- Most number of walkers that participated in any training session so far (We were 11 walkers, 4 from Satyam Snails - Venki Prathivadi, Harish Singla, Subbu Pithani, Debbie Block and 5 from Satyam Slugs - Kathy Gatti, Gurpreet Verma, Ananthan Mukundan, Anand Vyas, Julie Biasotto and two guest participants in Tom George and Iftekhar Alam. Vijay Athar couldn't make it to this session. Otherwise we would have been the "Dirty Dozen".
- Longest distance any of the 11 walkers had ever covered, in one night, in their lifetime - 28.4 kilometres from 8:30 pm to 5.30 am (9 hours of continuous walking in the wild bush, in pitch darkness, at an average speed of 3.15 kms/hour)
- The gruelling conditions of the session - It rained continuously along the treacherous uphill and downhill section. This experience of extreme weather is really invaluable for our preparation.
- The wonderful team spirit and sense of purpose - Sustenance of a good team spirit and can-do attitude throughout despite trying conditions has forged a stronger bond amongst all walkers, two of whom had never participated in any earlier sessions.
- The birth of a healthy baby girl to one of our team members - Congratulations to the Athar family and welcome to "baby girl Athar" to the world and welcome to the "Brave but stupid" world of Satyam Snails and Slugs.
- India won the 3rd Cricket test match against Australia at Perth. - Probably why we survived the walk this night.
It had to happen. The Melbourne sky decided to rain on our night parade as we had feared. It is commendable that we survived the trying conditions of continuous wet weather, pitch darkness, difficult trail - relentless uphill and downhill, yabbies, confusing tracks and sore legs and backs.
We left Checkpoint 3 (Grants Picnic Grounds) at 8:30 pm on Saturday night in high spirits despite threatening showers. It was dusk and the Indian walkers were all on a high after having celebrated India's historic win against Australia at Perth. I offer commiserations to our Australian walkers. As always, nothing dampens their enthusiasm for adventure and one swallow doesn't make an Indian summer. Soon we were huffing and puffing our way up Clematis Track, having crossed Monbulk Road. It was an eerie experience walking in thick forest in complete darkness. Of course we all had our headlights to see our way around. We walked through Sherbrooke forest as it became darker and the intensity of the showers increased. We came across huge Yabbies scouring the forest floor for bush tucker. They are revolting and quite a sight to behold when our headlights shone on them. Do see the photos in the "Images of the Trail" section to the right of this article.
It was a reasonably easy walk for the first 5 kilometres through Sherbrooke Forest despite the annoying rain. We had overcome the initial 1.5 km climb quite well and several of us recalled how easy this session seemed compared to a previous session on this trail a few weeks ago. We are all certainly enduring better with each training session. We took a detour around Alfred Nicholas gardens (through Nobles Lane) because the park gates were shut, being night time. Slowly the rain and dark had started to wear us down as we neared the 9 km mark near Pirianda Garden. Soon we started the gruelling climb on Hackett track. It is an unforgiving section that simply seems to go on and on and it feels like crawling up a slippery wall in pouring rain and darkness with the occasional street light throwing up diffused light through the fog. Every breath creates an eerie ball of white cloud in the fog. I was reminded of the first chapter of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Then we were on the slow gradual uphill climb on Old road. We passed by a house in the middle of nowhere with its doors wide open at 12:00 am in the cold and wet night with a gentleman still working. We checked with him to see if we were on the right track. He must have thought we were a bunch of nuts.
We came across a restaurant on the Olinda-Monbulk Road and although they were closing for the day they were kind enough to let our lady walkers use their toilets. It must have been a great relief. Imagine how hard it must be for women on a cold and wet night out in the forest. As always the men have no problems about their bio-breaks and have one every 30 minutes wherever they please.
We crossed Checkpoint 4 (Olinda Reserve) about 1:30 am (4 hours after we started). We rested for a few minutes for a quick snack before proceeding on Rock track through Chalet Road. If the previous section troubled us with the uphill climbs, this section tortured us with its continuous rough-terrain downhill peppered with tree roots and fallen tree trunks. Many of us will take an uphill climb any time instead of these knee-tearing downhill tracks. One of our lady walkers suffered here in this section, with excruciating pain in her knee. She is a true champion. Despite knowing before hand what she would go through in this stretch, she didn't chicken out. Most men would pack up here. It is something about the spirit of women and the mental ability to overcome difficulty that we men will find it hard to understand. All the male members of Satyam Snails and Slugs salute our three women walkers. Debbie, Julie and Kathy are incredibly brave and resilient. They are without doubt the most powerful motivators for the entire team to complete this event labelled as the "World's toughest and most challenging". Julie interrupted her family holidays in Apollo Bay to do tonight's training session. She arrived in Melbourne from Apollo Bay where she is vacationing and will go back on Sunday afternoon after having walked all night in the bloody rain without a wink of sleep, to resume her holiday with her family. The dictionary may not tell you this, but Julie is another name for "commitment". If all teams had people like Debbie, Julie and Kathy, there would be no such thing as a "failed task or project".
