Trailblazer Training

33.3km. The most I have ever hiked in a single day. Not bad, in preparation for next weekend's 50km Trailblazer hike.

Ambers Gully, Athelstone, to Mt Lofty Summit

Just one week until the big event, the 50km Trailblazer hike (a fundraising challenge). We haven't done a lot of specific training for it, so Tim and I thought we would make this one last opportunity. I've been doing lots of regular hiking, and been swimming twice a week, but today we set out to do the entire 33.3km section in the hills. Next weekend, we do the same, but start 18km earlier at from Adelaide Oval, following Linear Park to Athelstone, before doing what we hiked today.

Pretty stoked that we saw an echidna in the Montacute Conservation Park, it was wandering along until it saw us and did the whole camo thing.


No, I didn't take this detail-photo of an echidna. No photos today.

It was tough, but we set a mean pace from the start. We had set out at 12 noon, we knew it was likely we would finish in the dark, but Tim had a prior engagement. I think I can safely say I have never hiked this fast before, after 4 hours of hiking we had only spent 21 minutes of that time resting. After 40 minutes for lunch at Norton Summit, yes it was 4pm by then, we had completed 19 of the anticipated 32km. Neither of us really felt any sorer after this point, although my knee started giving me grief in the last 5km (the next day though... woah, pretty sore hey).

We stayed true to the Trailblazer course, although because I had forgotten to bring the maps we strayed a little in Morialta. At Deep View Lookout we should have gone down to the carpark, then along the valley floor, whilst instead we maintained the same altitude and skirted around the edge. We didn't avoid the killer hill neither of us expected though, presumably a necessary re-route to avoid the bridge-less closed section of the Yurrebilla Trail.

Only during the last few kilometres did we put our head torches on, and the floodlit obelisk at the summit of Mt Lofty kept us going to the end. A nice look at the view was brought to a premature end as we started getting pretty cold. Wedges with a nice serving of sour cream and sweet chilli sauce worked a treat though in the cafe while we waited for Kate to come collect us.



Stats:

• Distance: 33.3km
  
• Start time: 12noon
  
• End time: 7.20pm
  
• Moving duration: 6h 10m
  
• Stationary duration: 1h 09m
  
• Moving average: 5.5km/h
  
• Overall average: 4.5km/h