So last night was the mid-week 10 miler... nice and steady, and in some ways a bit of a break from the harder 7 mile thrashes that I normally do during the week. I actually really enjoyed it too, keeping a nice steady constant pace at just over 8 minute miles which was very comfortable - and going round in just over 1hr 20mins. Nothing much other to report on that really, apart from I had the usual 4kgs in the rucksack from work, it was dark, and oh, my camelbac was leaking slightly so I had no water the whole way round, but on a ten miler in the evening here you can just about get away with it.
Which actually leads me to the question around how I'm going to transport my water around in the Sahara. My ideal scenario would be to carry just one camelbac and have it in the rucksack. To me that seems so much easier than faffing around with having a couple of bottles and building straw networks for them too. However the incident last night made me realise that probably a reason why people don't have them, in case of leakages etc... For me it's ideal though, I like the fact that I can just have a straw run over my back and next to my mouth. I also think I
m going to have a hard time of it with two bottle perched on my shoulder straps. Yes they would balance out the weight a bit, but to be honest, fuck that... seems like hard work to me. Ideally I think I'll probably have a comprise of the two bottle int he sides of the rucksack, and then build some straw mechanism to come out of them... time to start trying stuff out me thinks.
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Dan, good work on the back to back.
Re: bottles vs CamelBak. at the moment I carry a 3 litre CB + a 800ml raidlight bottle (the ones with the straw and bite valve). Usually then I decant from the CB to bottle when empty and this way keep tabs on how much I'm drinking - hard to tell with a CB. But I'm nervous about CB in the desert - it's a faff to fill it at check points - rucksack off, CB out, fill, try to fit back in.... plus if you're using anything other than straight water they do tend to get pretty funky in the tubes, especially in that heat. I had a leak the other week from the seal not seating properly, really not fun.
My thinking is at the moment 2 x 800ml bottles + 1.5litre bottle, all on the front pack for easy access. I had a try with shoulder holders, really didn't like them; bottles move around too much, and they sit in the wrong place IMHO.
You can get "smart tube" drinking tubes that fit to standard bottles (ebay.co.uk item #170171684567), might be an option....
keep up the good work!
Cheers
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