The last few days have been the time to bring it all together, finally packing all the bits and pieces yesterday. We get a baggage allowance of 20kg that gets transported for us each day, leaving us to run light each day. The biggest weight of this is hill food for 8 days. it is tricky to plan how much food I will need and what to take, so I have a 'spare' bag as a backup and fingers crossed!

This is the part of the huge unknown about doing an event of this size for the first time and I'm expecting a steep learning curve!

I was surprised how much space I had though, so am able to take a lot more spare clothes than I expected so I have clean socks and tops for each day, with 3 pairs of shorts to rotate (and hopefully wash and dry).

The weather is looking fairly good, a bit wet for the first couple of days, but then possibly quite warm for the end of the race which could make life difficult. i have added another pack of electrolyte tablets to the kit this morning!

Training: For the last couple of weeks I have been focussing on tapering, getting a bit of a rest so that I start the event fresh. This was definitely needed as I was feeling pretty tired last month with big volume of training. This does mean that I feel pretty good am and pleased to be going into the event injury free. It does, however, also mean that it feels like a while since I have done a big run, so can't help questioning if I could have done more. I guess this is inevitable, and I have to tell myself that one or two extra runs wouldn't make any real difference at this stage.

In the last few weeks I have had a rollercoaster of confidence, swinging between wild optimism that I can be competitive at the front of the race, and wondering if I can even get round the course. After all the planning, training and thinking about the event, I am now just itching to get on with it and find out.

The unknown is the adventure, that is what I signed up for. There will be some lows, but if it was easy I wouldn't have signed up.... bring it on!!

You can track the event here

And even send competitors messages through ultra mail

See you in 8 days!!