That's right folks 9 DAYs. I'm not sure why I haven't mentioned it before, possibly denial, in fact most definitely denial.
What possessed me? Well a number of things really. And yes before I go on, to all of you who have already done it or know someone else who did it and said it was a piece of cake, it isn't that much of a big deal blah blah blah...BUT to me it is, so let me indulge.
January time, as advised by the wonderful Claudine, she suggested doing that I do something for me. She was talking along the lines of joining a dance class, maybe some pottery, learning to play the piano, a solo holiday perhaps - that kind of thing. Something that I wouldn't normally do, something that stretched me that little bit further, something to aim for. And all of those suggestions are absolutely valid and things that I would love to do ( maybe not dancing or pottery). And then it came to me, I remembered watching Cheryl Cole and Chris Moyles et al climb Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief on TV and feeling massively inspired.....I even distinctly recall saying to the boy that this was something that we should do next year....anyway, fast forward to this year, minus one boy (in both mine and Cheryl's case) and we got ourselves a challenge - in my case I have named it, " If Cheryl can do it, so can I!"
So there we have it.
Am I prepared? Not in the slightest. Mentally, not really, still cant believe I am doing this. And did I mention doing it with a whole bunch of people I have never met? What if they don't like me, what if I don't like them, who's hand am I going to hold on the plane...all of these not so pleasant thoughts!
What about physically? Not as much as I would have liked, in fact no, not at all.
I am hanging onto the words of the wise ones who have already completed saying it was a doddle, and that its only really the altitude and not your fitness. I'm lapping up the statistics that male 20-30 year olds are the ones most likely to fail as they charge up the mountain and 65+ year olds have very high success rates. I'm counting on the fact that I am half Chinese and thus may have some related genes to those Tibetan inhabitants who handle the altitude, and that maybe, just maybe the glory days of winning the Macdonald Cup aged 12 is enough to mean that my lung capacity is still big enough to cope with the battle ahead.
If all else fails, I am going to try and look my bestest as is possible whilst getting up that bloody mountain....I was in fact tossing and turning in bed last night as to which of my lucky necklaces I should wear and then decided that I would wear all of them at the same time to increase my chances.
So, with just over a week to go I had better continue and ramp it up a little.
Think of me on 29th August aka summit day and hopefully all of the above wont matter.
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