Sorry followers, it's been a fairly poor showing from us this week on the blog as, all of a sudden, everything went a bit crazy in journo-land.
However, we're back now and raring to go. Since our 25km walk on Monday evening, I've managed a couple of weights sessions in the gym and a quick run of about 8kms - not good enough, to be frank.
Hoping to make up for that with a full-on weekend.
Jeff, Pete, Lucy and I will be rising early tomorrow (seperately - we don't sleep in a big, incestuous Hack bed) and hitting Hatta, which is inland from Dubai and, by all accounts, an area of not inconsiderable beauty. There's a long trail there that takes in a few wadis (dried-up river beds), some pools and passes an ancient fort. The idea is some good, long hiking (around 6-8 hours in total) on terrain which is unstable but not sand...getting the feet and ankles used to rougher terrain without the calf-busting dunes of foot-high sand is important, I think.
Arenaphile, I discovered the other day, is the word for someone who collects or loves sand - after our last desert trek, I'm pretty convinced that there are no arenaphiles in our group. In fact, we're Arenaphobes Anonymous. Unfortunately, we need to make it more than twelve steps!
I've always really enjoyed walking and hiking - getting away from everything helps steady the ship. I'm also looking forward to seeing how our team dynamic plays out on a longer, harder trail. My role, as I see it, is keeping everyone going and trying to keep morale up wherever possible - starting with the flask of coffee and bacon sarnies at 6.30am.
Anyway, after tomorrow's hike, we'll be kayaking for two hours at 9am on Saturday morning and then I'm planning on getting 40k+ in on the mountain bike Saturday evening. I know a lot of people think we're mad doing all this but I see each event we're competing in at the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge as being like a metre-long ruler - that's how much effort we have to put in; that's how much it's going to hurt. Every km you run, cycle, kayak or hike after that shortens the ruler by a couple of millimetres here and there...meaning it'll hurt a little less, it'll feel a little shorter, you'll feel fresher that little bit longer.
That, at least, is the theory. We'll let you know over the weekend how the practice goes - should be some pics to accompany it too.
Hopefully I'll never say this about another man ever again but, in order to avoid the way-too-graphic mental pictures that scarred my very brain on reading his last post...I really hope Jeff brings the Vaseline!
Tatty-bye for now.
Matt
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment