Saturday 3 October 2015

October 3 - 28 days until first step

Walked about 22km today both with and without load (carried base weight - 9kg), testing that knee in some sand. Not too shabby - no pain (mostly), although no real ascents. Just some short, sharp pinches which dodgy knee coped well with. Big sigh of relief and much praise to dodgy knee and then praise to good knee in case it felt left out! I will build back up to a full load over the coming weeks as will be carrying lots of water on Ninety Mile Beach because ground water's in short supply.  Apparently some of the tour buses sometimes chuck you a bottle- kick it to me!

Basically my prep has been shorter walks during the week before work (around the 5km mark but with a decent hill), then on the weekends do some extended stuff with my pack.  I'm finding that a short 5 minute break every 90 mins or so with a longer one for lunch is enough to keep my shoulders and legs happy especially if I remember to do some stretching - which I'm pretty useless at - both the remembering and the stretching!

Have started packing up food to bring across to New Zealand, not because I don't think I can get similar over there, just because I'm not sure they'll have the quantities on the shelf. Compared to other hikers I am probably sending/delivering more Resupply boxes than most as I know, at the end of a hiking day, the last thing I will want to do is grocery shop!!

Before I went shopping in Australia, I contacted NZ Quarantine to get an Ok to bring in the types of packaged food I was thinking of bringing.They were really helpful and even gave me the OK to take some food out of original packaging to save room - as long as I can tell customs what's in them.  Have also emailed Bivouac in Wellington as they said they would happily put aside some dehydrated meals (Back Country) so I can just pick up when I get in. I'm not using a lot of dehydrated stuff (mainly for the more remote parts in the South) because I find it really salty. I am trying to use 'real'
food which, as my feet tell me, is heavier but just may keep me saner in the long run (also means you don't need to carry as much water so a bit of give and take with weight). Ready- to-go meals like Jamie Oliver 'Lovely Lentils' and Rices of the World are on the menu, prepared with a handful of nuts or seeds to up the nutritional value. A typical daily graze looks a bit like this:

Breakfast: Muesli or porridge with a hot drink

Second breakfast: protein bar (eg Cliff, Kind or Carman)

Lunch: Some sort of wrap (peanut butter and banana leather or snow peas for example)

Afternoon snack: trail mix (banana chips; dates; Craisins; dried pineapple; snakes; nuts) or
something salty.

Dinner: carbohydrate heavy meal - 3minute pasta, Jamie Oliver pulses; Rices of the World with a hot drink (chai tea; hot chocolate).

Dessert: chocolate!!

Pigeon xx





3 comments:

  1. Nice blog Leslie. .. Do you have s photo of you kitted up? I was wondering if kia ate tents as they do cars? ? Don't worry don't think they like pigeons

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    1. Well hello starving artist! Don't worry am sure there'll be a photo of me soon enough! Am not worried about any NZ wildlife - am worried about being a klutz and falling in a hole, or sliding off a ridge or causing an internstional incident...

      Try to keep up
      Lxxx

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  2. HI there!!

    Loving this and can't wait to see more!

    Annelies

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