Buying Up Big

Approximately 2 months ago now I came to the unfortunate conclusion that this would not be the year that I trek Kili. The ebola situation in West Africa, whilst not exactly adjacent to Tanzania, just seemed far too unstable for my liking and so I have postponed that particular adventure. Instead, I have elected to trek South America mid-2015. Mount Kilimanjaro will have to wait until another time.

It has probably been for the best, however, that I postpone my trip. I have not been able to commit to training as I had expected. An aggravating case of diverticulitis, then costochondritis, my best friend's kitchen tea and hen's night, my boss going overseas and an interstate visit from my mother have all adversely impacted on my time and ability to train. I had been training for another half marathon when the diverticulitis sidelined me on the couch and it has been a downward spiral since. A new pair of Asics GT1000 2s, swimwear and the coveted Suunto Ambit3 Peak Sapphire heart rate monitor later, my good conscious (and significantly poorer pocket) cannot allow me to sit idle any longer. And who would want to with all those new toys to play with?!

Of all my recent investments, I have to say that the Suunto Ambit3 is the finest and most exciting. While I have had it for only a handful of days, I am utterly enamored. As a female, it is bulky on the wrist but I purchased the larger Peak model for the purpose of hiking as well as for its functionality as a HRM. The inbuilt GPS is certainly an advantage. My Polar RCX5 required the GPS device to be worn on my arm which often equated to another source of chafe. While the Polar HRM was of a similar size (only 4mm smaller), the Suunto is certainly heavier at twice the weight (a whopping 92g total!) but it is not a nuisance for all of that. Indeed, all the little features are well worth it. I have been eyeing the activity tracker daily and cannot wait until I have justification to use the altimeter on my next hike.

As for the shoes, I cannot deny that Asics have been my runner of choice for the past decade. While the Kayanos model have always served me well in the past, I have struggled a lot in the past 18 months with what I believe is deep posterior compartment syndrome. Undiagnosed but consistent with its symptoms, swelling to my lower calves generally occurs within the first kilometer and the pain (read: the sensation of the muscle trying to explode through the muscle sheaf) does not numb until approximately the fourth or fifth kilometer. It does not seem to matter if I rest or not, which is a nuisance. I have also recently been getting arch pain which I attribute to the greater arch support of my Orange Superfeet in my Scarpa Mythos Tech GTX hiking boots making my arches lax.

My last pair of Kayanos having reached their retirement, I elected to have my gait analyzed (as far as can be done so in a store setting) at Running Fit's Shoe Lab. The verdict: I have high arches and mild overpronation (both of which I was already aware) and I was fitted out accordingly with inserts as well as the GT1000 2. Having trialed my new shoes for the past few weeks, however, I have come to the conclusion that even with all the arch support and pronation correction, it is my running style that must change.

I am a heel runner (read: jogger). I had been consciously trying to run a little further forward on my sole to reduce the strain and swelling in my lower calves and it had been helping but it is not enough. So I've taken it upon myself to try to run more on my toes. I should say that I am a slow runner; I run for distance and not time. I ran the distance of a half marathon in preparation for Nepal and I am training to do so again. I would like to run faster but my preference is always to run further and if that means I sacrifice time, I'm ok with that. Running on my toes is an interesting experience but certainly not unpleasant. The pressure seems almost wholly contained to the upper calf area. I do not experience any swelling in the lower calf area or cramps in my arches, and even the pressure on my thighs seem reduced. I feel lighter on my feet. Resuming heel running after toe running feels like running through sand, slow, heavy and trudging. I hope that slowly building up endurance to toe running will be the cure to the issues caused by my heel running. And who knows? Maybe I'll even run faster for it.

When I'm not running, I'm swimming. I have foregone weight training for the moment, preferring cardio instead. In the new year I'll reintroduce weights but for the meantime it's all about the kilometers and endurance. While I know that I do not need to be as prepared for trekking through Peru and Bolivia as I would for Mount Kilimanjaro, I want to be well prepared all the same. There's no need to suffer the trail unnecessarily when the hardest thing about the trip was your training for it. I know more than one person that could have benefited from that mantra.

At any rate, I'm now left to source a Power Monkey to charge my Suunto Ambit3 watch before my next trip. I think I'll add that to my Christmas wish list, seeing as the watch was an early birthday present to myself.

Princes Park Rerun

The wind that has torn at Melbourne these past few days has, at least for the time being, finally abated. Today has been quiet and calm. The birds endlessly call to one another, their minds on Spring hatchlings. The traffic hums pleasantly. Not one siren sounds, the MFB and Ambulance vehicles are cold and still in their depots after a busy night. Even Thor's hammer has been laid to rest, having beat out a few cracks to join in with last night's chorus.

