A Smell of Summer Spirit in Paris (May 29th)

Back in Paris, I have the same temperatures as in Moscow, over 26 degrees. Still on holidays, I decide at 5 pm to go for a 4 hours walk in the "Bois de Vincennes"... an opportunity to do a thing I have not done yet after 7 years living nearby... make a route, go into the forest, get a bit lost, see new things. It does not mean I have never been to the Bois before but not exploring it the way I am ready to do it this time. I have no map, do not know where I am really going but that is what makes me all excited about.
I was planning to play golf earlier & ended up in taking my camelbag (filled with water & some cordial), putting running shoes on, taking my metro pass to go to Porte Dorée, ready to discover the place. A new adventure as I like them. Finally, you do not need to go far to be in the mood of it. Such a walk is always synonymous for me of a moment  for & with myself, an introspection on what happened recently, things I do or do not want, a retrospective on good moments lived in Moscow. For a while, It gives you the will to change things & have the feeling that your life is not just guided by "the system" we are living in.

This walk was about to make my day. I started by walking around the Daumesnil Lake, stopping at what I think is the only buddhist monastery in Paris. Unfortunately, it is not open & I will not take picture of it. However, on the 25th & 26th June, as every year, it will open its doors for a Tibetian ceremony during which they serve food from this region of the world.

Near by the lake, I can see or I should say I can smell a summer spirit in the air... some people are sunbathing on the other side of the bank & others, more romantic are canoeing on the lake. A feeling of a good atmosphere is spreading in the air like the pollen & the buds announce the spring. I am in the same mood, a revival is about to be revealed... ;)

Well, I was enthusiastic to do this walk & it turned out to be an excellent idea. I passed for the first time near by the "Hippodrome de Vincennes" & promised myself to organise a night out with my friends to come & watch a race in July. After visiting the outlying areas of the wood, I entered in & saw some scenes of life... a crow drinking some water in a river... a couple of swan with their cygnets. The cob is very dominant and jealous. Apparently, he is chasing ducks, kills their new ducklings and chase away two other couples of swan... Near a lake, I see people relaxing on benches, some lying on the ground in bikini. Other people are rowing in a boat and a quiet old man, a model maker, sitting in a chair like film directors, playing with a remote control boat & talking about his passion with a passer by... life is peacefully, quiet, calm here.

Then, I bordered the floral garden, passed the Château de Vincennes before arriving to a third lake, the Lake from Saint Mandé, a pochy area. I was nearby to make the loop when I decided to go back to the forest & get a bit lost... Fortunately, nowadays, we have the chance to have a GPS on our smartphone and it helped me to go deep & to be able afterwards to go back to my starting point & walk back home to make sure I walked 4 hours...

To be honest, I appreciated this walk even if I did not have the right shoes to do it. It was a good test because I was thinking about changing shoes & put running shoes on for the end of Trailwalker. Now, I know it would not be a good idea.

Sébastien

Training in Moscow (May 19th to 27th)

After Barcelona, I felt like getting a massive training in the russian way, a little bit like In Rocky Balboa III ;) So I packed up & flew to the capital of Russia... Then, started to look for a coach... I found a real one, a though guy named Bruno... as a matter of fact, he is a good friend of mine, living there for more than 16 years... From the first day, I knew he would challenge me....It started with his local.. gym not pub ;). I landed at 3am & at 10am I was exercising & trying to build up some muscles with weights... fortunately, I was saved by a running machine, more the kind of machine I am familiar with. The hamman at the end was more than welcome as we stayed there 5 hours... I am not saying I trained for 5 hours... We did some exercices & talked a bit with some other french people in the place... Big bosses as Bruno of french subsidiairies... Seems like the block is fancied by the french community !!!
The second day was dedicated to cardio work... & Bruno showed me the surroundings of the block of Dinamo where he is living with his wife & daughter. 4 hours bike riding with a mix between pavements, paths in the Moscovit Parks (forests, lakes), a bit of roads. Good training with an ex-competitor taking part in cycling events (competition) when he was a teenager. It was hard for me to follow him and he lost me twice. He was out of sight, I did not have any clue where we were, I had no phone & did not know his address.... I can tell you my russian is quite basic so not enough vocabulary to ask my way...I had some memories from my previous stay 14 years ago... A lovely Manager working for Bruno at that time was eager to learn french and we exchanged in English. I could imagine the titles in the Newspapers the next morning: "A french lost in Moscow !!!!"... Fortunately, he was looking behind him once in a while and realised he had lost me....

