Practice Session # 11 (The longest and the toughest) - 69 km on Saturday and Sunday, 08-Mar-2008 and 09-Mar-2008

Practice session # 11 (Saturday to Sunday 08-09 March 2008) of our Oxfam Trailwalker 100 km walk/run event has been the longest and toughest training session so far. We have reached peak endurance and fitness with the conclusion of this session and we will wind down our training intensity from here on to be conserve energy and be ready for the actual event on April 11, 2008.

Session # 11 highlights

Start: Check Point 2 (Lysterfield Lake)
Start Time: 7:40 am, Saturday, 8-Mar-08

(Break in training from 5:30 pm Saturday to 7:30 am Sunday)

Finish: Check Point 8 (Milwarra Primary)

Finish time: 5:30 pm, Sunday, 9-Mar-08

Total distance: 69.0 kilometres

Session time: 19 hours 50 minutes

Average speed: 3.47 Kilometres / Hour

Temperature and conditions: Dry and very hot (30 degrees on Saturday and 34 degrees on Sunday)

This weekend's training session, in two parts, was probably the most important of all our sessions for many reasons. Firstly, this long and very difficult session tested the team's endurance as closely as possible to the real event on April 11th while still allowing enough recovery time. We had decided that a good measure of our ability to complete the 100 km event would be to try and walk two-thirds of the trail (66 kms). Secondly, we wanted to cover this distance over two days to test our bodies ability to walk over 33 kilometres on a day on the actual trail, go home and sleep for the night before going back to the trail early morning to cover the remaining distance. Thirdly, we were trying to regroup as a team after losing two of our original team members. Please see the blog entry titled "Decision Time - Saddest day yet" to understand that phase of this endeavour.

Six walkers assembled at Lysterfield Lake (Check point 2) on the morning of Saturday to tackle the 33 km hike to Olinda Reserve (Check Point 4). Four members were missing from our usual force of ten. While the absence of two - one had a wedding to go to and another was on vacations in India was understood and accepted, the absence of two regular walkers created a deep level of sadness and quiet reflection in all other walkers. We had been a team of ten in most other training sessions and the feeling of incompleteness was overwhelming.

The weather was quite chilly in the morning and this was our first experience of the Melbourne autumn chill. We walked briskly trying to warm up. Our spirits were lifted when we saw a herd of wild Kangaroos bounding across the trail. We soon crossed Wellington road with great care, vividly recalling the scare we had in an earlier session when Forrest Gump (nickname for one of our walkers) attempted to cross in front of a car travelling at 90 km/hour. We breezed through the steep climb of Broadway Street and steps to reach the Belgrave swimming pool. Many of us could recall the difficulty we had at this section during our earlier training sessions. Here was proof that we had indeed built up endurance and stamina. Although, we were tempted to we didn't stop for tea at Belgrave and decided to stop for a quick bite and tea at Grants Picnic. On that picturesque Coles Ridge Rd track we realized that we had a chance to break our previous time record for this section and as a team we decided to go for it. We were walking as fast as our 7-8 kg backpacks would allow us. We beat the record as we coasted into Grants Picnic (Check Point 3) having covered the 13.8 km length in 2 hours and 48 minutes. We treated ourselves to a delicious cup of tea at the cafe there before dragging ourselves out of the comfortable and tranquil environs.

We were soon climbing the steep trail leading out of Grants Picnic to Olinda reserve. There is a green metal railing fence along the trail that always confuses us. We had made a mistake here once in the earlier session and therefore had become wary of these railings, so much so that we are hesitant to even take the correct path. Onlookers probably find it humorous to see us going back and forth here a few times before sense prevails and we cross the bridge. We decided to blame this minor confusion on Julie, our chief navigator and map reader, because she wasn't on this session. We eventually crossed Sherbrooke forest, still feeling reasonably fresh and went through Alfred Nicolas gardens. This trail seemed so different from the last time we were on it when it was pitch dark and rained all through the night.

It must have been the serene and calming nature of Alfred Nicolas gardens that prompted a deeply psychological discussion and exploration of reasons as to why we had embarked on this mad adventure to walk 100 km. One of our lady walkers provided a wonderful observation when she said that she had decided to do the walk and training sessions to rediscover her personal self having been so engrossed and dedicated to taking care of her family, home and going to work. This training experience had given her an insight into something new, something that was outside the routine of life and also introduced interactions with people whom she would normally have not mingled for 10 hours or more at a stretch on a Saturday or Sunday. She said that the aspects of learning about new cultures to which other walkers belonged and the cultural differences between her own culture and that of others fascinated her. She also observed that although her weekends were now taken away by these training sessions, she still managed to get all the "routine" housework and her children's weekend commitments done with help from her husband. I think some of us men were thinking about our own families and the realization that perhaps we should help at home too to give our wives some private time for themselves silenced further conversation.

