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| Entry for August 01, 2009 |
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| Some travel stories |
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| Today was a straight forward training session of 32km. I decided to introduce some variation to the walk by leaving home very early and spending the first hour and a half walking in the dark with my headlamp on. Everything went well. Everything is coming together well now. I have practised so many aspects of the walks, packing the backpack, adjusting the pack and the clothing, and now I am seeing the benefits come. Packing the backpack is very quick and easy and there's very little chance of me leaving anything out now. When I started serious training 14 months ago, one of my goals was to get to the stage where I didn't have to think and fret about what I took and how to pack the backpack. I reckon I'm now very close to being there. I'm already starting to get excited about the next Wilsons Prom walk, even though it's 3 weeks away. I really think I'll get all the way around on this next trip. Training - 6 hours 20 minutes - 32km Medication - increased normal dosage by 7 units in the morning |
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| Aug / Sep 2009 |
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| Entry for August 03, 2009 |
| I'm already getting revved up for the next Wilsons prom walk, even though it's still over 2 weeks away. You can see the plan for this one here. You'll notice that the differences between the "plan" and the "reality" are getting less. As I was walking along today I started to fantasise a little. As the event is 8 months away, it's likely that I'll being doing 7 more Wilsons Prom walks. The fantasy was that before the end I just might be able to do the 98km double loop. I'm not betting my life on it, but it is something to strive for, because I am quite confident that I can complete the 58km loop without sleeping next time. |
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| Entry for August 09, 2009 |
| Today's was a simple little walk of 25km. To add some interest, and to get further practice with walking in the dark, I left home at 20 past 5 in the morning and got practice with the headlamp for the first hour and a half. The only other item of much interest was to do with the taping of my right foot, where I had that enormous blister those months ago. I need to make sure I take the time and effort to ensure the taping is done properly. Today I felt the beginnings of a new blister after 18km. That would be no good at all if it was the first day of the event. Training - 5 hours 0 minutes - 25km Medication - increased normal dosage by 6 units in the morning |
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| Entry for August 15, 2009 |
| I HATE BEING ON CALL FOR WORK. There, I've said it. Of course being on call means I'm restricted in the type of training walks I can do, so today was similar to last week. It was 25km, a piece of cake (that means it was easy), and I left home at 5:20am again. There were no learnings from today, but I had an interesting observation. I got talking for 5 minutes with two other walkers, and for that brief time the little aches and pains didn't seem so bad. The brief chat just took my mind off things, so maybe the same will happen in the Sahara with other walkers. Training - 4 hours 50 minutes - 25km Medication - increased normal dosage by 6 units in the morning |
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| Entry for August 22, 2009 |
| Wilsons Prom - hmmmmm. I'm thinking of writing a full story, but haven't decided yet. So for now let's have the executive summary. Sadly I didn't make it the whole way round without stopping, but it wasn't because of exhaustion or sugar. It was because of the high tide in the middle of the night. When you're alone, it's 1 o'clock in the morning, it's cold and you are faced with an unknown expanse of water of unknown depth, the sensible thing to do is to stop and wait for daylight. So I hunkered down in the sand dunes, wrapped in my trusty poncho and shivered my way through the night until daylight. It was a reasonably easy walk of two and a half hours from there back to the car, so I was back by 9:30. There was a vital learning from this walk, and that is to do with managing the sugar during the morning after a long walk. Piecing that together with previous experience and it is now quite clear to me that I need to do something a bit radical with the dosages when I'm doing consecutive days. So far I haven't decided exactly what I need to do, so to help me work it out I'm going to have a week away from work later in September and do 5 marathons in a row; that is a marathon per day for 5 days. Doing this based from home will give me the opportunity I need to experiment a bit and determine what I need to do. The sugar on Sunday afternoon, evening and Monday morning was not very good. I have some photos to add soon. They're good, so start getting excited. |
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| Entry for August 30, 2009 |
