It's not quite Kili...

but it's been 3 months since I went on a walking holiday, so I reckon it's about time for another one. All in the name of training, obviously, nothing to do with having fun. So I'm off to the Sierra de Aitana (don't worry, no one I've met so far has ever heard of it either, not even Spanish people) for a week's meandering among the Spanish peaks.

Puig Campana (in the picture) is one of the 5 peaks I'll be climbing. It looks a little scary from here, though it's only 1406 metres. So we'll be doing that before breakfast as a warmup then.

 Shame I haven't got any new equipment to try out, as this would be a good opportunity. But the 8 hour days will be a good test of my current stamina. The final day's climb on Kili is something like 18 hours, so I need to get in some preparation. I've currently been doing only 5-6 hour walks in the Peaks (given the train service and the short winter days), but then again, when there's only 1 or 2 of us, we barely stop for lunch, let alone a break. With a group of 10 or so, the breaks are usually substantially more as you wait for people to catch up.

I'd better get packing. Sod's law, my flight is at 6.30am on Sunday morning, but because the clocks go forward, it's really only 5.30am. I only ever get up this early when sport or adventure are involved! I dread to think what getting up and starting the final ascent of Kili at midnight in the freezing cold and pitch dark is going to be like though. Much mental strength will be needed!

Imagine an arthritic 90-year-old walking backwards, and you're going too fast.

That's the advice given by Jon Garside, training officer of the British Mountaineering Council, who has led numerous groups up Kilimanjaro. Sounds like a barrel of laughs, especially when you realise that the ascent will be in pitch darkness, snow, and freezing temperatures down to about -30 degrees C. After my experience on the Inca Trail climbing Dead Woman's Pass with a stomach bug, nauseous, severely dehydrated and combatting the effects of altitude, I know what it's like to climb at a rate of 5-10 seconds per step, freezing cold, soaking wet, gasping for breath, and trying to find the will to make the next step. It wasn't fun. Having already lost consciousness a few dozen yards from the top, and with the cold and rain, I felt no satisfaction in reaching the top (I still had a couple of hours' descent ahead of me, possibly in the dark, and I was still battling with a bad stomach). I'm very sure that reaching the summit of Kili will feel vastly different though, however tough the climb is. Meanwhile I'm practising testing my willpower by making myself do all kinds of things which I really don't want to do. Walking the couple of miles home rather than taking the bus when it's late at night, freezing cold and pouring with rain, with every step I remind myself that climbing Kili will be far worse than this, so I should just get on with it and stop whingeing. On Thursday night I forced myself to carry on the remaining 30 minutes of a spin class even though my blood sugar was low and I felt like lying down and closing my eyes (for the worried amongst you about the wisdom of this, I had taken plenty of glucose and turned my insulin pump off, so I wasn't actually going to lose consciousness by carrying on, it just felt like it). At least this willpower testing is doing my training no end of good, by forcing me to carry on when I'd normally just give up. I'm sure it's a good philosophy for life.

Oh, and this is the old lady I shall be imagining. If she can do it....

How hard can it be to climb Mt Kilimanjaro?

Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty sure that climbing Kilimanjaro is not a walk in the park, in spite of the title of this blog. But I've always been of the mindset that you can do pretty much anything if you want it badly enough. Obviously there are some exceptions. But you only have to look around at the amazing things that many disabled people get up to, to realise that it's the mind and not the body which is self-limiting. When I was 18 and travelling in New Zealand, I never thought I could do a bungee jump until I saw a video of a 70 year old doing one. "If he can do it at that age, what on earth is stopping me doing one?" And with that I signed up, threw myselff off a 141ft (34m) high bridge above a swirling river, and thought I was going to die. It was the best and worst moment of my life rolled into one. I didn't die, but I did rip my stomach muscles and couldn't walk properly for a week, let alone laugh or cough. But that moment set the scene for a lifetime of pushing myself to the limits to regain that sense of achievement.

Having turned 40 this year, I set about finding myself a challenge. At this point I should mention that while I currently feel fitter than I have in the last 20 years a least, I have numerous health problems and I'm very aware that my body may not hold out for nearly as long as I would like. In fact my fitness might deteriorate from now on. I've had type 1 diabetes for more than 30 years, I lost a lot of my sight 15 years ago and am technically registered blind (though I still have a fair bit of usable sight in one eye) and I have asthma and IBS, not to mention the minor health niggles that pretty much everyone has - bad back, dodgy knees, and so on. Oh and I've broken something like 12 different bones at varios times. What spurs me on perhaps the most though is the fact that my dad, a type 1 diabetic for over 50 years and now in his 70s, lost both his legs last year as a result. That really brought home to me how fragile we are, and the fact that if I leave it too long to do these things, it might be too late. So there we go....I can still walk. So I can climb Kilimanjaro if I put my mind to it. It really doesn't require any other skills except for a bit of fitness, a bit of luck and preparation to avoid alttude sickness, and the right mindset.

So, assuming I get medical clearance, in February 2013 I shall be climbing Kili and raising some money for charity. I have no doubt that, like the bungy jump, it will be one of the worst and best experiences of my life. I'll be updating this blog throughout my preparations, as well as my regular blog for other topics.