The day before the trek begins

We're packed, prepped and jumping on the beds ready for our trip up North. It's been a real experience in the bizarre since the Herald Sun piece. We've been on 3AW, have an appearance on RRR tomorrow and then a 'Take Five' interview... not bad for 'a fun idea'.

Next log will be the tales of the winning or the sorrow of our first failure :)

Until then...

Herald Sun

After a grueling 2 day business planning retreat in a far away land... no it wasn't Finland, it was Woods Point, but it felt like I'd been travelling long enough to be there, I returned to play photo shoot with the Herald Sun.

Dave and I were put through our paces, hurdling at the local athletics track, running in the median strip, across ridges and anything else the HS crew could think off we returned to the YMCA for some aqua fun. My ever supportive workmates stood by watching/hoping that I would be dunked and I'd like to point out that I NEVER fell once. However, that evil photographer 'laughing with you...' decided it would be a great idea for Dave to toss me backwards in the last shot - the aftermath is pictured page 7 of Saturday 3rd March Herald Sun.

Seriously though, the guys from the HS (Terry Brown and Craig Borrow) were great and it was a lot of fun. If you can't get the paper you can view at http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21315836-662,00.html

So, we're all set to go. We'll be leaving early Tuesday morning and making our way slowly and surely; getting some training in along the way.

A big thanks to Knox Leisureworks YMCA for their support and encouragement. We'll proudly be wearing the 'Y' when we win (come on, no point in saying we're not interested in winning... it's a trip to Finland for goodness sake:).

Stay tuned for more pics and stories - We'll be live on 3AW at 3pm today -

Two weeks to go...

...and still training, despite all the pressures of the beginning of the academic year, and Karen's workload increasing.

We went down to the Knox Athletics track last Friday and managed to do the 200m in just under a minute - though this was without the course obstacles, so we're hoping to improve on that. Karen didn't quite feel confident with me not holding her legs, but then her quads pulled up sore after the run, which I think may have been caused by the extra pressure of me holding on to her. We shall see.

Today, while Karen was working, I ran some 200s and 400s (doing a 31.9s and 1.27.00s respectively) with the children looking on - Cody being timekeeper, Callan playing his Nintendo, and Cassidy running along behind squealing 'I'll beat you!' I then ran a 200 with each of them on my back piggy-back style, going from lightest to heaviest. Piggy-back is certainly tougher than Estonian! Or maybe it was having already run so hard... Either way, the Uusorg boys (the world champions for most of the last ten years) have a background more so in middle distance running than weightlifting, so it must be the right way to go about it.

Looking forward to the trip up north. The program has the compeditors arrving on motorbikes! And then there's the Japanese TV thing happening. All good fun and, we may even be heading for Finland at the end of it all...

One month to go...

The big day approacheth and, though unfortunately our preparation has been disrupted, we're gonna go at it hard. Karen has been under an illness cloud that meant her cardio training had to be kept under a heart rate limit due to Doctor's orders. I managed to pull my right calf muscle four weeks ago doing some sprint training and it has only just come back to 100%, but there's four weeks to go so plenty of time to be strong and ready: I'm planning on being back to the kind of condition pictured, with some more upper body bulk to get me over those wife-laden obstacles.

Everyone's excited about the big event and really looking forward to a few days off. In the mean time, we're planning on concentrating on cardio endurance, while I'll be traing to maintain my current strength conditioning simultaneously. We'll also be doing some on-the-back training to get used to the feel of it again.

It's fun hearing people react to what we're doing. They generally assume we are having a lend of them, but become very positive about the idea. Callan and Cassidy's school principal was so sceptical that he wanted to see the websites for proof, but now asks me about the even tevery time I see him. Maybe this could be a 'growth sport'? Who knows?