Mt Kilimanjaro & Me. Annette Freeman

weeks. This was a setback. If I could only limp across the room, how would I ever climb Mt. Kilimanjaro?

      Chapter 8: Limping On

      Despite the ominous twinge in my foot, I stuck to my training program and in June enjoyed a great day walk on the Freycinet Peninsular in Tasmania, hiking up over a saddle to look down on the breath-takingly beautiful Wineglass Bay. From on high, the bay has the shape of a perfect wineglass, this one filled with turquoise liquor. The trail dropped down to the sweeping white beach then crossed a narrow isthmus, where a mob of wallabies was unconcerned at my picture-taking. It continued through to the more open and windy Hazzards Beach. I was carrying a heavy pack this time, with most of the weight contributed by my camera and new long zoom lens (purchased specially for Africa), plus monopod, all of which I tried out with great success on the wallabies and the gulls on the beach. I spent way too much time enjoying the bushland and gorgeous beaches, so that the last two or three hours hiking back around the headland were completed rather late in the day. Still, it had been a good walk and great for the soul. My right foot had twinged only a little, although it had swollen somewhat ominously by the end of the day.

      By this stage I had, rather humiliatingly I thought, acquired orthotics for my hiking boots. This turn of events had given me a curious mixture of feelings, from affront to disbelief. I didn’t have flat feet, surely?

      It had happened quite quickly. Debra had tried a number of treatments on my foot, none of which seemed to stop the nagging pain more than temporarily. So we x-rayed and scanned it, and no fractures or tears could be seen. She suggested talking to Adam, a podiatrist, who straightaway saw all kinds of defects in my arches and gait, which until then I had thought were perfectly normal. Although not blaming the half-marathon outright, he told me that problems often manifest when one takes up a new and demanding (on the feet) activity, such as me and running. He compared my situation to young men recently enlisted in the army taking up gruelling training regimes. This was vaguely flattering.

      But orthotics! I’d never wear nice shoes again! Adam assured me that the orthotics he would prescribe need only be worn in my sports shoes and hiking boots. On inspecting my expensive running shoes he pronounced them completely wrong for my feet (too bendy, apparently). I’d run that whole twenty-two kilometre race in them. So I was fitted out with new, correct sports shoes and my first orthotics. I was willing to try anything to stop that niggling pain.

      Except that they didn’t stop it. Orthotics, I was told, are likely to be uncomfortable at first, and take a few weeks ‘to get used to’. Weeks passed and the pain worsened, if anything. I was now limping most of the time. Adam revisited the orthotics and replaced one. Not much improved, although things seemed not to get any worse. Adam scratched his head and said he had no answers. My condition was pronounced ‘probably tendonitis’, a microscopic sprain of the muscles that just needed lots of time to heal. Preferably using the foot as little as possible. Excuse me, but I had a mountain to climb! And training time was running out.

      I started to get a little worried. All my work to increase my fitness was going to slide away if I didn’t keep up my regime. But I needed to keep off the foot to allow it to heal. I gave up running. I gave up training walks. I gave up the treadmill and any gym work that was weight-bearing on the foot. What did that leave? Swimming, but I wasn’t getting to a pool often enough, and I’m a weak swimmer. I needed something I could do every day, something readily accessible.

      The dreaded exercise bike. I borrowed a stationary cycle and started pedalling, morning and evening if I could stand the boredom, using hill programs and trying to ensure that I puffed enough. I’ve always disliked the exercise bike, but needs must.

      It was around this time, as I limped about and complained about ‘the wretched foot’, that one or two people seriously suggested that I would need to call off the climb if the injury didn’t improve. Their tone made this sound inevitable. I was repelled – negative thinking wouldn’t get me up the mountain! Steve, my trainer at the gym, on the other hand, never for a minute suggested such a thing. He just turned his mind to exercises I could do which kept weight off the foot, including insisting on the cycle. He also came up with a great suggestion – visualise the climb! Maybe I took this a little further than Steve intended.

      I returned to my favourite guide book author, Henry Stedman. In cheerful and amusing style, with enthusiasm for the flora and disdain for the state of the camps, Henry gives detailed day-by-day descriptions of the various routes. My kind and helpful sister Sue read his description of the Lemosho Route and recorded them onto a cheap little MP3 player acquired for the purpose. This I listened to every day as I pedalled hard up the artificial hills of the exercise bike, visualising the trail, the bends in the track, the creeks crossed and the camps arrived at. Eventually I thought I knew every tree and rock of the route. With hindsight, however, I consider that Henry was a little coy in his description of the Great Barranco Wall as ‘a short scramble’.

      Since this visualisation exercise had gone well, and I was getting to the point where I could recite the guidebook description from memory, I expanded the concept. I bought two DVDs about the mountain and set up my laptop beside the bike. Now I had inspiring visuals as well! I watched the beautifully-filmed David Breashears IMAX classic To The Roof Of Africaand a US PBS documentary made by Nova called Volcano Above The Clouds. I’d seen the Breashears movie at the theatre in all its IMAX glory (several times), and it is indeed visually spectacular and inspiring. However, it does not, I can now say with authority, give a true picture of what it is like to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. Even the easy bits it shows are hard bits in reality, as far as I’m concerned. Ditto the Nova production. However, for the purposes of my training visualisations, they were both excellent. This was a time to be inspired, not daunted. I pedalled on. And on and on.