Season's greetings

We wish you and your family a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Satyam Snails (Venki Prathivadi, Debbie Block, Subbu Pithani, Harish Singla, Vijay Athar)

Satyam Slugs (Kathy Gatti, Anand Vyas, Julie Biasotto, Gurpreet Verma, Ananthan Mukundan)

Next blog update: After training session # 7 on 6-January-2008

Our Training Sessions (December 2007)

Welcome to the experiences of our training sessions (Satyam Snails and Slugs)

When the ten of us from Satyam Snails and Slugs signed up in late November 2007 to do the Oxfam Trailwalker event 2008, we all decided on one thing and that was to train every weekend on the actual trail.

Our training plan details can be found in the blog entry titled "Our Training Plan" dated 3 December 2007.

This section gives a glimpse of what we see and feel during our training session.
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Practice Session 6 (Sections 8 and 9)
CP 7 (Woori Yallock Primary School) to Finish (Wesburn Park)
Date : 23 December 2007 (Sunday) 7:15 am to 13:35 pm (24.0 kilometres)

Weather condition :

Mostly wet and cold, 10-17 degrees centigrade, misty, cold and wet in the morning. The drizzle stopped in the afternoon

Trail condition :

Slippery and difficult, Difficulty rating 6/10

Trail experience :

Long, Straight, Uneventful, Dreary, Unrelenting (Warburton trail) , The last section from Milwarra Primary school to Wesburn Park is quite difficult and demanding, even when attempted as part of just a 2 section workload.

Session story:

After last weekend's long and unrelenting Warburton Trail experience, we were looking forward to a good strong 2-section training session from Woori Yallock Primary School to the finish at Wesburn Park. We had a full strength team with all 10 walkers present at Woori Yallock. We were worried about the weather because it had rained continuously and heavily for over three days here in Melbourne. Fortunately, the rains had eased overnight and we started our session in reasonably good weather (light drizzle). You can see many of us decked in ponchos flimsy raincoats) and plastic sheets. Someday, we will become a little more sophisticated and spend more money acquiring water-proof Gore Tex Jackets and pants. But for now, all we can afford is some plastic sheet to keep the water out.

We made good progress on the section from Woori Yallock to Milwarra Primary School, walking at about 5.6 to 5.8 km/h speed on a constant gradient trail. You can see photos of the terrain and surroundings in the section titled "Our training sessions" to the right of this page.
There were quite a few pit stops by the male members of our team along this 13.5 km stretch (must have been the cold weather) and as usual the women had to suffer in silence till they got to Milwarra which had public toilet facilities. We stopped for about 20 minutes at Check Point 8 and a few walkers bought some doughnuts (instant energy) at the local bakery next to the sawmill.

We then commenced the long hard uphill climb having left the Warburton trail to our left. We could see the strongly flowing Yarra to our left. Obviously the rain had done a lot of good to the parched country side. The trail was very narrow, muddy and slippery - very different to the long, straight and flat Warburton trail. Within minutes many walkers had their walking poles out of their backpacks and were using them effectively to leverage strength and balance from the upper body. The uphill climb continued for about 5-6 kilometres along Mount Little Joe. The winding, thick, wet and slippery trail took us through Dolly Gray Picnic grounds. This is a beautiful place to behold and enjoy and took our minds off the dreaded thought of how our tired legs, body and beaten mind would cope on actual event day. It is one thing to trundle along this difficult path having started off fresh, just 4 hours before at Milwarra Primary and quite another thing to get this far having walked for over 24 hours and covered almost 90 kilometres. Apparently many walkers give up at Milwarra Primary having been broken by the Warburton section. We hope our experience will stand us in good stead.

Soon we experienced a 2 kilometre downhill section that gave us some eagerly accepted respite from the climb. The rest was short-lived as we started the final ascent over steep, rocky and challenging trail. We kept wondering what fate might have in store for us here on actual event day. We hope our practice sessions will build enough endurance in us to withstand this torture after 97 kilometres.

