs are over hills (there are some steep Jebeles in the MdS) firstly working on speed and covering the distance as fast as possible, and then the next night working on 80% maximum heart rate. Friday is a gym session and no run. One day a week I have a rest day.
Whilst having a training plan is vital, it’s also important to be flexible and be able to adapt depending on life pressures and your body’s feedback. Saturday is usually a eleven mile run, which is ramped up to 20 milers in the final month and put back to back with a 26.2 run on the Sunday.
As well as training my body I also use my runs to train my mind, as Namib Ultra finisher Kobus Alberts said last year, ‘the longest distance is the one between your ears’. I run in the rain, blizzards and sun whatever it’s like working on the mental strategies that I employ during Ultra on my long runs. It’s also important to get to recognize the voice of the ‘dirty tricks department’ of your mind compared with the voice of your body telling you when to rest. The best way to tell the difference is by hearing dirty tricks sending you messages on those long runs and push them away and outpace them. It is however very important to know your body and when to rest. I find regularly check my resting heart rate on the run up to an event gives me a useful baseline for those times when I’m unsure if it’s the ‘dirty tricks department’ or a genuine problem. A couple of weekends ago I woke on a Sunday feeling exhausted, I felt like I just wanted to sleep. I was ready to force myself out the door but checked my heart rate (75bpm), which is over twenty beats higher than my normal rate of around 52bpm. Clearly my body was telling me I needed to rest. I spent the day sleeping and next morning woke up with a heart rate back at 52BPM feeling great, got up and ran 26.2 miles feeling strong.
Finally carrying a little insulation when running in a cold winter is one thing but when you get to the desert and its fifty degrees that little insulation becomes like a 700 down jacket. As I get closer to the MdS I get as ripped as possible, its hard work but loosing body fat is essential for efficient dissipation of heat, we may not be easily able to acclimatize for the Marathon Des Sables in the UK but we can defiantly give ourselves an advantage by loosing as much lagging before we hit the heat. My preferred method is a gradually change from a moderate carbohydrate, moderate protein and low fat diet to a low carbohydrate, high protein diet with the fat content being made up of 5% saturated fat and the rest from ‘healthy’ oils. It helps me to drop the fat while sparing lean muscle mass. I supplement this with CLA and four cups of green tea a day (recent research showed that this promotes up to 17% greater fat loss than control groups). Also to help reduce muscle damage I drink a large glass of cherry juice a day (research suggests this reduces post exercise creatine phosphate kinase levels, a marker for muscle damage).
See you on the start line!