For the Love of Feet

September 13, 2015September 14, 2015 / runningforthegate / Leave a comment

Well doesn’t that title just entice you to read this blog post!

OK if you are eating, drinking, sipping, nibbling, snacking, whatever – STOP.

This is a pretty graphic blog post about the sad, short life of a toenail on Kilimanjaro and my concern for my feet considering the pain and punishment they have caused me in the past. You have been warned …. and warned again … this post is not for the faint of heart, the weak of stomach, or for the love of feet! BUT if you have ever hiked this blog post will totally make sense to you, sadly.

I have had some awesome experiences walking lengthy distances. It would seem that’s what I like to do – walk a lot. I have had the pleasure of the West Highland Way in Scotland 154km, Pembrokeshire Coastal Path in Wales 299km, Hadrian’s Wall Path in England 135km and Great Glen Way 127km in Scotland to name a few of my most awesome adventures on my own two feet. And there are a b-zillion more walks that my soul and feet are just itching to complete – oh so many! Don’t get me started!

My first long distance walk in 2008 (Scotland, West Highland Way) that got me addicted to the seeing the world on my feet!

Its OK, honest, you don’t have to understand me. This walking thing is a illness. Sometimes referred to as a hill walker, walker, hiker, trekker, strange, crazy, rambler, munro bagger, weird, wanderer, walkabout-er, pilgrimage-r, nuts, traipser, perambulator, peregrinari, etc. To name a few of the loving names we walkers identify with and/or have been called across the globe.

Depending on who you ask, my love of walking is either just so super cool (thank you to my friend Jane, you are the best fan ever) or is just down right crazy (thank you to my husband Lance who loves me dearly but finds this love of walking thing rather odd).

However, as much as I love getting about on my feet I am one of those very “lucky” people who gets a blister from thinking about shoes – seriously. A shoe can be so comfortable for me for weeks or years and then one day KABLAMO there is a hot spot and a lovely blister to make my world painful and me grumpy for a week. I get blisters in flip flops and have even gotten a hot spot from slippers. For real. What the heck?

Don’t believe me; allow me to dazzle you with some graphic foot-of-pain pics … final warning, stop eating!

Heat rash and a horrible blister during the Great Glen Way, Scotland with my sister Shar.

I will spare you any additional pictures – too gross right!

Regardless of how unpleasant these look, I will not let this foot stuff taint or ruin my trek up Mount Kilimanjaro!!

As you may have guessed, I have taken my training for Kilimanjaro a bit seriously – hiking twice a week, running 5 mornings a week, core and lower body work outs, trying on every article of clothing I will be wearing on that mountain, etc. Oh and yes this includes putting on every layer I will wear on summit night including head lamp and walking around the house, up and down the stairs, etc. to make sure I can move and am in a happy, sweaty, warm place for the slog.

I am, in fact, so dedicated to my training that I am already losing a pre-climb toenail … providing great experience on just how absolutely NOT fabulous it feels to stomp downhill with your fleshy toe hitting the front of your boot. Queue the “learn how to tie your boots for downhill climbs” on Pinterest and YouTube commercial here … If this is me not even on the mountain, what will the mountain do to me!

Toenail soon to be MIA thanks to all this pre-Kilimanjaro training.

I am not alone – I read somewhere that the average number of toenails lost on Mount Kilimanjaro is 4. Yes you read that right! This is some crazy stuff. When I googled Kilimanjaro and Toenail to dazzle you with some more quirky stats, I got 43,000 search results. That tells you something. Google knows!

Please cheer for me in what seems to be a crazy game of toe vs nail vs boot vs mountain game! Current score is Team Brande 9 vs. Team Toenail 1 … score to be updated post Kilimanjaro!

Brande

PS 13 sleeps to go, we are in the home stretch now!

Forgot My Boots

September 8, 2015September 9, 2015 / runningforthegate / Leave a comment

Let me paint a picture of total forgetfulness with moments of awesome – generally centered all around my hiking boots (as so much is these days).

My lovely, amazing, best ever Asolo boots of awesome – finally on my feet on the trail!