We finally arrived at Wesburn Park Oval having tackled the Conduit track with renewed energy (the end was in sight). It was a great feeling having accomplished our first goal of "The complete 100 km trail familiarization". It had taken us 6 practice sessions over 6 Sundays to get from Start to Finish at an average rate of 16 km/training session. Today, was the longest session we had walked (24 kilometres in 6 hours and 20 minutes) since we started to practice in late November 2007.

I had expended almost 2000 calories in walking the 24 kilometres today and I drank 2 litres of water and 1 litre of electrolytes in the process. I also ate 2 muesli bars, a banana and had 2 energy gels during the walk. A rough calculation tells me that I probably created a deficit of about 500 calories. Hurray, I lost 50 grams!. This goes to show why even after all this walking I still look the same - I tend to eat more and then blame it on increased metabolism or the silly season.

We are having a well deserved rest next Sunday over the Christmas period and we will resume training on 6/1/2008. We intend to cover 3 sections (35 kilometres) in one session starting from Jells Park and finishing up at Grants Picnic. We are aiming to increase our endurance during this phase of training. Our training goal is to be able to cover the 100 kms in 3 training sessions by end of January 2008 and in 2 sessions by end of February and hopefully, eventually in 1 "real" session on April 11th 2008.

We invite you to view the photos from today's session. Unfortunately we didn't carry a video camera today because of the wet weather and therefore we don't have a video to share our experience. Perhaps we will have one in the next session update on 6/1/2008.

Finally, we would like to thank Sumana Prathivadi and Dennis Biasotto for the wonderful support they provided in driving 80 kilomteres to pick us up from Wesburn Park and bring us back to Woori Yallock where we had parked our cars. We are very grateful to our support crew. Without them we wouldn't be able to hold any practice sessions.

Wishing you a merry Christmas and a happy new year from all of us at Satyam Snails and Satyam Slugs.

Have a great day and do write to us on this blog.

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Practice Session 5 (Sections 6 and 7 )

CP 5 (Silvan Reservoir) to CP 7 (Woori Yallock Primary School)
Date : 16 December 2007 (Sunday) 7:00 am to 12:15 pm (21.5 kilometres)

Weather condition : Mostly Sunny, 13-21 degrees centigrade, fresh and invigorating in the morning, changed to warmer and sultry conditions in the afternoon

Trail condition : Good, Difficulty rating 4/10

Trail experience : Long, Straight, Uneventful, Dreary, Unrelenting (Warburton trail)

Session story:

All of us assembled at the Overflow car park in Silvan Reservoir at 7:00 am. We were all relaxed and cheerful having enjoyed the Satyam@Telstra annual Christmas party yesterday at Gumbuya Park. We were looking forward to an easier session after last week's gruelling uphill climb from Grant's picnic grounds and knee crushing downhill trail from Olinda Reserve.

Silvan Reservoir Park is set in the foothills of the Dandenongs. Established in 1931, the park is home to exotic trees including cypress, spruce, liquid amber, poplar and maple, and local fauna such as beaked echidnas, sugar gliders and wombats. We had a relatively easier time finding the trails, compared to last week, and we were soon on our merry way walking the "Olinda Creek Trail". We were soon into the dense forest valley and the sounds of honeyeaters, blue wrens, wattle birds, fantails, willy wag tails, thornbills, grebes and other birds was enchanting and mesmerising.

This trail then led us into "Track 10" and "Aqueduct Borang Avenue" leading us away from the forest into less endearing bush. This change in the landscape also caused a slight change in the mood of the team. We became quieter and a few male members went off into the bush for their "bio-breaks". We felt sorry for our uncomplaining lady walkers. On these walks, our lady team members have to hold on till they find a public toilet in park facilities or a reserve. Unfortunately there aren't many. We do feel for them. As someone said, they are "Brave, but stupid". That is what we will call ourselves next year - if we survive this year - "Brave, but stupid"!

We were soon on the dreaded and weary "Warburton Trail". We had heard from many previous Oxfam walkers to watch out for this section. Apparently, most people drop out at this section, firstly because it goes for over 15 kilometres starting around the 65 km mark of the entire trail and secondly because it is a dull, boring, flat and tiring trail. There is nothing much to see or do here other than just put one foot ahead of the other. There is nothing to hear other than the sound of our hiking shoes crunching the gravel path.

