Parkrun and the westcliff stairs

ok so training continues to hot up = we are taking part in April 2014 - SA's 9 Peaks, 9 Provinces Challenge, then in May we are once again off to Mt Kilimanjaro. Provided we raise enough we will be once more off to Elbrus, in Russia around July August 2014. Then in September we are putting together "Stairs of Courage" to launch our two next big climbs and the foundation we are raising funds and awareness for - Aconcagua (January 2015) and Mt Everest (April 2016), then in December we may sneak in a trip to Oz to climb Kosciusko. If we achieve this it will mean 2 of 7 volcanoes down, and once we have climbed Aconcagua in January this will be 4 of the 7 summits down.

I have been a bit sickly over the past 6 weeks and my work as a ALS Paramedic at the local fire dept, the long hours, especially the busy night shifts has really created a huge struggle to keep to any fitness regime. But this week I have slowly started to crawl back.

last Saturday I took part in another Parkrun at Delta park - lots of people - very muddy and in some parts a bit slippery.  About halfway the shins started to protests and I discovered my beloved Nike x-trainers soles had actually split -  the one piece  had come off completely and the other was flapping in the wind. By this time I had decided to suck in it and walk briskly till the finish, I still had to meet the rest of the team at the West Cliff stairs for a training session. Rather ambitious of me and dumb. Being very competitive this was very hard but I sat back and chatted to a couple of the walkers along the way and decided for the most part the individuals taking on the Parkrun are actually rather nice and friendly people - unlike the crumpy me when running or competing against the orks!! I was coping rather well I thought, knowing that many people had run ahead of me and that the crowd behind me was not as big as I like to it be - that was until a very large fat, huffing and puffing - example of very bad German engineering -  a dachshund came sprinting past me with equally large looking "mom and dad". The only reason I did not sprint after it was that my skins were killing me and knowing that I would have looked like a right royal Ass or chop, trying to run and lift my foot high enough to achieve clearance of the shoe flap. I would have looked like a drunk clown so I quietly swore under my breath, vowed vengeance on all,  that next time I will own this trail - fat dogs and all!!

Then went of to the infamous West Cliff stairs - these stairs are hectic - let's be honest here. I have seen the fittest of males fall, cry and sweat blood. Last week I only managed 5 reps this week was a bit stronger and I had not been stupid and did a Parkrun before hand. Manged to complete a whole ten reps. so was excited and now I can build and work towards 20 in the next 4 weeks.  One rep is 200 steps - walk/run down the stone stairs then turn around and crawl back up to the top.  I can never remember how many reps - by the time you have passed 5 your brain turns into porridge, your body is protesting and screaming at you, asking you why are you so stupid - what are you doing - crazy chick. so you body fools and tricks you into believing you have done at least 300 reps when in fact you have only done 2!! Today Irene got me collecting pebbles from the bottom of the stairs and carry it up to the top. Slowly but surely the rocks collected into a neat pile. Being the control freak I am I had to place my rocks into a neat row but then noticed they were not the same colour or size so I then started to look out for similar rocks - which suited me because I now had an excuse to catch my breath at the bottom of the stairs,  before I clawed my way back to the top only to do the same thing all over again. Ok Ok I admit mountain people are not normal - you spend some time at altitude all alone and see how your brain functions fool!!