It’s only ten days or so until I embark on my little adventure north of the border for the LAMM. At this point I should be fit and raring to go. Except that I’m not. Fit that is. I am actually looking forward to it quite a lot but I am shitting myself about my fitness levels. It doesn’t help that I was laid waste to by a bad bout of sinusitis which took nearly three weeks out of my training plan. I’ve recovered well, though, and quite happily went out for a 5/6 mile run on Sunday.

However, come Tuesday and my legs were still aching. This is not a good sign. A week on saturday I will be doing about 3 times that distance and the same again on the Sunday, carrying all my gear and doing considerably more in terms of ascents and off-off-road running (i.e. not on roads, footpaths or any type of recognisable track). Still, I have a couple of days left before the weekend and time to at least get a couple of 10+ mile runs in, with perhaps a long run carrying gear.

Speaking of gear, I think I’ve managed to address some of the issues which went against us for the OMM - namely having heavy kit. I’ve already seen that it’s possible to get hugely obssessed with with the weight of your gear and there are an increasing number of sites dedicated to ultralight kit. When we did the OMM, we suffered from having a tent that weighed nearly 3kg and we were possibly carrying too much food. The sleeping bag I had was 1.2kg and I reckon (although we didnt weigh it) that were probably carrying 7-8kg each in total. The recommended weight that anybody who seemed to be “in the know” often cited as being ideal was somewhere around 5kg.

I had mentioned this in concerned tones to my mate who is quite an experienced mountain walker and outwards bound type chap. He recently admitted to me that he thought he knew better and said that he wished he’d paid more attention. As a result, I’ve recently splashed out on some new gear.

The first is a tent. I don’t own one and haven’t slept in one for nearly 15 years. It seemed only fair I contribute to this, especially if I make this more of a hobby. I went for the Vango Ultralite 200 because it was considerably cheaper than the Terra Nova Laser and comparable in weight at only 1.4kg. My mate did try to encourage me to go for the 0.9kg Terra Nova Laser Competition which sleeps 1+ people. I.e. you need to know each other very well as it could get, um, cozy. I’ve known D. for sometime and he’s a very good friend but I can safely say I have no intention of getting all Brokeback Mountain with him up in the Scottish Highlands. Frankly, having seen how cozy the Vango 2 man tent is going to be, I think this is a wise decision.

Next purchase was a sleeping bag. The difficulty here is that lighter sleeping bags invariably means less insulation. I’m taking the risk that, as it’ll be June and technically summer, a 2 season sleeping bag that weighs only 600g will be fine. I gather that the normal adventure racing way of doing it is by wearing enough clothing to keep warm. And I’m not talking about my Thomas The Tank Engine pyjamas!

Food is the final hurdle. Back in October, I spent a lot of time working out weight to calorie ratio and aimed to take about 1.5kg worth of food (aiming for ~6000kcal) for the two day trip. This time it’s a little easier. On saturday we’re having a big breakfast at Wilf’s (bacon rolls 4tw!), dinner will be 2 packs of super noodles (and possible a Snickers bar for afters) and food during the day will be eaten on the hoof - muesli and power bars plus jelly babies. Sunday’s breakfast will be Alpen with extra sugar and the rest of the day will be as saturday although possibly not as much. We’re planning on running light and hopefully we won’t run out of energy. It’s a calculated risk, one which I’m partially alleviating by deferring any weight loss regime until the following week.

I’m sure it’s a good thing that I feel slightly sick at the thought of this. It must be the adrenaline.