The following days, I did some training on my own... different one. Indeed, the weekend was over & Bruno had to go to work. I decided then to visit & discover the capital by foot... Moscow on a shoe string, a title we could certainly read in the "Lonely Planet." dedicated to the city. A challenge in itself & I must admit... I like it.  Why? because we are loosing our marks, we have to cope with a new alphabet, a new way to pronunce words, it creates some confusion, people do not understand you at first... it obliged you to make more efforts in your communication skills, miming like the Mime Marceau, doing mimics, showing them a map... All this confusion is so good. It makes people laugh or looking at you with a very illustrative way... God, It reminds me my year off. I like to be in such position. You need to be open minded, smiling, exchanging with people. As a matter of fact, the harder, the better that is why I loved to be in Russia.  Only people less than 35 years old can speak in English. Moscow has changed a bit over the years.

The first time I came, there was a lot of prostitution in the street, police men were controlling people in the street. It was no good to be from Armenia or Azerbaidjan at that time because you were stopped often in the street. The FSB was posted in front of many buildings entrance with Uzi machine guns. All that seems to have dissappeared but you still have a lot of electonic gates at the entrance of shops, hotels, universities. I even saw a row of them on a bridge to give you access to a manifestation on the Red Square. Regarding the population, life is still hard for a major part of them as the cost of living is very high in Moscow while the average salary is about 1000 €. Not a lot of people in their thirties can afford to buy an appartment. Nevertheless, the young people at the end of the winter want to make the most of the summer time as there is no spring here. Young people are going out. Women make efforts to be trendy, well dressed, looking good on high heels. They are fashion victims but to be honest, they are gorgeous. 

During 5 days, I paced up & down the metro, the streets, visited monasteries, churches, the Red Square, visited the Kremlin (the churches, the armoured room), the Tretiakov Galeria with dozen & dozen of paintings only from Russian artists, studied the way they painted a river & make the stream come true, beautiful landscapes, life scenes from different period, draw portraits of famous people (Tsar etc...).
I admired the architecture & lines of some old buildings (rym, hotels...) , drew some in aquarelles, saw massive Stalinian buildings such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the MSU, the University of Moscow with its 36 floors.

All in all, I think I walked everyday on average more than five hours. A fairly good experience. On top, to have a good overview of the Moscovit life, two nights out, having good time with my friends but it does not count as training just entertainment.
After 8 days, I have the feeling I always lived in that place, feeling like being home or almost. It reminds me the words I pronunced while  I was on my way back to France 10 years ago after travelling during a sabbatical year: "The world is my playground, Europe is my garden & France is my home". That is in those special days that  I feel alive, free as the wind and it feels good. Trailwalker will be without any doubt a fantastic experience & I am very happy to be part of it in 2012

Sébastien

To Pole Or Not To Pole?

I had recently been quoted the statistic that walking poles reduce the loading on your knees by upto 40% and, after the aches & pains Lawrence & I had experienced on the Trailwalker route a couple weeks ago, I decided to invest in some reasonably priced trekking poles to see how I get on with them. I set out at 7.15 this morning to try them out and hopefully beat the heat of the day (it was already 16.5degrees). I remembered from one of my earlier training walks that the hills around Bath were pretty similar to the terrain of the South Downs. My target was to get to Kelston Round Hill, a 218m "summit" with panoramic views all the way around. Although only about 4 miles from the car park the aim of the day was to try out my poles rather than cover a long distance (I've got next weekend in London with Steve & Richard for that).

It did indeed turn out to be a good test and I found out quite a lot about using poles. The most important thing seems to be to get into a natural rhythm (although my wife and daughter will deny that I have any rhythm!). However, on hard packed ground and gravel the constant clack, clack, clack as I planted the poles tended to become quite hypnotic. I think I may have even drifted off into a trance at one point.
Initially I found that my arms started aching, but I think this was down to me gripping the poles too hard, and there was always the potential of blisters on my hands (as if just getting them on your feet wasn't bad enough!).

I reached the top of the hill and paused for a brief rest and to take some photos, before setting off back down to give the poles a good downhill test. I actually found them more effective downhill and could tell that my knees weren't taking the pounding I would normally expect on those sorts of slopes.


Overall, I'm still not 100% convinced about them. They certainly made a difference for my knees, but that needs to be offset by having to carry something else, possible blisters on hands and just not having your hands free.
More practice is required and if I decide against using them they'll be great for sword fighting or growing beans up!