We were back at the dreaded Hackett Road and its 15 degree inclination. This time we scaled it reasonably well. We think we are getting stronger and Hackett doesn't scare us anymore. We made it to Olinda reserve almost on the dot at 1:00 pm. We had our lunch watching the local cricket match at the reserve. The Olinda reserve is next door to the golf course which has a great little cafe. We bought take away coffees with us on the way to Silvan (Check Point 4). By this time one of our team members, Subbu was struggling a bit because he had twisted his ankle having stepped on a stone. Subbu was in considerable pain as he hobbled and limped through the downward slopes of Predator track and Barges road. We took it slow and easy because we knew that we had another day to go and about 38 kms more to cover. Soon we reached the overflow car park at Silvan reservoir. Martin Block, our wonderful support crew for the day picked us up at 5:30 pm after 10 hours of walking to bring us back to Lysterfield where we had parked our cars. We thus ended the first phase of training on session # 11 having covered 33 kms and one walker had been injured.

We were feeling sore in the leg muscles and undersoles when we woke up at 5:30 am to be ready for a 7:30 am start from Silvan. We knew from the weather forecast that it was going to be hot. This time there were only five walkers, two men and three women. It was commendable that Subbu decided to give the gruelling 36 km it a try despite a twisted ankle. It brought a lump into our throats to see him limp out of the car park at Silvan into the Olinda creek trail. This is the type of attitude that helps teams and individuals accomplish extraordinary outcomes. It would have been so easy for him to just stay back home and put his feet up on this hot Sunday. He chose to do what champions do and we are proud of him. The morning was quite refreshing and we walked to Mt. Evelyn reserve quite briskly. This place had uncomfortable memories for us because it was here that we had given up without reaching our target during an earlier training session. It was little wonder then that we were in a hurry to leave the place after grabbing a quick bite and toilet break. Within a few minutes we were at the start of the dreaded Warburton trail. A post at the beginning of the trail is marked with a W and 32 kms written beneath it. That is how long this unrelenting trail is - 32 kilometres. The sun started to blaze on us and soon we were perspiring with the heat and load of our backpacks. On this occasion we managed to find Graham Colling reserve (Check Point 6). We had gone past it during an earlier training session. The section from Graham Colling to Woori Yallock is about 13 km and walking along this uninteresting section under the hot sun must have prompted all of us to think many times as to why the hell were we doing this. After walking for over 5.5 hours from Silvan reservoir we reached Woori Yallock (Check Point 7) and we went straight to the world-renowned Woori Yallock bakery. You will find the world's best pies at this bakery. If you don't believe us, we sincerely urge you to walk there and find it out for yourself. Patrons at the shop must have wondered as to what was going on. Here was a crazy group of five walkers inside a bakery with all their gear spread across tables gulping their home-made sandwiches, the bakery pies, coffee and tea on a quiet country afternoon. We must have caused a furore in the quite, sleepy town of Woori Yallock.

The hike from Woori Yallock to Milwarra Primary School (Check Point 8) is the toughest and most demanding we had undertaken so far in the last three months. By late afternoon the temperature had reached well over 30 degrees and the heat was really unbearable. We had all drank lots of electrolytes and water and despite that we were soon reaching exhaustion. We played the team video on a mobile phone several times and that kept us going for 20-30 minutes at a time. Our mental resolve was thoroughly tested on this hot afternoon and all of us simply wanted this session to be done with. We were literally dragging our feet as we got within 2 km of our target Check point when one of our lady walkers suffered a mild sun stroke. We were thankful that we were so close to our destination. I think we would all have been in trouble had there been more distance to cover.

We limped into the Millgrove supermarket to buy ice creams and bags of ice to cool our hot heels. We are really proud of our achievement over the two days and it seemed incredible that we had walked almost 70 kilometres under really hot and trying conditions. We are particularly proud of Subbu who was very determined to finish the distance despite a twisted ankle and we are equally proud of all three women who showed us men what they are capable of. This is the kind of steely resolve that helps teams overcome tough challenges such as the Oxfam 100 km trailwalker event.

