Well it seems that the phrase “I don’t like Mondays” is very applicable today (actually it is now Tuesday am as I post this). Firstly the dog wakes me up at 5.30am (I mean just how totally inconsiderate is that?), and then I have to get up half an hour later to go to work. That is a bad start to the week! As if to compound this, the inner thighs are hurting a bit, probably from three attempts at the bleep test yesterday, but more particularly as it is the first time I have run in eleventy-two gazillion years. After a coffee or three I trudge off to the office eventually at about 8am to face that other world that I live in.

I had a couple of emails over the weekend which I need to respond to as well, as I have been lax on responding to anything. A couple from Henry – he has given me some pointers as to how to best coordinate travel arrangements to and from Tanzania to coincide with proposed climb start dates. Also another very kind one from Saira at Bowel Cancer UK – she would like a quote from me and a picture for the website. I need to get this arranged, and realise quickly that I don’t think I have a recent picture of me at all (other than one collapsing in the garden yesterday during the bleep test, that wouldn’t be good!). Oh, there was a picture of me falling (very literally) into the Thames during a recent punting attempt in Oxford, but that probably won’t work either. Need to convince people that I have the ability to stay on my feet here, lest they do not sponsor my mountain trekking adventures!

Lastly I have a response to my advert for a travel buddy! The first one (hopefully there will be more too) is from a guy called Edd, who is from Derby I think (Hi Edd if you are reading this!). He says that he would love to climb Kilimanjaro too, but would like to know the costs. I send them to him, and hopefully they won’t put him off.

I have another trawl through the travel buddy site later, and it seems that most people are off soon to the forthcoming Oktoberfest in Munich. People are putting up notices saying the likes of “Hi, we are 22 year old Australian sisters – would you fancy coming with us to drink gallons of beer in a party atmosphere at the world’s best and biggest carnival – cheap accommodation, not far to travel, and drink and sing to your heart’s content the best beers served by voluptuous fraüleins in one of the world’s foremost party capitals”. Funnily enough they are getting shedloads of responses! Why won’t people jump to respond to my advert which says something like “If you’d be so kind, would you spend a fortune flying half way round the globe with a middle-aged bloke on his own for a week or more, and half-kill yourself walking up and down a massive pile of rock”. Hmmm, they are all missing the plot somewhere I think, or is it me?

Mondays, pah!

OK, so I did it this morning – the bleep test that is. I realise now why my daughter told me that she wanted pictures, so here below (if they come out OK, haven’t worked out how to put pictures up here yet) are some pictures of the before, during, and after. Firstly, it was ugly. It is now about an hour later, and I think my heartbeat may just be back down to its normal level. So here is a picture of the before:

Trying to psyche myself up....

I tried to do it with my iPhone, hence the earphones, and had already surprised myself being the technophobe that I am (wait and see what happens next!!) that I managed to rip the file via iTunes in the first place:). So with my carefully measured 20m path set out between two of the dog’s toys (dog watching bemused from the house in case she runs up and nabs one of the toys and spoils it for me), and thankful that there is room in the back garden to do this, I begin.

I get to stage 1, part 6, and am thinking “this is easy”, when what is this, the Manic Street Preachers start playing on the iPhone! Totally bemused, I stop, set the beep test back up again, and start again. This time I get to Stage 1, part 7, and then holy shit (!), I am hit with Mott The Hoople “All The Young Dudes” (no comments on my musical taste please:)). I am ready to either give up, or throw the iPhone over into next door’s garden, or both. I look at it, perplexed, and decide that it must shuffle or something when you run with it (you can tell here that I have never ever run with this before – in fact I cannot remember the last time I ran for anything – I think it was when I was University about 20-odd years ago). My heart rate is already up, and I am not happy! I decide that running with an iPhone is a waste of time.

I cobble together a much better solution – I burn the bleep test to a CD-R, and decide to do this the old fashioned way. Armed with an old ghetto blaster, and an extension cable, I put a chair in the garden half way between the two dog toys, and plop the CD into the ghetto blaster, and bang the volume up to maximum. I am away! It is way too loud, and can probably be heard three streets away, but I care not, I am not stopping for anyone now, and pray that the CD player doesn’t have some sort of shuffle feature as well. I decide not to run too close to it:).

At about 800m or so, probably level 4 or 5, I start to feel my breath shortening (note chair in foreground with the CD player on it!):

I pass level 6 without difficulty – I can feel my breathing, and the frustrating part is that the ‘running’ bit is fairly easy, there is no real pace involved. I get then half way through level 7, and whilst I can make the distance easily, I feel myself breathing so heavily that I decide to call it a day. Here I was a moment later:

just resting, honest!