The view from Kelston Round Hill nr. Bath



Wedding Bells

Today one of our team, Lawrence, is getting married.
We'd all like to wish him and Jo the best of luck and hope they have a wonderful day.
Plus, not to forget that having 2 weeks off work for a honeymoon will give him plenty of time to get lots of training in!!

French People Training in Barcelona !!!

A good experience to assess our fitness …

May 12^th & 13^th, Joel, Caroline and I took a plane to join Christelle in Barcelona. A first meeting for Caroline with the rest of the French people… and the feeling was good from the beginning… Good point for building a team spirit !!! And this was confirmed throughout the weekend.

After landing late on Friday evening, we celebrated our coming over with some good rhum… 

  

We started earlier a 40 kms walk under a sunny day and with good temperatures over 25 degrees. We decided to walk in Casteldefelds surroundings, a region named the Garraf. It looks alike the “Luberon” down in the South of France near by Avignon and Aix en Provence.

We started by a steep ascent among the bushes and once the top was reached, we had a magnificent view on the sea shore and inlands as well. We seized the opportunity to make our first pictures, as well as when crossing with sheeps park..

 To the opposite to our English team mates, we did not apply advises from Oxfam as regards 10 minutes break every 11 kilometers. We stopped when we felt like doing it. But the frequency was lower than expected.

The relief was hilly and the topography was in line with the one we will meet the D day on the way from Peterfields to Brighton.

We finished the walk with 5 kilometers on the sea side and to celebrate the distance covered, we had a bath in the Meditterrean sea. I must admit it was a good decision even if at the beginning, it was a little bit hard to jump in the water at the temperature was around 15 degrees... It just took us five minutes to dip in all the body in the water. It certainly helped us to recover quicker for the following day or at least that was what we imagined…

At the end of the day, we did not need to count up the sheeps for getting asleep… We were sleeping before the countdown even started as the sheeps never got the time to show up!!!

The second day, we visited Barcelona (Sea side, old quarters, Gruel’s Park etc…) and we walk a 21 extra kilometres in 5 hours. Our pace was slower as we were in the city (people, traffic lights etc...) and as you can imagine walking on the pavement turned out to be more difficult than walking in the country side. No trees but very nice architecture so everybody enjoyed the visit

Conclusions:

1. Keep on stretching all the way and every time we stop… Joel had quite a lot of muscles ackes on Monday for not doing it enough time during the walk
2. Drink water often. Every ten minutes should be a good pace. I felt very weak on Monday as I did not hydrate myself enough
3. Put a “ Second Skin” on sensitive part of your feet to prevent blister or other inconveniences
4. Choose special socks made for trekking or long distance walk…It really makes the difference as Christelle would agree
5. Do not underestimate the footwear. Joel brought a pair of running shoes and quickly realised they were no good for the type of paths and distance we are supposed to cover

Findings:

1. We should be able to cover the 100 kilometers
2. A good will and solidarity between team mates… very important
3. Need to train again and again in accumulating kilometres at weekends.

Sebastian

Training in Barcelona

39% there! Sadly that's not a pass.

The mock exam proved to be a real eye opener...

May 12th opened with glorious sunshine and a sweet cool breeze. Neil & I were dropped at Queen Elizabeth county park for our warm up walk of the actual trailwaker route. Checkpoints 1 - 4.
Confidence was high and the beautiful surroundings meant the first check point was reached in a quick time and relative ease. Beacon hill was a particular high point, quite literally! In a slight deviation of the south downs way you go up a very steep ascent to go over the top of the hill. You know it's steep when you use your hands to get up!
A good view at the top and an ideal photo opportunity was seized.
Unfortunately it was soon after this point that my feet started to blister, a change of shoes from walking to running trainers eased things a lot and I was confident the problem was sorted.
The hard point came at the beginning of the 2nd to 3rd checkpoints, although a shorter leg the start is a long, long, long climb! We'd promised ourselves a break and pork pies at the top, unfortunately for us the top never seemed to arrive! A fallen tree was an ideal sit down point and pork pies, dried fruit and energy bars were decimated on mass. The ten minute rest was over very quickly and it was very obvious it hadn't been great for our legs! Still we persevered over the hill.
After 17 miles my garmin died due to a lack of battery power, this had an impact on my mental state more than anything as I then found it hard to judge how far we'd been and crucially when I could have my next fruit pastille (one a mile!). The blisters started to take over and we had to stop to try and fix my feet. Neil had packed some blister stickers thankfully, and we carried on, at a noticeably slower pace!
By 21 miles I was in quite a bit of pain and the fact I knew the finish was near meant I started to go into shut down. The last few miles were tough, it felt like I was walking on pins! I cursed my shoes, and I cursed the fact I couldn't continue, and certainly wouldn't make 63 miles.
Amberley train station was a welcome site!
My next mission...
1. Get new footwear, seek a professional retailer and get advice, get measured and get sorted. I don't want to fail due to kit.
2. Get walking! Sounds obvious but I need to get my legs used to long distance walking, certainly not there yet, the hills really make a big difference.
3. Get some good tips on dealing with blisters, Vaseline is very useful apparently.