To avoid boredom, we spoke a lot to each other and we even discussed the objectives of why we were doing this event and how we might feel at this stretch on actual event day (April 11, 2008).
Although we were practising this stretch during day time, we will be grinding along at night on this section. Fortunately, there is nothing to see and we won't be able to see much either at night.

Occasionally we came across cyclists on the trail and one or two runners that looked like seasoned marathon runners that wore no flesh on their bones. The cyclists were a nuisance though because we had to break up our strides and group to give them enough way on the trail. Some of them appear crazy because they would zoom past us on a slope at a furious pace.

We decided to continue past Check Point 6 (Graham Colling Reserve) having covered the 8.5 kilometre section in about 2 hours.

The stretch between Check point 6 and Check Point 7 is really boring and uneventful. This is where the Warburton trail begins. It is impossible to get lost on this section because it is just one long straight path. There is a beautiful view of the mountain top merging into thick clouds, but apart from that there really is nothing much here other than some horse shit, cyclists and a few locals walking their dogs. It took us about 3 hours to complete the 13 kilometre stretch and we reached Woori Yallock Primary school at 12:15 pm, hungry, thirsty and tired. We had walked continously for about 5 hours and covered 21.5 kilometres.

We went to the local bakery at the Woori Yallock shopping centre to have a coffee while waiting for our support crew to pick us up and take us back to Silvan reservoir where we had parked our cars.

That's it for today, two more sections covered and crossed off - a total distance of 21.5 kms in 5 hours, almost exactly as per estimate. We have now covered the cumulative distance of 76.0 kilometres of the 100 kms trail in 5 training sessions. Sometimes, we cannot stop wondering as to how the hell will we do the entire stretch in one go on April 11th? Brave, but stupid!

You can see photos from our session to the right of this section. Clicking on a photo will launch them in a seperate window.

Let us remember that the driving force of why we are doing this is to raise money for charity. So please help us raise funds for Oxfam.

Finally, we would like to thank Martin Block and Srikanth Parna for graciously sacrificing their personal time this Sunday afternoon to drive up to Woori Yallock to pick us up after a long hard walk.

Have a great day.
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Our Training Plan

We read somewhere that "Failing to plan is planning to fail". We also learned that many teams and walkers attempt the 100 kilometre trailwalk without much preparation or training. We were told that not many finish the distance (not surprisingly). We don't know what our outcome will be, but we are sure of one thing. We will not let "lack of planning, preparation or training" as causes that let us down.

We have decided to practice on the actual trail every weekend (at least most weekends) with the objective to familiarize ourselves with the actual terrain, conditions and varying weather (heat, cold, wind and rain). Here is our training plan.

As you can see we will train regularly leading up to March 2008 and then start winding down the intensity of our training to conserve our energy for the big day. We plan to train at nights too because we will be walking Check Point 3 (Grants Picnic grounds) to Check Point 7 (Woori Yallock Primary School) during darkness on the actual day. That is a distance of 41.2 kilometres in the dark, possibly rain and cold and up and down back breaking uphill and knee crunching downhill sections.

We also aim to peak in our training sessions, on February 9th 2008, doing 6 sections from Check Point 3 (Grants Picnic grounds) to Finish (Wesburn Park) in one session over an estimated duration of 20 hours. Don't even come near us the following Monday and don't talk about walking or training.

Hopefully we will build familiarity and endurance on these sections - through two training sessions on these areas.

We would love to invite your comments and suggestions on the above training plan.

The 100 Kilometre Trail

The Melbourne Trail

The Oxfam Trailwalker challenge requires teams to complete the 100 Kilometres walk / run event (62.5 miles) from Jells Park in Wheelers Hill (a suburb of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia) to Wesburn Park in the Yarra Valley (Victoria), within a total time 48 hours .

