Driving 2 train station everyone feels like they've forgotten something...

Lisa's instruction sheet she gave 2 us all - detailed! Her morning didn't start well as she had a near fatal problem with her camelbak bladder. Making to do with a plastic bag on the outside and john given instructions to buy a new one before he meets us at the 42km Checkpoint. Katie

Packing

We're trying not to let nerves get the better of us and most of us (apart from Katie who is sorted)are in the final throes of packing. Food will be done on Thursday night, so sandwiches are sort of fresh'ish, fruit will be cut, camelbacks filled, and the last bits sorted. We're all feeling good, we're keeping a keen eye on the weather, and we're ready to start walking. Katie flies in tomorrow afternoon from NZ, food and gear bags will be dropped with John who's on the first watch as support crew, carbs will be loaded and legs, ankles and feet will be strapped.
Almost the end of a long journey.
We're also watching with amazement as more donations flow through with a super generous donation from YBR Investments capping off a fabulous total - currently we (sorry, you) have raised about $8,600. Incredible.
I'll get a quick blog fix in tomorrow, and see if we can train up our guest blogger, Al (Katie's husband) to give updates as we walk. Remember too, you can watch us on http://www2.oxfam.org.au/trailwalker/Sydney/team/179 and if you get a chance drop us the odd text, we need as much encouragement as we can get!

More tomorrow

A Nice Idea

After a particularly hard slog one day, Mia, who has a beautiful, positive soul and who subtley suggested I need a whinge-free zone and who cheerily calls out "good morning" to startled people picking up their morning papers when we stroll past them, had a moment of clarity and inspiration when climbing a whinge-inducing hill a week or two ago. And this idea is just brilliant.

It's simple, before the event, we'll print out from the Oxfam site, all those people who have made donations to us, pack it away in our bag, and when the going gets tough, or when we're having a "moment", we'll get out the list, pick out a name, have a chat about him or her and then dedicate the next km to that person. This way, not only have our supporters supported us with fabulous donations to Oxfam, but they will be emotionally supporting us on the day.
In effect, our team will be massive as each of our supporters will be with us on the trail on the day.

And that's got to be one of the most inspirational reasons to get through the bad stuff.

It's not just about us.

The last long walk

With less than 2 weeks to go now, Mia, Tracy and I got together one last time for our last "team" walk (minus our dear NZ based team member, Katie). Being bored, bored, bored with the bush for the moment, Tracy sorted us a nice 30km'sih stroll around the northern beaches of Sydney. With a 28C day forecasted, what perfect way to have a last walk together. Tracy has been doing a lot of running (including a 42km bush marathon)and is thinking of running the Sydney marathon in September, she is uberfit and in fabulous form to do the trailwalker. However, it may have been a shock to her to go back to walking (albeit as-fast-as-we-can walk fast walking form) that Mia and I are mentally in the zone for now. Running will start 1 September, until then, fast, consistent, endurance walking. So we wandered, chatted and generally had a lovely Sunday morning, finishing up with a coffee/juice at Belaroma with Evey and Marius, Tracy's mum. Perfect conclusion to many hard months of training. Still one more tapering 20km walk to do for Mia and I next weekend with Tracy running the Pub to Pub to blow out all the cobwebs she gathered this weekend. Katie is still struggling with her health a bit in NZ but is under her trainers orders now to lay low, get healthy and not worry about any training. She'll be absolutely sweet on the day as long as she (actually all of us) are healthy!
This weekend also saw a more important event for The Keep On Moving team - our Keep On Moving Support Crew, got together with us and hatched a plan. Support crew are officially mobilised and good to go. We just need to pack our bags, keep in touch with them, make it to each checkpoint and not do to much more than that, other than the walking.
Oxfam Briefing this Wednesday night will bring on a swarm of butterflies.
Oh, and yes, that is Mia and Tracy in short sleeves in the photos, no sign of thermals, gotta love Sydney in winter time!

The Last Stage

The last stage of the walk is a sedate little bit of bush/lot of road/smidge of beach walking. Now I'm going to describe this painstakingly as even though it's one of the easiest stretches of the trail, it's the one we will feel every kilometre of. This is the one we are walking with 90km weary legs, shredded feet, sore hips and probably a few tears. Or then again maybe not.

So this weekend, Tracy was running the City to Surf, Mia was doing her own thing, and Katie was still in recovery mode from her maybe-swine flu/bad cold, so I headed off on Sunday morning to walk 25km taking in the last stage and a bit more. This stage starts with an easy couple of km through a flat firetrail before coming out into civilisation at our local soccer club grounds, then ducking back into the bush for the last wee bit of bush walking. The trail then pops out onto the main road where it meanders along suburban streets for a couple of km. It's a bit weird after 90kms of bush trails, boulder climbing, stream crossings, to be wandering along past peoples houses with them doing their normal weekend stuff while we look, well, a bit weird. There's a steep stair climb down to the Spit Bridge (actually I'm dreading those stairs as the stairs are very steep, I'm scared of heights and with sore knees and dodgey everything, it could be challenging. A small hill climb after the bridge takes us onto the gorgeous Chinamens Beach, and then after another small climb we come out onto the very popular Balmoral Beach (when I wandered across on Sunday morning, the beach was full of a wine and food festival, nice). After walking along Balmoral beach we then climb maybe a zillion easy stairs, that I'm sure will feel anything but easy at that stage. A short burst through the bush and then a teeny road climb takes us to Georges Height Oval and our finish. The plan is that 4 of us will make it to this final stage, and once we're at this point we will do everything to get all 4 of us to the end. All sounds easy, right?
Our last big walk this weekend, an easy 30kms on the road somewhere round the northern beaches, with a support team meeting on Saturday to get a bit of a plan together. We have our support crew aka the husbands (except for Al in NZ), we kind of know what we need to pack, it's just a case of bringing it all together and working out timings and strategy as a wider group.
14 days to go.

