Beyond Endurance - Rhys Harries

My first 50mile is getting closer - the excitment's starting to hit me now and to be honest it's on my mind a lot. This week has seen a big cut in my training load, today I did a 4mile with 8 x 30-1min intervals to just stretch the legs. Thats 36miles for the week with a couple days left one of which will be about 12 miles which will see me get to about 48/50 miles for the week which was what I planned. I'm glad I started the taper this week as I can feel my body healing and today I really had to hold back so this is good. Iv'e kept to the 5 od minuets of stretching this week, infact my favourite is the classic hamstring stretch whilst waiting for the kettle to boil!

This week I've been thinking about what kit I need to wear, take, food and other bits like medical things like foot care! At the moment (this could change) I'm thinking for food I'm going to carry my cliff bars and cliff shots with me as well as some salted cashews. That will be it, for the rest I'm going to use the check points to re-fuel and stock up. As well as this my commited supporter (my Dad) will be along so I'll give him a rucsack with ample malt loaf and other little bits. People have mentioned ibuprofen so I'll carry these just incase. Vasaline is my other saviour (everywhere) and I'm going to tape parts of my back up with zinc oxide tape to try and stop the cuts and grazes coming from the camelbak. It's like giving me an extra layer of skin. From previous experiance I'll take a foil blanket incase something goes 'tits up' and I have to stop because I'll get cold fast. I'm also thinking about putting a 2nd pair of trainers in the rucksack incase I 'just want a change' to give relief to possible saw spots. Saying all this I don't know maybe I'll be fine with less food, no more vasaline, no second pair of trainers etc but I havn't a clue due to inexperiance in this sort of thing. This is the case with speed to. Today I felt fast and thought maybe a touch faster is possible but I'll probably play it safe and enjoy it.

Nutrition wise been great all week so I'm happy with this. As well as the physical benefits, eating well certainly helps with mental recovery as you just feel better. What people get wrong is to think that eating well is dieting. It's not, you can eat loads of calories through good healthy food which will fuel you well and on top of this keep you'r body at a much smaller risk of illness and disease.

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