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.