Onwards and upwards!

Booted up and ready to go!

This year I am challenging myself to climb the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro. At the moment, even looking at the statistics is quite daunting. The hike will take five days, plus one day of rest before we head off to the summit, which stands at a towering 5, 895 metres above sea level or 19, 341 feet in old money. The start of the hike though tropical forest will be hot and steamy, then as we ascend through moorland, then up to a sparse alpine desert the temperature will drop considerably, down as low as minus ten degrees at night. In total, we will notch up around 80kms up and downhill. What's more, there is no backing out now, as our head teacher dragged all of us ambitious mountaineers-to-be up in assembly in front of the whole school and told the children what the climb entails. Whenever there was a quiet moment in class on Friday, one of the kids would say '3,895 metres, Miss!'.

This familiar hill has been biked, run and now hiked!

Over the next five weeks or so I will be trying to build up my fitness and stamina levels so I am ready to walk for about eight hours a day. To be honest, that is the least of my worries, as I know I can train and prepare my body for the physical onslaught. What is more worrying is the fact that I could get altitude sickness and the whole trip could be in vain. Altitude sickness is unpredictable. It doesn't matter how old you are, how fit you are or whether you have had it before. The only cure is to drop down to a lower altitude and let your body recover. And then there's the cold. These days I reach for a cardie on chilly Kampala days of around 22 degrees so I wonder how I am going to deal with negative temperatures.

View of The Baha'i Temple - the only one on the African continent!

I started my training this week. I am trying to do something each day, keeping my usual bike rides, swims and runs, but also adding in some long walks. We are quite fortunate that we live on the edge of the city, so we can just step out the the house and access hills and country roads to practise walking. I need to break my boots in, but am still not sure that I will follow my colleague's advice of wearing my hiking boots to school every day until we go. Putting on the fleecy hiking socks in these tropical temperatures is pure torture, plus I wouldn't like to be mistaken for one of the God squad who all seem to wear hiking clothes when in the city. I will never understand why converting people to religion should require multi-pocketed clothes and bum bags - perhaps they keep their Bibles in the pockets! The other day, my training buddy and I thought it would be a great idea to grab a bite to eat straight after our walk. Big mistake! The restaurant was jam packed and there was some sort of formal function involving women wearing satin dresses and high heels. I was mortified when I went to the bathroom to wash off the orange dust as I was surrounded by glamorous ladies preening their hair and applying make-up!

In order to make today's walk extra difficult I decided to drink more than a couple of glasses of wine at a party last night. This may sound a little unconventional, but listen to this. I needed an iron will to make myself even set off on the 18km walk today and it took sheer determination not to jump on a boda half way through. I felt weary, but I pushed myself through and got there in the end. I imagine I will experience similar levels of exhaustion and muscle aches on the actual trip. It makes perfect sense ... but I plan on using this tactic only once!

So to sum up the training so far -2 bike rides, 1 run and 2 walks, clocking up around 30km. Not bad!

Banana break to refuel!

Looks like we weren't the only ones taking some exercise on a Sunday!