Tuesday 27th March 2012 - Last minute kit buying!

Pretty lazy day on the physical side of things today.  I was working away so a 4:30am alarm call followed by a six hour round trip sandwiching some meetings and no lunch.  I got home about 8pm and had to set about some housekeeping and kit buying, more of which in a moment.

First though let me quickly bring you up to speed on yesterday's training; if you can call it that.  I started with a quick session in the tanning salon.  These places get a bit of a bad press and I think the whole tanning culture is derided slightly but my experience has been good.  The prices are really cheap; in fact I've wondered whether my tiny fee even pays for the electricity those giant machines use!  I guess it must because they seem fairly succesful.  Anyway, if you're looking for a good salon in Wrexham follow the link and tell them I sent you.  They won't know who I am but I'm sure they'll be happy to know that some random customer has recommended them.

After a quick 5 minutes frying in the vapouriser I headed off to the gym.  I spent a long leisurely time in there alternating between the pool, the sauna and the steam room.  All together I swam 1,500 metres and spent about an hour in the heat.  Roughly 45 minutes in the sauna and 15 minutes in the steam room.  It was a good session but I found some new blisters from my training walk on Sunday and frustratingly the ones from the night I got hypothermia (which are six week's old now) are still deep and fresh.  I now fear that they will not have healed fully when I reach the desert.  I wonder if I'll be the only person in the race to have blisters before I even start!

So on to today.  I still have a few items left to buy.  The main one causing me worry was the sunglasses.  It is important to buy 'goggle' type glasses, or ones with some kind of foam to the side because sand can blow in under the lense and be very unpleasant, particularly in a sand storm.  I had feared that I'd be paying over £100 for them but I found these little beauties online.



The other thing I've done tonight is buy myself a blood testing kit.  For my medical form I need to know my blood type.  It's the kind of thing I've been told in the past and never had the common sense to remember.  Or even write down!  Anyway, this nifty little number should sort me out.

Blood testing kit

That's it for today folks.  Peace, out.