The entire trail is along parkland and bush with very few road crossings. The trail begins with the wide open spaces of Jells Park in Wheelers Hill. Passing south-east through the Corhanwarrabul Wetlands then east through the Churchill and Lysterfield National Parks. The trail heads north through Belgrave and into the beautiful Dandenong Ranges National Park.
From here it travels east along the Warburton Trail before looping south of Warburton to the ups and downs of Mt Little Joe, finishing in the expansive Wesburn Park. There are eight checkpoints between the start and finish located approximately every 11 kilometres along the trail.

Here's an overview of the trail with the check points labelled:

The Oxfam 100 km Trail (Melbourne 2008)

Here's some detailed information for the more technically minded readers and those that want to explore the trail, virtually or really! For our offshore readers, I have included a map of Australia to show where the state of Victoria is (it is in the South-East). The map next to it shows you where Yarra Valley is with reference to Melbourne CBD (also in the South-East of Victoria).

North-West

South-East

Australia and the states

Victoria and Yarra Valley

Information about the trail sections and check points.

1. Start to Check Point 1 - (Jells Park Tea House, Wheelers Hill to Churchill National Park Picnic Grounds) - 12.5 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 12.5 kilometres)


2. Check Point 1 to Check Point 2 (Churchill National Park Picnic Grounds to Lysterfield Lake Picnic Area) - 9 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 21.5 kilometres)


3. Check Point 2 to Check Point 3 (Lysterfield Lake Picnic Area to Grants Picnic Ground) 13.3 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 34.8 kilometres)


4. Check Point 3 to Check Point 4 (Grants Picnic Ground to Olinda Reserve) 11.7 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 46.5 kilometres)


5. Check Point 4 to Check Point 5 (Olinda Reserve to Silvan Reservoir Park) 8 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 54.5 kilometres)


6. Check Point 5 to Check Point 6 (Silvan Reservoir Park to Graham Colling Reservc) 8.5 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 63.0 kilometres)


7. Check Point 6 to Check Point 7 (Graham Colling Reservc to Worri Yallock Primary School) 13.0 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 76.0 kilometres)


8. Check Point 7 to Check Point 8 (Worri Yallock Primary School to Milwarra Primary School) 14.5 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 90.5 kilometres)


9. Check Point 9 to Fnish (Milwarra Primary School to Wesburn Park) 9.5 kilometres (Cumulative distance : 100.0 kilometres)

You can watch a fascinating tour of the entire trail on Google Earth. You will need the Google Earth application to view the tour in three dimensions - Terrain, buildings and all. Please download Google Earth here - It's free. You will also need the tour file, created by Oxfam. That can be downloaded here - Google Earth Tour of Jells Park to Wesburn Park.

Enjoy the virtual tour. That is the closest I can bring you to experiencing the 100 km walk across the bush, without leaving your comfortable seat.

Do visit this site often and check out our posts to the upper-left of this screen.

In conclusion, we leave you wih this wonderful image from Google Earth showing the terrain, check points and other detail. You can view all this in 3-D animation with Google Earth and the file.

Looking forward to your comments on this post.

Have a great day!

Why are we doing this (Objectives)?

Hello readers

As you know, we are planning to walk 100 kilometres (62.5 miles) in one go on April 11th, 2008. Any initiative like this can be fraught with difficulty and dangers, if approached in a casual manner. It requires serious planning, preparation and intensive training. Even more importantly, it requires clear answers to the fundamental question - "Why are we doing this?"
The answers will help us stay on course from now until event day and also, hopefully, get us through the event particularly those difficult sections where the tiredness, irritability, swearing and exhaustion might play tricks on our minds.

Our Objectives for the event (in the order of priority)

1. To honour our fundraising commitment to Oxfam. (Satyam Snails = $5,000 and Satyam Slugs = $3,000)
2. All eight members to complete the 100 km walk, safely and happily (within the available 48 hours)
3. To raise more funds than our committed amounts
4. For at least one member from each of the two teams to complete the 100 km walk (within the available 48 hours)
5. For both teams to complete the 100 km walk within a benchmark time of under 30 hours

At first glance the above objectives might seem pretty ordinary and obvious. Let us analyze them a little more closely:

• Our team members are from different backgrounds, ages and genders [Indians, Australians, South Africans, Italians, young (under 30), middle aged (over 40), male and female]
• Some of us are fitter than others. Some work out in the gym about 5 days in the week doing cardio and resistance (weight) training exercises. Others walk to stay fit.
• Some are motivated by the physical challenge of the event and training sessions. Others are motivated by the charity cause. Others enjoy the teaming aspect
• Some members approach the training properly equipped (hiking or trail running shoes, technical shorts, T-shirts and socks, walking poles) and others manage fairly well with whatever they have (gym runners, cotton Tees and socks and a fallen branch of a tree)

You get the idea. We are a team of people with diverse backgrounds, motives and mindsets. So, how do we jell together?

