[The Day I Almost Climbed Mount Kosciuszko]
Earlier in the week we were in the Snowy Mountains of NSW. We’re stayed in the cutest little camp ground in the National Park, surrounded by trees, close to the creek and walking tracks. We were visited by kangaroos every day, and had camp fires and possum visits every night. I finally feel like it was the first serious camping experience of our trip.
If you haven’t been to the Snowy Mountains in the Summer months I’d definitely recommend it. I know it’s renowned for snow, but it’s a gorgeous place even without it. Just don’t be lulled into the false sense of security… just because it isn’t snowing, it’s still bloody cold.
We’ve been quite active since we’ve been up here, mostly bush walking. We had a few runs on the bobsled at Thredbo (not so active but lots of fun) and went on a 4wd tour to see the brumbies.
Since we got here we’ve talked about conquering Mt Kosciuszko. In the summer months you can take a chair lift from Thredbo village then walk the remaining 6.5km to the summit, making it a 13km round trip. We gave it a go and honestly, my legs were burning about 500m in. Walking up hills has always been my arch nemesis (I had surgery in an attempt to correct it when I was in the Army; it didn’t work).
Anyway, we’d done a beautiful 6km warm up walk the previous day and let’s just say, I was feeling far from warm. By the time we got to the Kosciuszko Lookout (2km in) we were both hurting, realising we’d possibly made a mistake in walking the previous day. We took a break and started to feel better, but it was lunch time. We knew we had to be back at the chair lift by 4.30 or risk walking a further 10km back down the mountain. We still had to walk another 4.5km up to the summit, then 6.5km back, so after much umming and aahing we decided to turn back.
Honestly, it was a disappointing decision. We could have gone on, but we weren’t sure we had it in us to walk another 11km. Remember, every step we took meant it was a step further to get back. It would be easy to say we failed, but I won’t because I don’t believe we did. I believe we made a good decision based on our current fitness levels. We didn’t reach the summit because of a decision we made on the day; we didn’t reach the summit because of the decision we made months ago to take a break from training while we finished house renovations.
There’s two lessons here:
Firstly, always know your ability. It’s great to push yourself, and you should regularly push yourself during training. It’s fantastic to work towards achieving things you haven’t done before. But sometimes you need to acknowledge that you don’t have the energy, fitness, skill or expertise to do some things… it’s ok to put your health and safety first.
Secondly, when you choose not to train there will be consequences. As someone who trains regularly, the consequences are negative since I’ve taken a break. However, if you’re in the opposite position you’ll discover there’s some amazing benefits of working out on a regular basis.So we didn’t conquer Kosciuszko, but we gave it a go and we learnt from the experience. For us it was a big realisation that it’s time to seriously commit to training again.
Are you ready to commit to training so you can climb your Kosciuszko?
Start here…
Originally published at www.tarafitnesspersonaltraining.co.uk on 11-Mar-2017.
