It seemed like a good idea at the time. "Help the kiddies in Africa" they said. "Beautiful countryside" they said. "Only 5 spaces left" they said. Somehow 100km in 48 hrs didn't look so bad on paper. Being a civil -minded bunch, and possibly suffering a little nostalgia for the great outdoors back from the mid-winter gloom of February we happily signed our names up to participate in Oxfam's 100km "Trailwalker" event. Images of rolling hills, green countryside, picture perfect Mt Fuji backdrops and mountain streams, friendly locals providing us with friendly hospitality along the way pervaded our thoughts.
It wasn't long after inking our names to the sign-up sheet that it all began to go wrong. Casual enquiries among colleagues and friends of greater experience revealed, to our horror, that all was not as it seemed. "Worst day of my life" said one. "Way worse than a marathon" said another. A barrage of e-mails related to advisory seminars and vital equipment landed in our in-boxes. Helpful tips on where to buy professional footwear ('the ones that ultramarathon runners wear), or waterproof headlamps (hang on a minute: walking through the rain in the DARK??), or bear bells (deeper investigation reveals that these are as much to convince hunters of our un-bear-like nature as much as they are to frighten off actual bears that inhabit the woods). Things were starting to go pear-shaped. Without a marathon or triathlon between us, our combined experience of endurance events tends to lean towards a heavy night on the beers side of the scale rather than the Marathon des sables.
Worse was to come. A gentle foray into the terrain we are expected to cover revealed to our disgust we had the been looking at the map upside down. The trail STARTS at the sea and ENDS at mount Fuji. Not only that but the trail designers clearly have sociopathic issues (we'd like to meet them, but we doubt the feeling is mutual). Our initial (and so far only) training foray ran into trouble after two (out of 10) stages with one case of gammy knee, one case of severe hydration and four cases of manic depression.
So where does this all leave us? Well, having been through the 5 stages (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance) we are meeting this challenge head on. Small personal targets have been set and met, stairs have been climbed in lunch hours, malt/barley/hops related bevarage intake is down across the board, and a seed of confidence is growing within us that YES we CAN finish this race. Kicking, screaming, drooling, mewling or even crawling there's a challenge out there that we WILL meet. We might even beat the 48hr deadline (but we doubt we'll beat the gurkhas planning to run the thing in 16 hrs, so don't hold that against us)
As for you.. you have the easy part. All we need is to raise Y800,000 from our sponsors (you). Should we fail then all will be for nought (and you wont get to laugh at our sorry *sses at the finish line). So please please be generous, and above all remember "It's for the kiddies in Africa"
