D-Day minus 156 days...

So here we go... the first posting. Today it is 156 days to go, and yesterday I decided that I would write this blog leading up to the race in Namibia on the 6 April. The idea is to keep a journal over the race preparation I do, and with that hopefully make myself take the training more serious and actually plan it!

So today I thought I should give a bit of background and the answer to these questions:
- Who am I?
- Why am I doing this?
- Why the race in Namibia?

Who am I?
Well that is a fairly ambitious question, so lets cut it back to try to give you an idea of who I am, rather then getting into a more philosophical discussion… I am 32 years old, from the southern tip of Sweden, and living in London since 8 years. I have always liked sports, and even though I went through a spell of about 10 years with very little regular sport activity, I have still always considered myself sporty.

My friends says that I have a slight problem in the way that I get a bit obsessed with different hobbies… A few of years ago it was rock climbing, a couple of years ago photography (to be fair, I still do a lot of photography), and the last year it has been running and adventure races. Typically I give 110%, get all the gear in the world, and then move on to something else 6 months later…

Why am I doing this?
I think it started two years ago when I on the day after the London Marathon went out and ran for about 3h45min without a stop. And did this with absolutely no training… I got inspired by watching the race and just went out and did it. Of course this left me totally unable to walk, but at least I did it… At the time some of my friends (Martin M. in particular) would define me as overweight, over-the-hill 30-something, so I clearly needed to change this.

The change came a year ago when I signed up for Tough Guy (http://www.toughguy.co.uk), an adventure race in January. With about a month to go I had hardly done any training, so I started to run. In the end I completed the Tough Guy race in (for me) a respectable 1h59min… This was the start to a newfound interest in running and races.

With Ben, a friend in London, I decided to do the Swedish Classic Circuit during 2008 (90km cross-country race, 300km bike ride, 3km swim, and a 30km cross-country run – not on the same day though *smile*), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Classic_Circuit. With this the bar was set to get fitter. In August I got a bike and two weeks later did the London Duathlon, signed up for another duathlon and by now the training had started to take off.

As always, I got a bit obsessed with my new interest and started to do more and more (including a nearly 4h training session with Ben, starting at 22.00 a Friday night, Dean Karnazes (http://www.ultramarathonman.com) here we come… The more I ran, cycled and exercised, the more I wanted to do tougher challenges.

So here is the real reason why I am doing this: Throughout my life people have set me challenges. My dad would time me running around the house (little did I know he just tried to tire me out a bit) / My friends dared me to drink a bottle of Tabasco in one go (thank you Jesper) / I ate a whole banana, including the peel (mental note, next time, start with the hard top bit, that one is difficult to chew on its own) etc etc. However somewhere along the line my friends grew up and stopped setting me challenges and dares.

Why the Ultramarathon in Namibia?
So there I was, on a Monday (29 Oct), looking at the Marathon de Sables website (http://www.darbaroud.com/index_uk.php). Me and Ben have decided to enter the 2010 race and the Swedish Classic circuit in 2008 will kick-start the training for the Marathon de Sables (for those of you who don’t know, the MdS is a race through Sahara, 6 days covering the distance of about 5 full marathons, by some called the toughest foot-race on earth).

I found a link to another desert race, this time in Namibia. I have for a long time wanted to go to Namibia and the race, covering 120km in 24h seem to be the perfect reason to go, so I signed up (http://www.adventure-racing.org/races/04Namibia%2024hr%20Ultra-Marathon%202008.asp). I thought it was a great idea to combine my interest for photography with the obsession of running adventure races!

So here I am, 156 days to go… The longest I have ever run in one go is about 30-32km. I am a decent shape at the moment, I run about 3-4 times a week (on a good week), and I can run for 3h straight.

However, let’s fool no one, I am in no shape to for 120km in one go… So this is going to be an interesting one for me.

Happy runnings!

/Joakim

Btw, went out yesterday and did a very slow jog for 25-30min… I am still a bit sluggish in my legs from this weekend’s exercise, and on Sunday I am doing the Hell Run (http://www.hellrunner.co.uk). This means that this week will be a quiet one on the training front. The real training starts after next weekend, when Hell Run and the Ballbuster Duathlon (http://www.humanrace.co.uk/buster/index.html) are both in the bag.