We are grateful to Dennis and Bala for picking us up at Millwara Primary School. Without their help we wouldn't have had the energy to get into a car let alone drive it.

We have now completed the second phase of training very successfully. The first phase which we embarked on in December was to familiarize ourselves with the trail. We covered the entire 100 km trail in 6 training sessions. We then entered the second phase of training which was intended to improve our endurance. During this phase we gradually increased both the distance and time in our walks. This phase culminated in the weekend's effort of 69 kilometres in a little under 20 hours. We will now rest for a week and then commence the short third phase of training where we will cover shorter distances and try to improve our speed. Our confidence levels are high and we are now more certain than ever of finishing the actual event.

You can see pictures from this session at the photo gallery on this site.

Please do visit this site regularly to read about our experience.

Walking the Talk - Video

Here's a 6minute video clip of our Oxfam Trailwalker 2008 (Melbourne) initiative.

Decision time - Saddest day yet

Tuesday, 4th March 2008 - Decision time (Team composition)

This black Tuesday is the saddest day yet in our team's history since we came up with the "brave but stupid" idea to participate in the Oxfam TRAILWALKER 100 km walk/run event.

When we assembled our team during late November 2007, we had a small problem. We had ten members who were actively interested in participating in the 100 km fundraising walk. That was two more than the eight that we could register in two teams of four each. We had made a conscious decision at that time to have ten people in the overall team expecting that a few would drop out as we progressed with training. Time went by and although many of the ten members had privately doubted their own ability to walk 100 km at that time, everyone was drawing upon the inspiration and contagious enthusiasm from the team as a whole.

We commenced training in earnest and all ten members attended the weekend sessions on the actual trail. We instituted a weekly team meeting, every Tuesday, to discuss our progress and pain from the previous training session. Soon we started to do the really intense sessions where we walked for 10-15 hours continuously, sometimes in the dark and in the rain. Although none of us ever raised the troublesome topic of how to trim down the team of ten to two teams of four each, that problem was always on our mind.

The Oxfam Trailwalker is a team challenge. Every team can have only four members. We had registered two teams from our organization - the "Satyam Snails" and the "Satyam Slugs". Although we were ten walkers in our overall team, we could only have eight on the day that mattered - April 11, 2008. That day was looming quickly and moreover we had to soon change our team member names on the official forms to the eight that would actually walk the event.

We had all hoped and planned that two team members from our team of ten would opt out by themselves because of personal reasons, lower confidence, injury or lack of fitness. As things turned out everyone became fitter and more confident as we trained harder, making our original assumption and plan, to have two extra members, incorrect.

There were seven male members and one female member when we had first registered the two teams. Subsequently two more women joined the team to make it seven male members and three female members in the team. Recently, all seven male members unanimously decided that all three women would walk on April 11 2008 which meant that two men had to make way for two women in the final eight. This unanimous decision was made on the common belief amongst all men that the three women had shown exemplary courage and resilience on the tough walks and deserved to go through. Also every man valued, respected and promoted diversity in the team. I personally believe that had there been a fourth woman in our team of ten, another man in the team would have gladly given his place to her. Despite the potential disappointment that would set in on being excluded, this chivalrous quality amongst all the male walkers is indeed commendable.

So it was then that we had to make the difficult decision on this Black Tuesday on which two male walkers would be left out of the seven. When it looked like there was no other practical option but to pick five names from the lot of seven male names, one of the male walkers pulled out at the last minute expressing that he would be happy to sit out because it was becoming harder to stay away from his family on training days. They had a two month old baby in their household. It then came down to picking five names out of six to determine who would walk and who would be the unfortunate member to sit out.

Although everyone knew that the outcome would be painful, I cannot possibly describe the disappointment, sadness and pain that we experienced when we had to leave out one of the most deserving of all men. Not only is he a perfect gentleman, he also has the highest probability of finishing the event amongst the ten walkers. Fate had delivered one of the cruellest blows to our campaign by eliminating one of the most deserving.

