1 team. 4 friends. 100km. what could be so tough?!

the start line buzzed with excitment and every walker was full of anticipation. together the event had raised over 2.2 million but as the countdown hit 2 minutes there was also a sense of 'why the fuck did we sign up for this' and 'oh shit, its raining'! 

for the next four hours despite the rain, energy levels were high, for some unknown reason we even decided it would be fun to run the first few kilometres! chekpoint 2 came and with the smell of lunch in the air the rain ceased and we piled our stomachs full of friend rice and checked our feet that had already began forming 'hot spots' because of the wet weather.

we met so many  people along the way but for some reason they were keen to either drop back or hurry on forward. i think it had something to do with our insanely loud voices and joking mannerisms. maybe it was just a bit much for everyone?!

checkpoint 3 was a breeze and we arrived at checkpoint 4 unscathed and still in high spirits. dinner was served, but our appetite was barely there. happy to start the walk through the night we unpacked our night gear and turned on our head torches! little did we really understand, for the next 11 hours, this small beem of light would be our only perspective of where the hell we were. 

our journey over the next 11 hours was totally delusional. we hadnt studied the maps at all before we left so we knew nothing about what was ahead of us. it was a matter of putting one foot in front of the other and following the beam of light coming from our head torch. soont here were two broken headtorches in the team so we stuck close to all follow eachothers footsteps. We asked a marshell how far until the next checkpoint and with her comment we found great optimism and wanted to push on. "you're doing well, 5 km to go until check point 6!" thank goodness we thought. about 2 hours later and what we thought was 10km we realised she was wrong. totally unaware of how far there actually was to go we put our headphones in and dragged ourselves to the next checkpoint. at one stage we decided we must have past the checkpoint and were walking to the next, we were wrong. eventually we made it to checkpoint 6, gave our blisters and aches and pains some attention and struggled onwards.

the sun began to rise at 6.45am and the light was welcomed with great relief that we could now get rid of our head torches. now running on solar power we pushed down a great hill to checkpoint 8. the last checkpoint on the journey but definetly the hardest to leave. we had heard the next 7km of the trail was the toughest, only up and down and had realised walking up wasnt the struggle, it was the downhill and pressure on our knees that proved difficult. 

the 5km mark just screamed “you’re almost there” and with a sip of gatorade a rush of anticipation took over our whole body and we were ready to conquer this walk no matter how much our bodies told us to stop. we struggled up each hill and ran down the other side, we just wanted to get this bloody thing over and done with now. 500 metres left and the celebrations had begun. 

25 hours 15 minutes later we had made it! i am an Oxfam trailwalker... i walked 100km... what’s next!?


note to self: tell everybody who reads this to give the 100km oxfam walk a go. you will absolutely suprise yourself at how far your body will let you go.