I cannot recall the last time I had such a luxurious morning. The dawn might have called but only noonday was answered. Weeks busy with training and work and not enough sleep between seem to have finally caught up with me and so I slept long and hard as I have not done so in months. I still have a 9k run to warm my legs on this dwindling afternoon and an engagement with that old whoremongerer the 1000 Steps with my new weighted vest tomorrow. But I feel rested and unhurried in a way that I have missed.

I have finally broken my running drought, particularly the long distance one. A few short 2.5 or 3k jogs here and there (most often with my weighted pack down to the car park from the top of the 1000 Steps), 3 weeks ago now I put on my much loved and increasingly worn ASICS Kayanos and took myself on a 2 lap trundle of my old training ground, Princes Park. I spent months acquainting myself to its 3k circumference while training for Nepal last year. I ran my first half marathon distance there albeit broken a few times at the end to make use of its water fountains and to stretch my sore legs. As part of my training for Kilimanjaro, I intend on running (read: jogging) more than one of those bad boys but I also intend on doing it with more finesse and care. I was on a tight schedule last year and so those last 2 laps of the park grew increasingly uncomfortable until it did not matter whether I ran, skipped or walked back to my car, only time relieved the impressive soreness left behind.

I have become much more clever in managing the recovery of my legs also since I discovered that iced calves do not persistently ache the way that they had been when I first started stair training a couple of months ago. I work my legs a lot, knowing how important it is that they be strong and resilient and enduring of the steady work that will be required of them for days on end. That was the second biggest mistake I came across in Nepal after acute mountain sickness. Something that I've heard tell time and again from others also. People taking for granted the importance of their legs to a trek, their knees especially. Persistent downhill is hard on knees. That is a reality of trekking. I have met those with bad knees from trekking trails such as Kokoda as young 20-somethings without prior training. Developing osteoarthritis from a 1-2 week trek competed at age 22 is an absurd and unnecessary lifelong complication. It is ultimately far better and less inconvenient to train.

I recently read an article about a 60-something gentleman who had just competed his 200th sub-3 hour marathon. In all that time, he never suffered a major running injury. He strongly advocated listening to your body when exercising. If your body told you that you werenl not fit to finish your weekly long run as planned, then you did not do so at risk injuring yourself. He advocated also training tired. I do not mean that he recommended training injured or training hard when your legs are tired, but going for a long slow run on tired legs better equips them for what they will experience in a marathon. The same is true for trekking and hiking, I do believe. If I want to spend 1-3 weeks walking in excess of 5 hours a day every day (something that my ordinary life does not provide for) then my legs must have the endurance to do so. They learn that endurance by training until they are tired multiple days in a row. I will endeavor to improve upon this endurance slowly over the next 4 or so months. While I certainly do not advocate doing too many kilometers too quickly (as I may have done), I never experienced the pain or exhaustion in Nepal as I did for every kilometer ran over about 16k. I was grateful for the comparison and preparation it leant me but I need to be fitter and harder for Kilimanjaro, at least for summitting day.

Headwind

This week, short as it has been with only four days, has been a trying one nonetheless. A rest day tomorrow is well overdue, although I am trying to mentally prepare myself for a short run in the hopes that it will come to fruition. I've struggled with the motivation to really get back into running.

It seems more and more that I ride my bike uphill into a headwind in the evenings with other road users that behave with ever more self entitlement. This week I have been forced to swerve car doors opening into my path when my strobe light into their rear vision mirror, especially in the dim light, should have made my presence plainly known. To stop and give way to cars that have pulled out into the road in front of me, cutting me off (both from turning right across my path into a side street and turning left onto my road from a side street). To stop because a vehicle is abreast the shared bicycle-pedestrian pathway. To negotiate cars parked in clearway zones at clearway times. To avoid cars that drive two wheels into the bike lane.

Cyclists are by no means a perfect community of road users but the damage a cyclist could cause to a driver and vice versa are incomparable. A fright and scatched car versus death or lifelong impairment hardly fit onto the same scale. Yet how careless some drivers have been toward me, and I'm not even including those that have failed to overtake me at a reasonable distance. To top it all off, winter winds push against me, fighting me for my forward momentum, as I square myself against the enduring rise of St Georges Road, my hip flexors protesting and teeth set. My calves are particularly sore and hardened, their recovery from last weekend delayed. I am grateful for the breeze, however, that keeps the sweat from sheeting off me, the cold blooded Scotsman descendant that I am.

