Training and such

Hey Fen & Nita, this is for you! I wanted to post a comment on each of your blogs to tell you how I trained, but realized that it would be too much of a hassle, so here goes.

First of all, I don't know if you are going to carry your stuff up there or if your trekking company will provide for all of that. I heard that on Kilimanjaro there are porters that would carry just about everything (including a toilet seat) for a given (affordable) price. Anyway, I think the basic training for any mountain (carry or no carry of load) should consist of hiking at a high speed uphill carrying loads. Yup. I'm not kidding. This will increase your lung capacity (critical at altitude, remember kili is almost 6000m) and also increase your endurance.

Not so many hills here in singapore, but MacRitchie is a good place to start. If not, bukit batok reservoir is also nice (i miss took bukit batok for macritchie at one point). For MR, there is a 10 km route that is just nice for the start.

I think at first you should have about 5 kg of load - what I did was to carry 1.5, 2 and 0.5 l bottles filled with water - to up to 12 when you're done. This way, if the going gets tough, you can dump some of the water in the jungle or even drink it if you're desperate (i think water becomes undrinkable after a couple of weeks of being kept in a container - i did not spill it cause it seemed like a waste). Since the water bottles didn't fill up the backpack and i didn't want them to wiggle around, i put some bed sheets for padding (i kid you not).

And you should walk as fast as you can. You should hike in the boots you plan to hike in during the trip itself, to ween them in and sort out any problems that might arise (blisters, etc) As for boots, I think any trekking boots should have a hard sole, from a good material (preferably vibram), should hold the ankle and have a hard tip (for when you hit rocks). Running uphill is also good training, but i did it only once a week. This load carrying trek should be done twice to three times a week - i think WE (yes i need it too) should start in early May or even next week, woohoo!! I volunteer Sunday evenings, yay!

If you plan to hike using trekking poles, which I seriously advise you to, you should adjust their length correctly: they should reach your shoulder or higher when you go downhill and they should be lower when you go uphill.

The same goes for your backpack: you should carry the backpack you plan to have with you. There's a whole theory about how you should pack you backpack, and how it should be adjusted. Basically your hips should carry most of the weight. I will show you if you don't know how.

For the rest of the gear, I suppose the trekking agency will give you a list of gear which I suppose you will need to buy. Lemme know!