An early long-weekend Monday morning (yesterday), the hubby and I are heading out on a hike to enjoy the wonderful mountains Vancouver area has to offer and to get some training in for Mount Kilimanjaro with our friends Doug (and Hudson the Dog) and Scott (a fellow Kili climber).

We have our backpacks packed with water, snacks, med kit, rain gear, about 10-15lbs in books to give us an extra workout (we are training after all), poles, Buff, etc. We are all dressed in our technical hiking gear, and we are on our way to St. Mark’s Summit on Cypress Mountain; about an hour drive from our place. Sipping coffee on the way, chatting about our prep and packing for the big Africa trip and I get this awful sick to my stomach, tummy sinking feeling “Oh crap I forgot my boots”. We are minutes from our destination and I have flip flops or golf shoes in my car and that is it. My amazing, wonderful, so delightful Asolo boots are at home in our front entry whimpering at the insult of being left behind. Noooooo! Doh! Doh! Doh!

I could not be more frustrated. Seldom do I get company on my hikes, and today of all days I have the hubby and a couple friends and the bouncy, loving Hudson Dog coming out on a hike and I mess it all up by forgetting my darn boots. I am livid at myself. I am also oddly mad at my husband for not remembering MY boots. Insert all kinds of grumpy expletives; some horrible self-talk about my own stupidity; some superstitious bull-dooey about it must be a sign that I forgot them for some cosmic purpose; and finally some apologies to the hubby for blaming him for forgetting MY boots. We flip a totally ‘legal’ U-turn and we are on our way home to pick them up. A few text messages later, and our friends are going to head up the trail without us (rightfully so, we would be an hour and a half before being back to the mountain).

Once over my self-loathing crap, swallowing my pride and getting over my embarrassment it ended up being a totally awesome date day! Hubby and I got back to the trail by 10am, set our FitBits, and started our way up St Mark’s Summit at a great pace with some really great conversation. Perhaps this was the cosmic purpose crap I was cycling through on my grumpy go home and get my boots drive.

We liked the terrain right away – lots of areas with roots and rocks to step up and over to keep you entertained. Enough folks on the trail to keep the bears at bay (we hope) and little chance of rain (we also hope) – it was a great hike.

Terrain on St. Mark’s Summit Trail a little muddy but that makes it even more fun.

More of the St. Mark’s Summit trail terrain.

About hour into it or so, I spot these fuzzy ears and a fuzzy tail up ahead – ha ha you thought I was going to say a bear! It was Hudson the bouncy, loving Dog of Doug. We chatted with Doug and Scott for a while on the trail and committed to getting ourselves up and down quickly so we could have a cold one with them at the bottom. Glad we got to see them, and the heckling at my forgetfulness was mostly bearable (they were clearly taking it easy on me but I know this will definitely be brought up in future – what are friends for right?!)

Lance and I continued up the trail for another hour to the summit which sadly had clouded over by the time we got up there but you can imagine how great the view over Howe sound would have been!

The view from the top of St. Mark’s Summit – too cloudy for a great pic but you can imagine how great it would be!

Saint Mark’s Summit sign – found at the top 10,000 steps or 5.5km up to a 1370m elevation.

All in all, we made great time – the trail description advises 11km and 5hrs and we did it 3.5hours without being too rushed on the way up, but definitely picking up our pace on the way down in hopes of meeting up with our friends after. The packs felt good, the technical gear worked perfect and the boots (both Lance’s and mine) were amazing as usual. A good trial for our bodies and our hiking stuff for Kilimanjaro for sure.

Lessons learned … wear my boots on the drive to a hike then I can’t forget them, wear my boots on the plane to Tanzania so I have them for Mount Kilimanjaro, don’t take life too seriously it’s just boots and ‘not the end of the world’ as lovingly noted by my husband during our U-turn, be nicer to myself in my own head, and I absolutely love hiking with my husband and secretly enjoyed having him all to myself for the hike. Tee hee!

Us at the top – quick pic, snack, close encounter with a chipmunk and on our way back down.

Brande

PS 18 sleeps to departure (excited scream)

What Are You Training For?

September 3, 2015September 3, 2015 / runningforthegate / Leave a comment

Hailey, Brande and Lana (left to right) the ladies of our 7 person Mount Kilimanjaro team!

