Darren Roberts and brothers Steve and Nick Tidball are Team Men’s Fitness. Here, in their latest Team Men’s Fitness blog, they talk about their fifth week of training for the fearsome 120km Namibia Desert Ultra race on 8th April.

Nick Tidball
Last weekend Darren and I went down to Thorncombe, Somerset, to train with Across The Divide, the organisers of the Namibia Desert Ultra race. It was a great couple of days, but a proper eye-opener about the dangers and challenges we'll face during the race – particularly when an event doctor highlighted all the possible ways we could die (dehydration, hypothermia and animal attacks to name but a few). With only ten weeks to go until the race, it's all starting to feel very real but we both ran well this weekend and I'm optimistic about how we'll do in Africa.

Steve Tidball
As Nick and Darren swanned off to Thorncombe for their training weekend I had strict orders from my physiotherapist to stay at home with my feet bound and dunked in buckets of ice. Last week I overtrained and now I have acute inflammation of the plantar fascia [connective tissue in the foot], which means I could be off running for up to a month. With the race just nine weeks away that's scary and gutting in equal measure.

Darren Roberts
We got some great advice from organisers during our weekend training camp, and you couldn't ask for a more professional, knowledgeable outfit to take you to one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. One of the best things about our trip was that it showed we're fitter than we thought – during long runs we were able to keep up with most of the group, many of whom were competitors from previous Namibia Desert Ultra races. This has strengthened our resolve to not only finish the race, but to try to win it.

Go to the Adventure Racing website for more information about the Namibia Desert Ultra Race.