near the vegie garden 

The first (serious) solo training walk

On boxing day - Monday 26th December 2005, I set off on my first solo training walk - Port Fairy to Warnambool. I was well provisioned with my new day pack, walking boots, walking poles and 2 litres in the water bladder along with various christmas snacks. Mums fruit balls - an abandoned cooking experiment - turned out to be a great source of energy for hiking. Warnambool is about 24 kms from Port Fairy, and the walk along the beach, whilst picturesque is challenging with many kms of soft sand.

I saw eight dead seals on the walk in various states of decomposition - six of them seal pups and two full grown adults. The flies on the walk were particularly bad, and stopping at any point involved being bitten by March Flies.

The walk took around 7 hours alltogether - some hours longer than I had anticipated, and I sustained a badly blistered toe for my efforts. Next offical Team Nurofen training walk is not until the 15th January, so next week I will need to get on with the cycle training.

Lessons learnt - Don't wear short sleeved tops, fix straps on pack, take fly repellant, pad areas prone to blisters prior to leaving.