And yes, that is pain on my face.

When I recover, I input my details into the VO2 calculator. The score was 37.4 for those who want to know, which equates to 7.3 on the test itself, which is apparently right about average for my age. I’m not hugely proud of the result, and it tells me two things:

1. I have a significant amount of work to do to build up my stamina if I am not to get so utterly exhausted on Kilimanjaro that it totally ruins the experience for me.

2. I am at least ‘average’ which considering I really do so little regular exercise gives me a little bit of heart.

Lastly, not that I was deluding myself or anything, but I vow to get properly fit over the coming weeks and months. I will do the bleep test again (however much it is not fun) in probably eight weeks or so, and hopefully the result will be a reasonable improvement. I decide to contemplate this further, and pop round to the pub for a Sunday lunchtime pint or two. I do have time on my side, don’t I?????

So today I woke up with the mother of all hangovers. I really don’t know why either. Did, I admit, have several too many glasses of wine last night, but that isn’t exactly unusual for me. I’m going to blame the dog, which seems only fair. You see, I was woken up by Abigail, our Yorkshire Terrier, at about 4.45am this morning. So that just wasn’t funny, especially when she sat on my head and stuck her tongue in my ear. I did doze for a while afterwards, but it wasn’t really happening for me on the sleep front.

So I sort of sat around on the sofa this morning – went and cooked some sausages on the barbecue, but it didn’t really make me feel any better, which is definitely a bad sign….

I think for about one very brief second thought about doing the bleep test, but my head is banging so badly that I can’t even walk without pain,  let alone contemplate running relentlessly between two bollards until I pass out. The thought is therefore dismissed from my mind as quickly as it enters it.

I sign onto a site called travbuddy.com, which looks great, and advertise for a travel buddy for February in Tanzania. Fingers crossed on that one.

I resolve to drink substantially less red wine this evening and to do this bleeping bleep test tomorrow instead…….

I was pleasantly surprised today when checking my emails. No, make that gobsmacked. On two counts in fact.

Firstly I have two fantastic emails from Henry, whom I have told I will book with to climb to the roof of Africa. (That sounds so good I feel like writing it all over again). As ever, he is tremendously responsive, and I get all the information I request and more besides. I have told him that I will either book on his trip at the end of February for Rongai, or will ask for a separate trip date, depending on what flights I can get out there. He is totally fine with this, and says whatever I choose is great. He has given me so much help on this it is incredible. Perhaps he is a great salesman – and I think that is in fact true, but I know that he is a lot more than that – he is first and foremost someone who loves Kilimanjaro, and has shared his experience with so many people. I admire him greatly, and am in fact envious of the fact that he has climbed the mountain and I have not, and that I may not even make it (though that I know now will not be for lack of effort). I dispel quickly those selfish thoughts from my mind – they are gone.

Next the really gobsmacking part. Yesterday I set up a page to link via Yougiving to make a commitment to drum up support for Bowel Cancer UK. Today I receive an email from Saira, who is Assistant Community Fundraiser at Bowel Cancer UK. She tells me that she has read my blog, and thinks it is “brilliant”. This is fantastic! Even better still – she asks me if it is OK with me if they feature my fundraising efforts on their website, as they would like it if other people could be inspired by it. Is it OK? Is it OK???? Errrrr, yes it is!! I am delighted, not for me, but for the fact that this thing has got legs now. This I hope means that the charity link can be seen by a whole lot more people than I could ever reach, and so hopefully the charity gets to benefit a lot more from it – that makes me very happy. I vow to be even more determined to make sure that I raise as much money as I can for them. I need to think of some good fundraising events to get things started as soon as possible…..

Meanwhile, tomorrow I am still going to do the bleep test. If it all goes very badly, I avow not to share my results here and to say that I decided to postpone it :). Lets see what happens then………truth or dare perhaps?

Not a cheery blog tonight, but probably instead the most important one that I will end up writing. I have decided to raise money for bowel cancer, and a specific charity – Bowel Cancer UK. Their website is here: http://www.bowelcanceruk.org.uk/

Why? Well there are several reasons, but the most important is that my mum died of cancer some nine years ago now, and I have never really done anything to raise money for cancer before. Guilt trip? NO! I just think that if you are going to do something as outstanding and memorable as a walk up Kilimanjaro then there will be people (I hope) who follow my progress, and some of them will ask (some of them already have) whether there is a charity involved, and so now there is.

