Friday April 24th 2009 Lybian Challenge

A client of mine, a young guy named Rod Sinclaire (still in his thirties so that is young to me) informed me last August that he intended to run the Lybian Challenge in February and could I help him with his preparation. The Lybian Challenge is a desert race over 120 miles and you have 75 hours to complete it (I think that's correct).

Now I am not going to claim that I coached Rod in his achievement, all I did was advise and hopefully added some useful input to his training. From my point of view, I did not think running on the beach in Florida constituted running in a desert terrain, mind you it was sandy and hot. Whereas Rod has hiked in various deserts in Africa plus trips to Arizona, where he once fell on a cactus, you should have seen where those needles went.

The other thing was, I have never, and I hope it stays that way, run that far in such a short time. Plus from what I understand there are no five star hotels on route! Can you believe that, bloody madness. Anyway between the two of us we managed to plan a race strategy, with Rod's desert experience and my coaching knowledge/imagination, plus having been Rod's Sports Therapist for the last 5/6 years I do have a good idea of what he can and can't do training wise.

Anyway to cut a long story short, Rod put in all the hard work and completed the race in 38 hours and I sat at home and followed his progress on the net, I did not even break sweat - how's that for being super fit. I did ask Rod about the creepy crawlies getting into your sleeping bag, he told me it was so bloody cold at night, that his chattering teeth kept them away. Rod was in today for a treatment and he told me that one guy has lost six toe nails since the race and that's just off one foot! But he still maintains it was one of the best experiences of his life. I worry about the boy, is he suffering from sun stroke? did he fall and bump his head? did Gaddafi brainwash him? we may never know.

Posted by Lynn Ferris at 20:16 GMT