Friday 20 October 2017

A Touch of Aconcagua

The big A is going to be the dominating thought for me for the next 12 weeks. Every time I exercise, every time I buy the last few pieces of kit, every time I look at my laptop's desktop background picture, haha.
What better way to kick off "crunch time" with a preparatory weekend at my tour operator's office in Sheffield! Drove up last Friday after work. Took pretty much as long as I thought at 4.5hrs. Checked into my accommodation which was actually Church Army property and felt like a mix of hotel and youth hostel. Not too bad really.
Headed out onto Sheffield West Street to meet some friends who live in Sheffield. Had a great night with them and a few beers/wines too many to be fresh enough for a run next morning. Self inflicted... I know.

Saturday at the Jagged Globe head office I saw again two instructors/guides who I met on my Scottish winter mountaineering courses Feb 2016 and they even recognised me. Awesome. Great to see them again.

I also met participants from all three of this seasons Aconcagua groups including three from my team. A talk about the trip followed and we could ask any question that we had. Very useful and we all had a much better idea of what to expect in terms of difficulty, health and hygiene, equipment etc.

Lunch and extensive shopping followed, now knowing what I still needed to buy. Tried on the La Sportiva G2 mountaineering boots I was so desperately after, got some super warm gloves (think waaaaarm and double that warmth, haha) and a sleeping bag. Rougly £1000 for all three items. Ouch!

Second half of the day was spent near Fox House in the Peak District. Superb autumn weather for a lazy 2hr stroll. More chatting and socialising with my fellow Aconcagua team mates and a bit of practising how to walk most efficiently.

Near Fox House
Back in Sheffield at Jagged Globe HQ we picked up our bought kit and disbanded for the time being. I had just about enough time to briskly walk back to the "hotel", have a quick shower (it was waaaaarm outside) and change before I headed back down to a nice pub/restaurant for dinner. Lovely evening with more chatting.


Sunday we met 9:30am near Edale deep in the Peak District for another walk. Thinking of the walk and the long drive home I once more ditched the morning run. Boo.
Did a circular of up to the Kinder Scout plateau and back most of it through pathless heather to mimic walking on snow.


Another lovely day, but no promised blue skies. At least it stayed dry. More talks on high altitude and some last questions about the trip.

Looking back down into Edale Valley

Had lunch up on the plateau with nice views around and took a group summit photo. A first vague idea of what it might look like on Aconcagua, haha.

A summit shot, almost like Aconcagua
2pm back down at the car park we said our goodbyes, sad that we were not all going on the same trip. We wished each other good luck and headed off in pristine sunshine.

Great weekend and well worth the trip for all of us. I have a much better idea of what to expect now and what I still need to buy for my kit bag. I feel more relaxed about the trip now, the photos we saw were stunning and it's less technical on summit day than I thought... all weather depending of course.

11.5 weeks to go!!!

Friday 13 October 2017

Aconcagua Training Kick-Off - 12 Weeks to Go!

What is Aconcagua?
Aconcagua - at 6962m a behemoth of a mountain. The highest outside the Himalayas. In 12 weeks' time I'll be flying to Argentina to once more join a Jagged Globe expedition, this time attempting to summit South America's highest peak. It'll be a 23 day round trip to the top and back.

Training for an "Event"
On October 16 I'm kicking off my 12-week training plan. Setting something like this up had worked a treat for my Marital Arts holiday earlier in the year. Over two weeks, I was able to train 2-3x per day (in the Singaporean heat) with the odd day off sightseeing. Without properly building up to this, I would have needed many more breaks in between training days.

What does my plan look like?
Aconcagua training will focus a little bit more on running and cycling, but the martial arts stuff is too much fun, to skip really.

I designed 3 phases, each one ramping up training volume. I'm looking at looooong days of walking on Aconcagua, that's why I'm concentrating on volume and not intensity.

I'll stick to my 3x90min Krav Maga sessions per week. Then add 3x60min gym heavy bag workouts and 1 5k run per week. In phases 2 and 3 I'll add more running and some cycling as well. I signed up for 4 10k trail runs, just to motivate myself to go outside and run.
Any missed Krav session will be replaced by a 10k run or a 90min heavy bag gym session.


Weekly Training Load
Phase 1Phase 2Phase 3
3x Krav3x Krav3x Krav
3x gym3x gym3x gym
1x 5k1x 5k2x 5k
1x 30k cycle1x 30k cycle
1x 10k

Each phase is 3 weeks on and 1 week off for recovery (Off doesn't mean no training at all.). The last few weeks will be tough and pretty much train, eat, work, train, eat, sleep. Day in, day out. 

That's the big master plan
Right then! Let's do this!!! The next big adventure is waiting. It's going to be hard work over the next 12 weeks and I will be a bit off the grid towards the end, spending countless hours exercising. Can't say I'm not looking forward to it though. The first phase is not much different from what I'm doing already.
I'm sure it'll be worth it in the end and give me a better chance of making it all the way to the top! Bring on Aconcagua!