Kilimanjaro Challenge 2011

Welcome to my blog!

Follow the ups and downs of the biggest challenge I've ever faced. My friend Justine and I are climbing Kilimanjaro in February 2011 and are hoping to raise £10,000 for Naomi House Children's Hospice.

Thanks for visiting.
K

Kili

Kili



Sunday 18 April 2010

MY LEGS HURT!!!!

So, training is going quite well, except for last weekend when I might have accidentally drunk to many glasses of pinot and couldn't face going for a run. This weekend we were back on schedule! 3 mile run on Saturday, 3 mile walk on Sunday followed by another 2 miles to deliver leaflets around the village. I'm feeling quite virtuous, if a little stiff. Luckily, we had some glorious sunshine to walk/run in so it was quite pleasant.

I'm very aware that now our basic level of fitness is up - and by that, I mean I don't think I'm going to die if I run for 3 miles - we really need to start doing some more serious uppy downy type walking. We're going to reattempt Watership Down in a couple of weeks, I wonder if I'll have to notify some sort of rescue agency, given our previous with map reading????

I'm off on holiday at the end of next week (23rd) Icelandic volcanoes permitting, naturally. However, there's a gym in our hotel and I'm planning to take advantage of this and try and get up to 4, maybe 5 miles (perhaps a little optemistic) of running by the time I come back, I figure I can run every other day in the gym, and if I get stiff, well, I'll be in Turkey, so I can go have myself a Turkish bath!!

No such luxuries to be had up a mountain! We sent off our deposits this week so our places are now confirmed, we fly out Feb 24th 2011 (if Iceland are still at it then, I'll be VERY cross!) so it's all become a bit real. We'd like to get up to a respectable 6miles each day on the weekend as we'll have to do similar mileage for 6 days straight on the ascent (up nearly 20,000ft! eek!) so we'll need to build on the good work we've done.

Our first event, a cream tea afternoon on Sunday 2nd May is all organised and folk have been very generous with donations for our bootfairs, for which we will be eternally grateful. Now the ball is rolling, hopefully, some pennies will start coming in!

Hey ho, I'm off to bed to rest up ready for another Monday morning! More pictures to follow next post.

Sunday 4 April 2010


Well, finally the clocks have gone forward and the longer evenings are here! This means that it will still be daylight when I get in from work and Justine and I can do our 3 mile circuit during the week. We've set ourselves a tougher target for the weekends. Yesterday we took ourselves off to The Gallops, which is just outside of Kingsclere slap bang in the middle of the Hampshire Downs. There are some pretty big hills for us to walk up and down and we figured that this would be better training for us as doing a relatively flat 3 or 6 mile walk on a weekend was no longer proving as much of a challenge as it had at first. Unfortunately, what did prove a challenge was reading the OS map we'd taken with us. In true girly style, we held it upside down and turned left off the road instead of right, walking away from the beautiful hills at Watership Down - where the author of the famous novel grew up. Instead, we wandered up and down a muddy track and found ourselved in a Caravan Club park. Lovely though it was, Watership Down, it wasn't!

Having said that, it served the same purpose, we did 4 very hilly miles and our calves and thighs certainly felt it later in the day! At least we'll know where to go next weekend, and my other half thought it was hillarious - although he had the forethought to be a little concerned that the same two that couldn't hold a map the right way up were going to climb a big ruddy mountain in Africa - luckily, we'll have a little man with us who'll do the map reading and the guiding and the carrying of very heavy bags, so that's sure to be a relief. My mini schnauzer is loving all these long walks, although he was utterly pooped when we got home yesterday as he'd walked his little paws off and had just about worn out his nose.

We're now planning for our first event on 2nd May - we're having a cream tea in our local village hall. Hopefully the weather will be kind to us. Pictures and review of the day will follow.

Well, I'm off for a lovely Easter Sunday roast, happy easter everyone and see you soon.