There will also be that added extra item to drive me on (I don’t need the motivation as such, but maybe if there are really dark and bad times of doubt that I end up having when I am shivering in my tent half way up the mountain, and wondering what the hell I am doing there, then I will recall this point in time, and more importantly the people who I hope will donate to this very worthy cause).

Thank you in advance to anyone and everyone who gives money. I will try to find time later on to thank everyone individually. There is a link to the charity site on the “Blogroll” section of this website, and there is also a link here below. Naturally, every penny goes directly to the charity itself, enhanced by Gift Aid if you are a UK resident and tick the box:

http://www.justgiving.com/Chris-Kilimanjaro2010

So, I shall not quote the immortal words of Bob Geldof……but you know what they are…….

So having decided yesterday that I was now wavering towards the Rongai, today I am still in the same place, except more so. Trouble is I had a really busy day (don’t you hate it when work gets in the way of the things you really want to do? :)). Had to get up at 5.45 to go to meetings in London – not good, and so little time to think about the mountain – except I didn’t stop thinking about it at all!

Got a recommendation also to advertise for some walking buddies on a couple of trekking forums (I hadn’t realised before today that such things existed, although I suppose that there are forums for everything these days). This, if I manage to get some fellow trekkists, would enable me to choose my own travel dates, and so that is a good thing, or it would be if I knew exactly when I wanted to go. Will have to put up some adverts – maybe I should say that I am a 21 year old Swedish blonde, and see how many responses I get. Err, on the other hand, maybe I REALLY shouldn’t do that at all, cancel that thought right away:). I will register for these forums tomorrow and see what comes back, if anything. How many more mad people are there like me? – I have no idea!

Will go and find some traffic cones or the like tomorrow too so I can do my fitness test at the weekend – not looking forward to that one at all – will maybe take some photos of that, and see how I put photos on this site – where do I start with that one? Oh, and I need to get my passport renewed too – you need a passport with six months to run to get into Tanzania, and mine expires early next year sometime. So so much to think about….

I am enjoying this hugely – maybe it doesn’t show – does it?? Well I am, I think it is the most exciting thing I have ever done, and I am still nowhere near it yet. Bring it on!!!

No no no, not about going, I mean about which route to take! I will be going – definitely! Got to talk today to two people who have done the mountain before. One of them has done it twice, once by Shira and once by Rongai. The other has done it about 12 times, and said to me (amongst many other pieces of helpful advice) that I should do the Rongai route at that time of year. It’s apparently quieter, more scenic, and the ‘saddle’ is fantastic, and must be seen! I know I should listen to people who have done it before, but what about the voices in my head, shouldn’t I listen to those too? – I mean they’ve never let me down before:)

Oh and the second person above that I spoke to has lots of kit which I can borrow if I want to, which is really really nice of him. He said to drop him an email and ask him whatever I want, which I really appreciate (was introduced to him by a work colleague, and so us never having met each other before this is really great of him). Oh, and one of the other things he told me was to “take Diamox early”, like before getting on the plane. I’m unsure totally about this, I’m really not a pill popper at all, but if it stops me getting AMS then I’m not going to dismiss the idea altogether yet – more of Diamox I think in a later blog…..

I also got a wonderful email from Henry, who tells me amongst other things that Meindl boots are the absolute dog’s danglies, and that his have lasted him forty two billion trips up Kilimanjaro, and a lot more besides, so that is good enough for me. In the words of Roman Abramovic, ” I buy them!” Oh and he also offers to put a link to my blog on his website (not sure why yet, I am sure he hasn’t read any of it), which is very nice indeed….I must book a holiday with his company one day:)

Talked to my daughter on Skype tonight about the trip, it is the first time we have chatted about it. She said that she thinks that I’m mad, but that she can maybe understand it if it is something that I really want to do. However, she concludes again that I am mad, about three times. I think that on balance, she is probably right, so I agree with her.

Finally, I found a link to a way to test your fitness (or at least oxygen absorption) levels, which involves a VO2 test, or something like that (I thought it was a type of shampoo?). Apparently you download a pulse test, and play it over your MP3 player, and then place two traffic cones on a field twenty metres apart. Then you simply have to run between the traffic cones (do you need to dress up for this one?, I’ll have to find out…), and count the number of times you can do it backwards and forwards before you cannot get to the next traffic cone before the next pulse sounds. Sounds like I need to do it 63 times to be “average” for my age – sounds like a lot to me, especially if I am seen doing it and burst into hysterical laughter. Maybe my daughter is right……..