Tori, Laura, Kim and Jane are all very brave but quite stupid and so we’re going to do Trailwalker – walking for a whole day and night without sleep to raise money for Oxfam. Tori and Laura are the silliest given they have done this before, know what they are in for, but are STILL doing it again…
Our team name comes from our first training walk which involved us getting horrendously lost less than two miles from our starting point. Hopefully we’ll get better at navigating by the time Trailwalker takes place.
So just to reiterate, we will walk 100km in 30 hours without sleeping and until our feet are falling off – and all because we want to make the world a better place. That’s got to be worth a tenner, surely!
Please dig deep and sponsor us online.
If you’re still in doubt, click on the box and watch our first muddy amblings – proof we need all the help we can get! Thank you!!!
Congratulations! I have been reading your blog on and off and have been waiting for the “We’ve done it! ” blog?!
I also wanted to say many congrats on the time you posted, really impressive. Only about 7 hours quicker than us!
Anyway, I’d really like to know how you did it – just keep stops to a minimum, or walk at a good pace the whole time, or jog bits of it? I’d love to get in the low 20 hours next time (yes I can’t believe I’m talking about next time already!)
Any thoughts would be much appreciated. And well done again!
Alistair
By: Alistair Aird on July 27, 2008
at 7:42 pm
Hi Alistair – thanks so much that was a really nice comment to get.
Well done on completing within the 30 hours it’s a brilliant achievement.
I think it’s fair to say that we surprized everyone. Our target was 24 and we had no clue what was going to happen. We trained at a reallt fast pace, and assumed we’d never keep that up on the day as we’d slow down naturally and at night. But on the day we just didn’t want to slow down. I think we just got in a really good place mentally – as we were doing so well at every point we just felt great about our performance which just pushes you on to do better.
We’d already had our team talks about timings and we did a spreadsheet beforehand with our expected times on it, and worked out our breaks. We didn’t stop for more than 15 mins at checkpoints – aside from CHPT 5 where Laura was really suffering and we put our time to the bottom of the priority list so she could get a massage and we could get our wits back about us. We were clear that finishing as a team was the most important thing.
Then the Gurkahs mentioned that we were in the 5 fastest women’s team – totally unexpected for us – and we just decided to go for it! It was a team decision though – couldn’t have done it without eachother.
1) planned out times at checkpoints and stuck to it
2) phoned ahead to let support crew know how long we were stopping and what we wanted to eat, bandage etc and they kept track of the time and shouted when there was 5 mins to go etc.
3) had my mum give us huge hugs every checkpoint and tell us we were “just super”
4) decided not to stop at checkpoint 1 as wouldn;t need it
5) decided not to stop at checkpoint 7 – as most people drop out there, so it’s quite a depressing place and we didn;t want to get sucked in. Turned out we got there at sunset which made us feel amazing so we did stop for cake and tea and getting dressed for the night.
6) our support crew walked some of the night stages with us – kept us alive mentally
That’s is really…! Hope that’s helpful for next year – good luck!!
By: lostingarsington on August 17, 2008
at 11:07 am