| The weather today was not very good, with wind, threatening rain and a bit of a chill. I set out at a quarter to 8 to do a marathon and ended up having a very interesting walk. Much of what happened I can't tell you about. Let's just say that I had a badly upset stomach today and just leave it at that. But because of that, I thought that I was not going to have a good finish time. The next obstacle that put itself in my way was a flooded creek that I needed to cross. Being the end of winter, we have recently been getting a little bit of rain. The route that I was following today took me across a huge farming area that is as flat as a tack, so the recent rain has turned some of it into a quagmire, criss crossed by drainage canals that are flowing with water for the first time in a long time. And at almost precisely the halfway point of my marathon I was confronted with a creek that is normally dry, but today was fast flowing and 10m across. After much thinking and pondering, I decided the best and safest way to cross was to take my boots off (to keep them dry), then carefully cross with my socks on. I had no idea what was under the fast flowing muddy water, so needed to protect my feet as best I could. This all worked well and I found myself on the other side. Ten minutes drying my feet and getting myself organised meant that the creek crossing added 30 minutes to my walk. With that in mind, in addition to the upset stomach, I was expecting the walk to take an hour longer than it should. However I found myself back at home only 20 minutes after the scheduled time. So my time for the marathon was considerably better than I expected. I'm confident that my physically ability has reached a new level. I hope so. Training - 8 hours 30 minutes - 42km Medication - increased normal dosage by 9 units in the morning |
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| Today's walk was a little bit different. Because I'm oncall, I need to be readily available for work. And because Donna was going out at 9 in the morning, I chose to start a 23km walk at 4 o'clock in the morning. That way I'd be home before Donna left. By doing this, I gave myself a few training benefits. I got to use my headlamp again, so that was extra experience. But most importantly, it gave me an opportunity to have my medication along the way, and get some practise at doing that. 4 o'clock is way too early to have my medication, so I stopped along the way, when the time was right, and had it on the side of the road. Doing this gave me a chance to test something that has been bugging me since the first Wilsons Prom walk. Are the low sugars I have been experiencing in the morning related to having the jab while on the track, or are they related to doing consecutive days of walking? It may not sound important, but it is actually very important that I figure this out. From my experience this morning I am now confident that it is the "consecutive days" aspect that causes the problems, not having the jab on the track. My sugar this morning was perfectly fine. I'm planning to fine tune the consecutive days scenario during the week after the Wilsons Prom trip. I've taken the week off work and I'm going to do a marathon each day for 5 consecutive days. That outta do it. :-) Training - 4 hours 30 minutes - 23km Medication - increased normal dosage by 4 units in the morning |
| Entry for September 05, 2009 |
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| Today's entry is a little different to the norm. A bit over a week ago I had a very bad hypo. I survived OK and was able to go off to work, albeit a little late. However during the hypo, which was very deep, I was thrashing around and badly tore the muscles in my chest. This became painfully apparant during last weekend's training walk. So now I'm concerned that I may not be able to do Wilsons Prom next weekend. Therefore I've taken this weekend off in an attempt to give my chest every possible chance of fixing itself. The idea of trying to walk 58km with a 16kg pack on my back is, as my chest currently feels, second only to hell. |
| Entry for September 12, 2009 |
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| My chest still hurts, but I believe it is improving. Six days to go until it needs to be good. Maintaining a hopeful approach, I have done the powerpoint showing what the plan for the walk is. Past experience now means that the plan is becoming fine tuned and close to how it should work out. The main unknown factor is high tide at Oberon Bay and how it could affect us. The plan has us getting there at 11:30 on Saturday night, when we will need to strip off to the waist and carry our gear across a 50m expanse of water. You can see the plan here. |
| Entry for September 13, 2009 |
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| Well, well, well - the latest big walk at Wilsons Prom has been a fantastic success. First, and most importantly, I was able to make it around the full 60km without stopping for a sleep. This is what I've been aiming for for the past 4 months (5 walks) and this time I made it. To achieve this I had to fine tune the food, the medication, the approach to the whole walk. Plus, I had to figure out how to manage the barriers that throw themselves up throughout the walk, such as the weather and high tides. This time Robin and I faced high tides at Sealers Cove and Oberon Bay that required special action to cross. Oberon Bay was the most interesting because we got there just on midnight last night. We had prepared ourselves for this and had planned what we would do. It took us 30 minutes to get across, keeping our gear safe and dry and ensuring that we were warm and prepared for the rest of the walk. We did not want to be wet and cold and get blisters or other foot problems while we were still 2 hours from civilisation in the middle of the night. It is difficult to describe the conditions that we were experiencing at that time, so I'll just say that this crossing was potentially a dramatic moment. We had another barrier earlier in the day just as we got to the lighthouse. Right at that moment, the weather decided to turn on us with frantic wind, torrential rain and bitter cold, all in the space of 15 minutes. But in those 15 minutes we were drenched and nearly blown off the track. It was awesome. A couple of amazing things happened during this walk. The first was the whale we saw at Sealers Cove. It was just marvellous to see such a wonderful natural event. The second amazing thing was that after walking 60km through all of this weather and wilderness, we finally got back to the tents within 2 minutes of the planned time. :-))) The next Wilsons Prom walk is 4 weeks away. |