This past weekend I was “home” in Alberta for the weekend and had the absolute pleasure of meeting my bestie Lana and little sister Hailey early Saturday morning for a Mount Kilimanjaro stair climb training session. Followed by a yummy brunch at my beyond favourite Chinese food restaurant ever (mmm Sam Wok).

Lana, Hailey and I make up the female complement of our 7 person Mount Kilimanjaro trek team. Girl power on the mountain! This is our first and last time we will be able to train all three of us being that we live in different Provinces and all.

For our training we hit up the Wolf Willow Stairs in Westridge Park – just a simple little stair case really. It starts at a high lookout point over the Saskatchewan River and in just 200 stairs takes you down to the lovely riverside. Please read that last sentence again and make sure you apply a healthy dose of facetiousness especially when reading the 200 stair part! Ouch and fun!

The stairs looking pretty easy from up here but we know what goes down must come up.

Wolf Willow Stairs across the Fort Saskatchewan River

The stairs looming from across the river valley – sweat and steps here we come!

We got started with a nice jaunt down the stairs, a brisk walk across the river valley bridge and back again to warm up. Then it got real! We went up and down those 200 stairs as many times as we could for an hour+. Basically stopping just before the leg wobbles got too bad to make it back to our vehicles and drive to brunch.

According to the trusty Fitbit Hailey wore, we did just under 4 km and completed 5,000 steps, and yahoo burnt 539 calories. Not too bad ladies, good stuff!

Twice during our slog on the stairs we were asked “What are you training for?”. I assumed people were asking us because we looked really fit, like we were pros at this stair climbing stuff and clearly dedicated. But let’s be honest, we were wearing weighted backpacks and heavy hiking boots to climb stairs. If you aren’t training for something you are cray-cray doing stairs with all that. (For the record however, we did look super fit and quite dedicated that early in the morning. ha ha)

When asked the seemingly innocent “What are you training for?” question, I had the easy answer of ‘Mount Kilimanjaro’ which prompted some follow up questions about the trek and some ‘that’s so cool, good for you’ comments. It was quite energizing to have people notice and ask about a goal we clearly must have.

While, I didn’t think anything of the question at the time – later on I realized that “What are you training for?” is actually, a totally loaded question! Think about it.

The question could have a wack load of different and possible answers: personal promises to yourself or others, bucket list intentions, self-love or possibly self-loathing reasons. Oh for sure the answer may be as simple as a marathon, to stay fit, to feel good, a competition, or to climb a mountain (like our answer was on that day). But the answer may also be as complicated as: to change my life, to recover form a horrific accident or event, to achieve an item on my bucket list or an item on behalf of someone else for their bucket list, in honour of someone, etc.

This question “What are you training for?” has really been on my mind … what is MY honest, bottom of my heart, belly of my soul answer to this question.

Sure, Mount Kilimanjaro is on my Must-Do List In Life List (yes I have an actual list in my journal named this – likely not surprising too many of you) but there is more to this than just training to reach a summit. Heck, all the stuff I have read suggests anyone “reasonably fit” can make the summit if altitude sickness stays at bay. So all this training is for something greater than the summit, I was already “reasonably fit”.

Then it hit me. I do know the answer! ME!

Kilimanjaro is a re-invigoration for me and my love of adventuring over long distances on my own two feet. My happy place! I have a list of walks across this fine globe of ours that my amazing Asolo boots are itching to discover as much as I am. On my own, with friends, with family or with a combo of any of that. Sorry to sound cheesy but “these boots are made for walking”!

Before even stepping foot on Mount Kilimanjaro it has set in motion a wave of energy, inspiration and adventure seeking that had taken a bit of a back seat to my everyday great life. This pre-departure epiphany feels great – wow – I can only imagine what the on-the-mountain-epiphanies may be. Thanks already Kili!

Of course … I could just be totally over thinking the whole thing, and those nice ladies on the stairs in Edmonton were really just nicely asking why we were crazy enough to wear packs and boots up and down stairs on a summer day.

Brande

PS 24 sleeps to our flight outta Canada