Mock exam results:
Fail :( but hey it's a mock and we've got 2 months to get in a place to pass. But before that I've got a premier league decider day curry to nail, and then a wedding & honeymoon. Then the army training will kick in!!

It's All Down To Feet!

We learnt an important lesson the hard (painful) way yesterday - avoiding blisters is going to be of vital importance to making it through Trailwalker.

After weeks of seemingly constant rainfall, yesterday dawned a beautiful sunny day with clear blue skies. Early in the morning, Lawrence & I set off on a trial run of part of the course with the intention of covering the trail from the start to Checkpoint 4, a distance of about 25 miles (40km) - the whole course is 63miles (100km)!

Lawrence & Neil on Beacon Hill

So armed with maps, suncream & plenty of snacks & water, we started from Queen Elizabeth Country Park and headed off towards the horizon expecting pretty muddy conditions after all the recent rain. However, the horizon was always the next hill!
We soon realised that the statistic of climbing the equivalent of both Ben Nevis & Snowdon along the trail is not an exaggeration. Beacon Hill, for example, entailed a straight ascent of 82m in a distance of about 300m. Pretty tough on the legs! There are some long steady climbs up hills which, just as you think you're at the top, a slightly higher bit of ground looms up ahead. And then, when you do finally get there, going down isn't necessarily any easier as your knees start to take a real pounding.
Anyway, all the exertion was more than compensated for by the stunning views across the beautiful Hampshire & Sussex countryside. We couldn't have asked for a better day.

Views from The South Downs Way

Unfortunately, despite changing his footwear early on, Lawrence started to suffer with blisters, so despite applying some blister plasters, he ended up in quite a bit of pain for the last section of the walk. The climbs had also taken their toll on our legs, as they began to ache pretty badly at times, and even the shortest of rests would cause them to stiffen up.

Neil in a field

So after covering countless hills & admiring great views in the sunshine, we finally completed our 24.57mile walk at Amberley Station (by Checkpoint 4) in a time of 8hours 10minutes at an average pace of 19:58min/mile (this pace includes rest breaks).

Perhaps a spray tan would be better!

Yesterday’s walk has shown just how debilitating damage to your feet can be in an event like Trailwalker. Avoiding blisters, or treating them as soon as they start to appear, is an absolute must. Apparently blisters are by far the most common reason for people failing to complete the challenge. If anyone has any suggestions on the subject of blister prevention or treatment, please let us know.

I also ended up with a blister the size of a pound coin (1 Euro coin) on the side of my heal, which is pretty painful today. Clearly, my new shoes aren’t worn in yet as much as I thought. Plus, as a result of spending all day walking eastwards with the sun to the south, I’ve got a fantastic tan line on my right arm.

As a fact finding mission the day was very worthwhile and we learnt a lot which will help us prepare over the next couple of months. Some of the things we learnt are:
1. The course is hillier than we expected.
2. The right shoes & socks are vital, plus we should change them regularly.
3. Setting the right pace for the terrain & taking rest breaks is important.

4. We’re not yet fit enough to complete the 63 miles/100km (2 months to go though).

5. Doing the event in a golf buggy could be a good idea!




Our Route - The Start to Checkpoint 4



Neil
P.S. Despite all the recent rain, we were thankfully surprised to find the track wasn't really muddy at all.

More Muffins!!

A massive thankyou to everyone at the Legal Services Commision in Bristol, who kindly donated £26.10 in return for Angela's homemade muffins.

We Can't Get Lost Now!

Today I took advantage of a timely 3 for 2 offer at Stanfords and purchased the 3 Ordnance Survey maps that are needed to cover the entire 100km route. Laying them out on the floor makes me think we must be absolutely mad to be doing this!
Neil

Mother In Laws' Welsh Cakes Prove Popular!

Thanks to my generous colleagues at work who have contributed another £10 today towards our target in return for some lovely Welsh Cakes. Plus, many thanks to Angela’s mother, Margaret, for the home made Welsh Cakes.

Neil