More importantly how do we ensure that the fitter and younger members don't run away on sections leaving behind the slower members?

How do we ensure that all of us are nice to each other and our support crews ( at least outwardly) when the blisters are killing us on the inside?

How do we resolve a potential situation, say at the 74 km point, when two members in the team are exhausted, depressed and down and want to pull out of the challenge? What do the other two members do? Do they give up for the sake of their team mates or do they help their mates make it to a check point, have them retire and then carry on to finish the challenge?

How will those that unfortunately had to drop out feel? (For the rest of thier lives)

These are only a few questions that may come up. As you can see this is not a simple "walk in the park". There is a lot of individual and team psychology and dynamics at play.

A clearly articulated set of objectives will help us remember the purpose of why we are doing this, clear our minds and carry on with life in the face of adversity.

Hopefully our set of objectives will help us stay on course - during preparation and the event.

Oxfam TRAILWALKER 2008 (Melbourne)

Hello friends, relatives and well-wishers

Welcome to my Blog!

My name is Venki Prathivadi and the purpose of this section on my blog (Web log) is to capture and share our experience relating to the Oxfam Trailwalker 2008, 100 km walk in Melbourne on April 11th 2008.

Oxfam TRAILWALKER is the world's greatest team challenge. And it's also one of the toughest. The challenge is to get our two teams across 100km of Australian bush in less than 48 hours - and, collectively, to raise at least $8,000 to help to overcome poverty and suffering around the world.

Our two teams are called "Satyam Snails" and "Satyam Slugs". We are all IT professionals working in Melbourne, Australia with Satyam Computer Services Limited.

Here are our teams and the trailwalkers:

Satyam Snails

1. Venki Prathivadi
2. Vijay Athar
3. Harish Singla
4. Debra Block
5. Subbu Pithani
   
   

Satyam Slugs

1. Gurpreet Verma
2. Kathy Gatti
3. Anand Vyas
4. Julie Biasotto
5. Ananthan Mukundan
   
   

Our Team Note:

We are ten ordinary, average, middle-aged IT professionals representing Satyam Computer Services Limited. We feel compelled to make a difference to the world in any small way that we can. So we decided to walk and run 100 kms on 11th April 2008, to raise funds for charity. We have never walked more than 20 kms before in our lives, let alone run it. We may not exactly breeze through the 100 kms. We may bleed through our feet, drag ourselves through exhaustion and hopefully limp our way through. But we will do it slow and steady. That is why we are the "Snails". Our pain will seem trivial and temporary when compared to the prolonged trouble and long-term suffering of so many needy, poor or underprivileged people in this world. So please support us if you can through donating money to Oxfam. Although we have signed up to commit $8,000 through this fundraising initiative, we would love to get close to or surpass the highest amount raised by a team at the Oxfam TRAILWALKER event last year ($80,821). Please donate to this worthy cause. In all humility, we thank you sincerely for your donation and support.

Thank you to all our donors. We are very grateful to you for supporting Oxfam, through our teams.

To donate to Oxfam, through our teams, please follow these links:

Satyam Snails

Satyam Slugs

Please do provide your feedback on this blog. We will regularly update this blog with the experience and insight gained from our training sessions.


Forthcoming articles in this blog:

1. The 100 km Trail
2. Our donor list
3. Our training plan
4. Training sessions experience
5. The gear and preparations
6. Our Support crew
7. Lessons learned (Parallels between work teams and this walk team: management, team dynamics and individual psychology)
   

Please do visit this site regularly.

Have a great day




Venki Prathivadi