After we had drawn lots to unfortunately eliminate this unlucky member, I felt like somebody in my family had died. I couldn't speak and I had great difficulty holding back my tears, so I left the room and went for a long walk to discover how I had failed. It became very apparent to me that this was a case of leadership failure on my part. I had simply focussed on the wrong thing and had made it happen. Instead of thinking positively and dreaming big, I had thought and planned in a negative manner all through. I had anticipated failure on the part of two members even before we had walked a single step on the 100 km journey. I should have foreseen and visualized that all ten would walk the distance and that would have prompted me to add one more team in the event from our organization. That would have created a different problem of finding two more walkers to fill the gap, but that problem would have been be a lot less painful to solve. It would also have meant that we would have raised more funds for Oxfam. Here was a simple but unforgettably painful lesson life had taught me. Incidentally, I have never failed whenever I have dreamed big or undertaken challenging initiatives with a positive frame of mind. I have failed whenever I have doubted myself or listened to negative people who have said something was not possible.

When I broke the news to the women later that afternoon, they were inconsolably distraught. I understood their feelings well. Two of them were feeling very guilty because they thought they had deprived the two men of their places because the men had formally joined the team ahead of them. They were probably also feeling severe pressure on themselves to finish the event because they had taken someone else's place. Troubled minds behave in strange ways. Negative situations promote more negative thoughts and it becomes a downward spiral. The next few days went by in a phase of deafening silence, sadness, disappointment and dejection. We kept thinking about how these two members who were coping and how disappointed their family members and personal friends must be feeling. After all, our family members are on a high with great pride in our endevour. How would they suddenly feel to discover that thier father, husband, son or brother would not be walking the 100 km event as they had originally thought. It will take a while for us to regroup and recover and hopefully we will rediscover our morale during our long weekend practice session. It may even take a bit longer than a week or two.

I now believe that this team member will walk on the final day. I don't know how, but I know he will and I know that the eight, nine or even ten of us will cross the finish line hand in hand on April 11, 2008 - perhaps with one or two others who haven't walked with us before. There is hope for without it there is nothing left.

Venki Prathivadi,
with great sadness and unconditional acceptance of responsibility for committing this unpardonable mistake.

Practice Session # 10 (A short one) - 16 km on Sunday, 02-Mar-2008

Practice session # 10 (Sunday 02 March 2008) of our Oxfam Trailwalker 100 km walk/run event has been a relatively short session compared to last month's long ones.

Session # 10 highlights

Start: Check Point 4 (Olinda Reserve)

Start Time: 7:00 am, Sunday, 2-Mar-08

Finish: Check Point 4 (Olinda Reserve) We went up to Silvan Reservoir (Check Point 5) and returned to Olinda reserve

Finish time: 11:25 am, Sunday, 2-Mar-08

Total distance: 16.0 kilometres
Session time: 4 hours 25 minutes
Total rest time: 15 minutes
Total walking time: 4 hours 10 minutes
Session average= 3.6 kms/Hour
Temperature and conditions: Dry and cool (about 13 degrees centigrade, although it felt a lot colder)

We had taken a 2 week break after the long 46.5 km session and many of the team members had been travelling to India on work. Therefore session # 10 was scheduled after a long 4-week break and was designed to gently ease us back into fitness again before the tough one.

This session was unusual because only 4 walkers were present and this was the first time we had started from a check point and returned to the same check point.

Only 4 walkers, Julie, Debbie, Kathy and Venki made it to the training as the others were still recovering from their trip to India. The session was pretty quiet and uneventful, maybe because of the small team size and also maybe because it was rather cold in the morning and clearly the only male member was completely outnumbered by the women who also ignored him with their girlie non-stop talk. The only time they are quiet on the trail is when they are hiking up a steep climb or the sun is blazing hot.

March officially signals the advent of autumn in Australia and the temperature can be a bit low in the mornings. The Olinda - Silvan section is one of the easiest sections on the entire 100km trail because of the continuous downward slope. This slope can usually trouble a few walkers with pre-existing knee problems, but no one experienced any difficulty this time.

Barges track ------------------------Silvan Reservoir

We reached Silvan, a distance of 8 kilometres from Olinda reserve, in less than two hours and after a quick sandwich we turned back. This time the hike was challenging because of the continuous uphill climb. We met many other teams practising on this section that morning. They must have been wondering why we were going the other way. Sometimes it is necessary to go the other way to get a different perspective! The real reason was that we had parked our cars at Olinda reserve and we had to get back there after walking up to Silvan reservoir.

We are looking forward to the next session, on Saturday / Sunday 8th and 9th March, with both enthusiasm and trepidation because it is the longest and hardest of all our training sessions. Hopefully this simple and easy session will kick-start the old bones and limbs after a long break.

Please do come back to read our experiences from the most difficult training session yet, next week.