There is something invigorating about riding to work in the morning, however. Even when it is so cold gloves must pad my fingers to retain the sensation in them and my ears are hidden beneath the neck buff that I tuck under my helmet. A little bit of water on the road is even better, as there are less cyclists to contend with and it is quicker to ride than to drive. I try to ride to work at least 3 times a week, each day saving me at least an hour of petrol. I feel that I begin those days at my desk alert and functioning, without the need for a strong caffeine injection. I begin the day well grounded also, especially if I have seen the homeless gentleman that sleeps beneath a narrow overpass on my route, his belongings packed into 3 or 4 green square Woolworths bags lined up neatly in a row.

The weather is truly winter now, our mild autumn ended a fortnight ago. It is so cold that I can hardly feel my hands as I carry my bike down a flight of steps, even in my windproof gloves. I store a cap in my bag in the event I need to keep the rain out of my eyes while I ride. And today as I made my way toward Ferntree Gully to climb the 1000 Steps, I watched as mist enveloped the hillsides so thickly and unexpectedly that I wound my window down to smell for fire, I could hardly believe what I was seeing was cloud. The damp day did make for much less traffic during the 2 hours that I was on those stairs.

My Salomon XA PRO 3D Ultra 2 GTX shoes are slowly but surely being broken in. I bought them specifically for training conditions such as the Steps where I might be inclined to jog or trot downhill. Something that I do quite frequently where pedestrian traffic permits, today being no exception. It is, I believe, the reason for the slow recovery of my legs this week even with a few days of hill and step work already breaking them in. They are less sensitive to the touch today, and I'm hoping they will improve and not worsen again.

On a trek proper, I prefer to wear my Scarpa Mythos nubuck leather hiking boots. They are much sturdier and provide greater ankle support. Last weekend I realised that I have cracked the heel of one orange Superfeet insert that I took to Nepal. Possibly on my rapid descent down the mountainside after the ascent to Kala Pattar. As someone with high arches, I prefer the extra arch support of the orange Superfeet on long hikes to prevent cramping although so far, I have not needed any additional inserts in my Salomons. I have not done a full day's hike in them yet but I will in the next month or so.

I will need to rejoin my hiking club to insert full day walks back into my training calendar for Kilimanjaro. I hiked at least 2-3 Sundays out of the month in preparation for Nepal, routinely carrying 12-14kgs in my pack, keeping pace with other hikers carrying less than two thirds that weight. This, I felt, was an important contribution to my training that I would have wanted for had I not included it in my training regime.

Tonight at my best friend's bridal party dinner, I was seated across from the partner of the Best Man who intimated to me that she thought that while trekking the Kokoda trail a few years before she got by mostly on the vitality of youth and not training, the consequence of which seems to be a persistent weakness in her knees. This is not the first I have heard of knees permanently damaged in twenty-somethings lacking trek preparation, I have heard it applied to Mont Blanc also. Descent is wearing on joints. I try to train specifically to build up the stength of the stabilising muscles around my knees to protect them which is what makes the 1000 Steps such an appealing training ground. It seems that others share that sentiment as I saw a singleton as well as a group hiking with weighted day packs and hiking boots while I was there today.

Over preparation has to be better than under preparation when trekking. Within reason, of course.

Back in Black

Seven months and 1 day ago, I stood on top of the little bump that is Kala Pattar, not even a mountain in its own right and yet 5545m above sea level with the most spectacular 360º views. After the less than favorable weather encountered 2500 metres down below, we were treated with the amazing contrast of snow and black rock from every angle. All the training on Sugarloaf, the hill on my father's farm at Mount Lonarch, and it still took me 2 hours to reach the top (although to be honest, I did not scramble up the little rock precipice that arguably forms the very pinnacle of Kala Pattar but then again, aside from our sherpa guide, Basu nor did anyone else). I remember forcing myself to walk 50 steps up that bad boy before allowing myself leave to stop and rest when a tiny little native rodent went scampering between the rocks above me not far from the top. As tired as I was, I would have gladly carried the extra weight of my stronger Nikon lens to photograph it had the weight restrictions on the flight to Lukla not been so prescriptive.

It all seems a lifetime ago now. I dearly want to return that I may experience it all anew but to do so now would be to forgo other mountains and other dreams and I cannot do that just yet. I am, as it so happens, already preparing for my next high altitude escapade: Kilimanjaro. I research the subject relentless until my wrists ache and my download limit hits red and I create and recreate lists of gear that I need.

Yesterday it occurred to me as I was readying myself to go to a friend's birthday, my legs not yet sore from my first attempt at the 1000 Steps in the Dandenong Ranges this calendar year, that I might have just edged myself back into training without having even made a conscious effort to do so.

I had recently gone through a particularly unmotivated over-sugared 3 month period where Cadbury Marvelous Creations levened themselves into my mouth on a too frequent a basis and I had stooped to buying both my lunch and breakfast in the work canteen. I was fatigued and fogged and entirely too beholden to crappy processed food.

