Training intensifies and another training walk completed 22.5km

After the miserable performance over the dandenongs last week, I decided that I had to increase my level of training and improve my overall fitness. I took on a new personal trainer - Mr Paul Davy who these days only trains elite atheletes, so I was lucky to get a couple of sessions with him and I was able to apply his governing principles to my training regime.

Governing principles include:

• Only exercise as hard as you can breath through your nose;
• Exercise is only a means to an end. It has no intrinsic value and should be abandoned once you acheive your goal.

(I think he may have adapted these from other philosophies such as yoga and buddhism, but as he is currently only paid with bags of cherry tomatoes, what can I expect?).

In the week following I cycled 54kms, ran up 22 flights of stairs per day and did one and a half hours of yoga. Last Sunday, I decided that I would do the walk again. This time with Shona, Geoff and Brian. This time, we only stopped for one coffee, and we managed the walk in 6 hours 25 minutes, including a 45 minute lunch break.

Saw a big echidna. We managed to avoid getting lost this week and ending up in Silvan dam, but discovered that we only walked a few extra hundred metres last week when we got lost. The weather was cool to quite warm by afternoon, but none of the bone sapping humidity of last week. My increased fitness stood me in good stead, I did not have any sore muscles the next day. Next week is the dreaded Mt Donna Buang!

Lessons learned this week: stair walking is good. Wear 'wicking' clothes and not cotton t-shirts on training walks. Drink lots of water on the hill sections. Put kitchen sponges in toes of walking shoes to stop bruised toenails.