We trundled on one foot after another, the rain pouring down on us. Our clothes were soaked wet, right through the outer wear, including underwear and socks. It is very painful to walk with wet clothes, shoes and socks. Hands and Feet become wriggly and the mind becomes numb with the monotony and drudgery. Even with the headlights it is not possible to see beyond a couple of metres. We arrived at Checkpoint 5 (Silvan reservoir) and it took us more than an hour to find Olinda creek trail that would take us beyond Silvan to the next Checkpoint. It is really difficult to read maps under our headlights with rain drenching the maps. Soon we were on our way to Checkpoint 6 with the rain increasing and our legs really starting to hurt by then.
Our bodies were aching everywhere and we were desperate for some shelter - somewhere to sit for a while, remove our shoes and socks and put down our heavy backpacks for a few minutes. After walking continuously for 27 kilometres we came across Mt. Evelyn reserve, a football ground with a large shelter and some benches to sit down. It seemed like the lobby of a 5-star hotel to us. We settled in for a rest to take off the wet outer gear and shoes for a few minutes. Soon that brief stop turned into a longer rest and our aching bodies and weakened mind gave way for the night. As dawn broke out (about 5:30 am) we as a team decided to call it a night although we had originally planned to continue past Check Point 6 (Graham Colling Reserve) and finish our session at Check Point 7 (Woori Yallock Primary School). I think our plan was too ambitious and didn't take into account the impact of rain and darkness. We were disappointed with ourselves that we fell significantly short of our planned target of 41.2 kilometres by about 13 kilometres. We finally went on to complete about 28.4 kilometres to the start of Warburton trail before we called it quits. It is indeed a remarkable achievement for a team that trained in the dark and wet weather for the first time. The sections we did were really hard. Our focus was on experiencing walking, in the forest, in dark and we had the bonus of doing that through incessant rain too. We learnt a lesson that darkness and rain impose a 25-30% toll on speed and distance goals. Simply put, walking in the dark is simply not the same as walking during day time despite temperatures being cooler. In fact cold weather creates a different set of problems through muscle cramps and soreness. Also, recovery seems to be slower. It seemed strange that we had done more than 33 kilometres a fortnight ago and felt a lot stronger after that session than we did on this.
We dragged ourselves away from the football reserve, because there was no mobile phone reception around that area and we needed to contact our support crew to pick us up. All of us dragged our feet to the corner of Monbulk and Clegg Roads where we discovered Mt. Evelyn Supermarket. Any store that sells more than newspapers, milk, bread and tobacco in the country is called a supermarket. The owner may have been a little irritated to find us sprawled across his shopfront with our backpacks, shoes and walking poles strewn everywhere, when he came in at 7:30 am to open the store. Perhaps we should ask him to build a changing room for us at the back, don't we Kathy?
Finally, I would like to congratulate Tom George and Ifti Alam for their wonderful spirit, courage and perseverance they demonstrated in tonight's walk. Most people would think that the idea of walking about 10 hours in the dark, in the forest, on a Saturday night when great cricket and Tennis was on - utterly and plain stupid. No, Tom and Ifti are not "most people". They were very warmly welcomed by our team when they expressed a desire to try and experience one of our training sessions. I will always cherish and value a statement Tom made to me during that unearthly hour of 3.30 am on the punishing Olinda Creek Trail. He said that he wanted to experience and feel what we (Snails and Slugs) would go through during our 100 km walk on April 12th and to do that he felt compelled to join us for a session. He said he would call us on the night of the event, from India, to encourage and egg us on, now that he understood the degree of difficulty, both mental and physical. I was moved. I wish we have more supporters like Tom and Ifti. They probably didn't see much of the Australian bush through their eyes, because of the darkness, but I am sure they understood a lot through their mind.
Anybody think we don't fit the "Brave, but stupid" tag?
Based on the lessons we learnt, we might now modify our training plan for the next session on Feb 2, 2008. Instead of attempting another night and day session with a distance objective, we might focus on a longer day session, say a 12-hour continuous walk to see how much distance we might cover.
To conclude this article, we would like to express our sincere thanks to our wonderful volunteers for this session - Kathy's mum and sister, Arun Doraiswamy and Sumana Prathivadi. They dropped and picked us up and brought us home safely. Obviously we were in no shape to drive anywhere after a night out in the forest.
Have a great day!
Venki Prathivadi for Satyam Snails and Satyam Slugs
A typical uphill track (Churchill National Park to Lysterfield Lake)
