Getting straight back on the horse

After "hitting the wall" the previous week the Moovettes were very disheartened and seriously re-considering this walking 100kms thing.

There is an expression that is used for times when you stuff up and hurt yourself... "get straight back on the horse". I was very conscious of this saying coming into this past weekend's practice walk.

There was so much temptation to just give us ourselves another bye (Renee was out with a pinched nerve and Myself and Katherine were still nursing head colds). But the horse was there and we needed to climb back on.

Saturday afternoon making my "lunch" for the night walk ahead of me I thought instead of chickening out of the practice walk completely why don't I just suggest that we reduce it to what is definitely doable without support crew. Our very threatening and overwelming planned 40km walk at night became 20km and I felt excited about "getting back on the horse".

We met at Wandin (between CP6 - CP7) at 4pm and after doing some luggage reshuffling (someone forgot their Camelbak) we headed to Olinda (CP 4). Leaving Olinda on time at 5pm I felt good. I was setting a pace (in the absence of our Energizer Bunny Renee) and we quickly overtook a couple of co-walkers who had been walking since 8am from the Start (gulp... thats over 50kms they wanted to get done on Saturday in the heat).

Now the best way to get from one place to another is to have a motivator. The Moovettes have discovered their motivator! A toilet. The promise of a toilet at each stop is almost as good as the promise of having the friendly faces of our support crew. We have quickly learned whilst training where all the good toilets are and roughly the "operating times". Very important stuff!

Another interesting thing happened on Saturday night. We walked further then we planned... and not because we were lost, but because we wanted to! We actually made it to where the car was parked and thought "you know what, we're feeling OK, let's keep going down the trail for a while and then turn around and come back". We are pushing ourselves to go that extra mile and we didn't hit the wall!

What's even more interesting is that I would have walked further if I knew that I didn't have to drive home tired at 1am in the morning (always a bad thing).

So:
Stats for Saturday 8th of March, 2008

Practice #: 7hrs medium
Location: Woop Woop (Olinda CP4 - Wandin (Between CP6 - 7)
Distance: 26 km
Climbing: a lot of down and minimal up
Walkers: 3 (Renee was out with a crook neck)
Conditions: Beautiful evening
Time: just over 6hrs total including 50mins in breaks
Speed: 5kms/hr
Fastest walker: Brig
Slowest walker: Katherine
Topic of conv: How much easier the trail is a second time.

How we pulled up: A little stiff (probably not enough stretching as we were tired and wanted to get home to bed) but OK and no wall in sight.

We are getting there.