The conscious decision I did make 3 weeks ago was to break my sugar addiction. I had done it before. I knew the side effects. Headaches. Fatigue. General irritability. I started taking porridge and banana to work for breakfast and homemade soup for lunch. I quickly developed the most frustrating sinus headache right behind the bridge of my nose and my computer seemed to misbehave entirely too often for my liking. Friday this week gone I felt as though I had turned a corner.

I awoke while it was still dark, my head clearer than it had been in months, and found the motivation to do the dusting before I even left the house for work. I came home that evening to vacuum and my usual weekend of housework was already done. In the background, my newly delivered washing machine was humming quietly and my kitchen finally cleared of all the things I had moved out of the laundry earlier that week when the first new washing machine arrived and then departed again, having been damaged before even packaged.

I was even more motivated upon rising Saturday morning, 8 hours of sleep reviving me. The market, brunch, a bargain buy at a local outdoors store that I had popped into on a whim while on my way to another store in search of Kitchen Tea items for my best friend. I returned home long enough to hang the freshly washed sheets and change my clothes before getting back into the car and making the 40 minute journey to the Dandenong Ranges where I proceeded to trounce up the 1000 Steps twice before returning to my car to devour with the utmost pleasure the salted caramel donut that I had purchased from the Tivoli Bakery stall at the market that morning, relishing in its sugary reward. Then I was scooting home again to prepare for a night out at The Aviary in Richmond to celebrate a colleague's 30th birthday.

Today was similarly motivated. I made soup. Lunched with my best friend. Went for an unintended but wholly needed short hill run to remove some of the lactic from yesterday's efforts. I was inspired by a blog I read from the author of a book I had previously devoured in the months leading up to Nepal on the writer's own experience with Mount Everest. I was curious as to her experience preparing for Mount Kilimanjaro, knowing already that she had previously completed Kili along with 5 other great mountains in her Seven Summits pursuit. I had long intended to write about my experience returned from Nepal. It had just fallen to the wayside as I allowed my best friend's new engagement to take centre stage.

As I write I have formed the conclusion that the most important thing about this year is not being her maid of honor. I am certainly grateful for its bestowment and will take my responsibilities seriously to do all I can to make her day the happiest in her life thus far. It would be an injustice to myself, however, to rank her important event before my own. Nepal's greatest lesson taught me that the most important day in my adult life was the day the surgeon stopped my heart to repair the genetic error that restrained me. The physiological damage mostly corrected (not entirely, however, my heart will never work as efficiently as one that never knew genetic adversity as mine did), the psychological damage took much longer and perhaps persists in some capacity even now. I understood early on that I was just not as good as other children on the field, that only those with obvious physical handicap were worse than I was. Asthma or obesity only could I outpace yet there was never anything visibly wrong with me. It did not matter how hard I trained, and I trained very hard during my rowing years, the average lazy teen that chose table tennis as their term sport (because it required the least effort) was fitter than I was. Hell, so were the muso's that were exempt from playing sport at all because their extracurricular timetable was already consumed by orchestra practice.

I am the sum of all of my experiences, however. The curves and planes of my personality as molded by those more formative years in which my physical inadequacy fed into my social insecurity were not wholly undone by my affectionately termed 'patch job'. Nor by the high altitude and impressive vistas of the Himalayas. The person that I found there is stronger than the person that left Australia, of that I'm certain. She trusts in her capacity more now than she ever did. She trusts that Nepal was not the end of her big dreams of big mountains. Her stomach rounded by this now concluded hiatus from personal responsibility and calves pleasantly sore from exertion, she has 7 months before the next one becomes a reality and she's determined that she should enjoy it!

There was no real conscious effort to commence training for Kilimanjaro. Ultimately it came down to a pair of shoes. I possess a keen dislike of the stereotype between women and their shoes - indeed, I feel much the same about pink - but it remains the same. Thursday week I stumbled across the pair of trail shoes that I had been coveting since February in the colour I want (have you got any blacker?) and not that awful pale grey and purple (seriously, how much dirt do you want to show?). I christened them on that family rite of passage, Sugarloaf last weekend and then again yesterday. I started riding again also but not so long ago, as my saddle sore rump should attest. This evening's run just confirms it: I am once again in training. I wholly intend on making last year's attempt look menial by way of comparison. I will never be the fittest person on any of the mountains that I climb but I will be one of the well prepared ones, even in spite of the residual inefficiencies of that most central of organs, my heart.

Right now, however, I must unhand the phone on which I now write if I am to get my 8 hours before the new week greets me. I hope that it will be as uplifting as this one has been.