| Entry for September 19, 2009 |
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| Today was a very important day in my training. Because I successfully completed the 60km loop at Wilsons Prom on Saturday, 62km actually, in the real event today is a marathon. So it was important that I tried to do a marathon. AND I DID !! Yes, I set out at 8:30 this morning wondering what the heck I was doing this for and plodded along for 8 hours and 20 minutes and staggered in at home at 10 to 5. And I am really sore. It will be interesting to see how I feel tomorrow morning. One interesting thing I have learned is that after a long walk my feet hurt and walking in bare feet or normal shoes is quite painful. But with my boots on I can walk a lot better. That's good to know for the Sahara. A very important aspect of the last 3 days, meaning the Wilsons Prom walk and today, is that I need to quite radically adjust my insulin dosages when doing consecutive days. What I have been doing up until now are single days of training. But when I do a number of days together the whole thing changes. I have found that I need to drop the evening and morning dosages by quite a bit. This may seem obvious to some, but it's not really when looking at the whole complexity of the 6 days of the event and the exercise and the distance. But yesterday and today gave me a chance to see just what was happening, so now I'm more clear on what I need to do. Something else that has become crystal clear over the past 12 months, and which has nothing to do with diabetes, is the vital need to take care of what is known as "rehydration". What that really means in simple English is that if I don't have enough electrolytes, think "salt", then it's all over red rover. No matter who you are, diabetic or not, if you don't have enough of the electrolytes during the exercise then you will be in real trouble. I have found some magnificent tablets that can be added to the drinking water that provide the required nutrients. If the company gets on board with some sponsorship, then I will be only too happy to tell you what they are, because they really work. Finally, Katrina from JDRF has made some hopeful connections with the media, so there is a small, glowing chance that news of what I'm doing could get on the TV. That would help to show other diabetics that they can still live an active life. Training - 8 hours 20 minutes - 42km Medication - increased normal dosage by 7 units in the morning |
| Entry for September 21, 2009 |
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| Following on from the BIG walk at Wilsons Prom (yay) and the marathon on Monday, I have come to realise that I need new boots. (sigh). It was always likely that I would need to buy a new pair of boots before the event, but I didn't expect that it would be this soon. The reason for the new boots is because the extreme walking over the weekend, in which I walked 105km over 3 days, has caused my feet to swell amazingly. This in turn has caused my toes to rub against the end of the boots and now I have very sore and sensitive toes. One of them is bad enough that I am keeping a close eye on it for reasons diabetic. It will be OK, because the skin hasn't broken, but it does look like a bit of a mess. I will try to get the same boots, which I have developed great trust in, but the difficulty is going to be getting the right size. The ones I have now are at the enormous end of their size range, and now I'll be needing a pair at least a size bigger again. One good thing is that the pair that I buy now will be the pair that go with me to Morocco. |
| Entry for September 23, 2009 |
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| Being on holiday has given me a great chance to do some in depth investigation and a big review of my approach to the event. With my experiences at Wilsons Prom and the days after, I can now see more clearly that I need to adjust my approach to a number of things, one of them being the food. The total weight is always going to be a concern for me, as I think I'm going to struggle to stay under the maximum allowed weight of 15kg. Donna has been urging me in the strongest terms to consider taking freeze dried meals with me on the event, to provide a range of nutrients and flavours. I have been resisting because of the extra weight requirements for a stove to heat water and the weight of the meals themselves. I've been hoping to get through the event on a mixture of the fruit strips, energy gels, almonds, peanut butter and meal replacement bars. Well yet again is appears that Donna was right and I need to expand my range of food. So the last couple of days have been spent learning more about my options for stoves, fuel, food etc. and I think I'm getting closer. But there are still a couple of unknown factors which won't make themselves clear until the online shop associated with the event organisers comes back on air after the French summer break. In the meanwhile I'll pose some questions to the online forum of participants in this year's event to see what ideas and opinions they have. |
| Entry for September 24, 2009 |
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| Bridget McNulty - Type 1 and travelling the world |