Food

It's official, we're in the 3 weeks 4 day countdown till our big day. 8.30am, Friday 28th August we head off. So at this time, its all about tapering (ie not walking 50 km+ in one hit), it's about maintaining everything ie health, feet, attitude and also it's about not making any changes to anything. Now's not the time to bring out the new shoes/socks/pedicure - what's going on now, will be what's going on on the 28th. Cardinal #1 Sin of Trailwalker - messing with the formula that's been working. Problem is we're bored to bits with our food. On a personal note, last time I dragged out the old faithful cheese and freaking marmite sandwiches, they hardly got touched. OVER THEM! Same for my pretzels, my fruit biscuits, even my Fruit Tingle sugar hit. Boring! And as for fruitcake, not only are Mia and I over the fruitcake, but we reckon all the sugary/floury/sugary stuff in it can't be good for us, or our figures. On our last walk, we started fantasising about chicken, mayo (and maybe a smidge of avocado) sandwiches and were working out which member of our extended support crew could bring out a nice plate of them on the day. We haven't walked with Tracy for a few weeks and she had made a killer batch of a healthy oaty slice thing, so we'll be lining up for that as well. When Katie and I walked 50km a few weeks ago, on the last 10kms, our fantasies were all about an icecream for her and salt and vinegar chips for me. HOWEVER, on the day we can't try anything new. Seriously. So this weekend, we have a 30'ish walk planned, finishing at the Newport Arms to meet our families (ie our support crew), so this is our last real chance for trying some new stuff out. Anyone feel like a chicken/mayo sandwich at 6am?

A Close Call

This weekend saw us doing our own things. Tracy was running 42kms in the bush for a charity event (which she totally destroyed finishing about the same time Mia and I had walked about 30km which did our heads in, but then that wouldn't have been hard that day). Katie was at home sick in bed battling a possible swine flu/cold combo she picked up after her big Sydney training weekend, and Mia and I were out on the trail doing a maybe 40-50km walk.
We headed out early again, with a 5.40am pickup to make the 6.19am train at Mt Kuring-gai to Cowan where we left the lovely warm train to head into the mist and cold, tackling stages 2/3/4 then back to the car. I couldn't find my gloves so wore socks to keep on hands warm. Nice look. That second stage from Cowan to Bewowra is hard and just goddamn long. We tried to walk at a good clip but the terrain just isn't suited for it. Mia was struggling a bit mentally after 5 days of hard skiing, and I quickly joined her, settling into whinge mode, which we then whinged about me whinging, so jointly decided a whinge free zone was necessary. By now, Mia was even more mentally challenged with boredom from listening to my whinge analysis and happily settled into listening to her ipod (rather than listening to me not whinging). You can see the kind of day we were having. We looked forward to stage 3 from beowora (ok, I KNOW I can't spell that word)to Apple Tree Bay, we'd done it once before and had enjoyed it with happy memories of long flats and a board walk in the middle of a glade like swamp. What we hadn't remembered was we'd done that at the start of a training session, not mid way when we were having enough motivational problems. By now, silence had descended as we trudged through the pretty but undulating and cold valley, finally coming out into the sun for a nice stroll to Apple Tree Bay. From here we headed along stage 4, past the Bobbin Head picnic'ers to the end of the bush before Kuring-gai creative arts school. To do the incredibly steep, gut wrenching hill or not? We decided not. Which ended up being the RIGHT CALL, as we headed back along the track and past the picnic'ers packing up for the day, we realised we were running out of light. And dumb, DUMB women that we are, we hadn't packed a head torch as it didn't occur to us it would take this long to walk 44'ish kms. We had a short amount of time to head up a long climb back through the bush to the train station. The sun had gone down, that purpley light was dimming and there was no end of the bush in sight. We had about 10 minutes before complete darkness. Once again all talking stopped as we focused on getting our sore legs moving at a pace that could get us out in time. The photos above say it all.
Our lessons (and there are many)
1. ALWAYS CARRY A TORCH. ALWAYS
2. No more fruitcake. Or Cheese and vegemite sandwiches. Especially on brown bread.
3. When a team mate has a cold, check up on her (especially when she's been your friend for 35 years), just in case she has the swine flu. We are in a pandemic afterall. Sorry Katie.
4. If we are ever having a barbeque at a picnic site and a pair of cold, tired, motivationally challenged walkers go past where they can easily smell the sausages cooking, we will ALWAYS offer them a sausage from now on.