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.