Marathon des sables - the marathon of all marathons

Cynthia and Gwen are now well into training in February.

We've done several long runs with back packs - the most recent being on Sunday 14 - celebrating Valentine's Day with 27.5km in 4 hours with  about 7kg on our backs.

A typical week involves some sort of training most days - running in water (which is exhausting), cycling and lifting waits with our trainer Hicham - who can be quite a hard task master -  as well as the dreaded hill training once a week, plus other endurance runs.

There will be 28 entrants from Morocco and yesterday one of the runners invited several of us to his house for dinner. There was another first timer like us, but the others were all "old hands" at it. Cynthia and I came away feeling not very reassured around all these THIN, extremely fit and muscular guys. Our host had put his food supply on show in the TV room. Although he's a big man, we could not believe the sheer quantity. I think we're about to go into food panic buying mode, as our meager rations looked totally inadequate compared with his!

We are now deeply preoccupied with the intricacies of gaiters (and how to attach them to shoes) and foot tanning with a special liquid to toughen them up. As well as which underwear, socks and sunglasses to take.

It's certainly an all-absorbing experience!