#leftrightrepeat2015

I woke up that morning and I felt ill. Everything hurt from the day before but I would be damned if I let it get the better of me. I'm stubborn and it was that stubbornness that kept me going as long as I did. I forced myself to eat breakfast as I don't normally eat so early in the morning or so quickly after I get up and kept myself to myself. When we started walking I started to gain new energy, I was able to do this. The first 5km we did relatively quickly but it was pretty flat terrain. It wasn't until later that I started to lag behind once more. When we got to the small hill we had decided to include in our 30km walk I fell very far behind. At one point I couldn't see anyone in front of me for a good five minutes. It took everything I had to push myself up the ascent but it was at this point that i decided enough was enough. I wasn't enjoying the experience as I wanted to take my time, enjoy the scenery but the walk wasn't about that, it was about getting the best time. It just isn't for me. I was on the brink of tears as I came to the realisation that I was a hinderance to the team and that I needed to bow out now. I pulled Doug aside to have a heart to heart chat and he agreed that it was what was best for the team. We walked all the way back although after damaging my foot I hobbled a lot of the way but we made it. I started to tell the rest of the team one by one. The relief I felt weighing up the next morning and knowing that I didn't have to go back out to walk was unbelievable. I genuinely don't think I could have walked the third day even if I had wanted to as my foot was causing me a lot of pain and my legs had seized up. This led me to shuffle around for the rest of the day and for the next few days after that. Regardless of whoever wants to argue with me, I will stick to my guns on my main issue with Arran: it was too much too soon. This is something that is not only thought just by myself but also others in the team. I completely understand that my lack of effort in the gym and fitness front is what led me to inevitably pull out during Arran but it was also a case of not having done much hillwalking before. In my opinion, what would have been more beneficial is if we had gone on day hillwalking trips to build up to Arran. Certain members of the team have been brought up with this type of fitness and it comes very easily to them but this does not include everyone. That doesn't mean that the team can't get to this level of fitness as I have every faith that they will make it to the Pyrenees and succeed in the completion of the trek. What I do believe is that there was a divide created in the team after that weekend and it did not help team morale.   What was important was that these issues were flagged up now rather than waiting until the Pyrenees for them to surface. It allows time for them to be fixed or worked through.

Arran was the beginning of the end and it very quickly and easily made my decision for me, I knew it was going to be tough but I didn't quite realise just how tough. On the first day I very quickly found myself at the back of the group. Although I had support from the team to keep going I just felt completely inadequate. Not only was I fighting an uphill struggle I was also constantly playing catch up. If the team waited for me, I would reach them then we would start walking again. This meant I was barely getting time to catch my breath or even just rest for a minute. I completely understood that we needed to go at a fast pace but my body was only carrying me as fast as it could, this was not good enough. I kept telling people to go ahead as I knew they needed to train at their pace and eventually we reached the top. This was incredibly short lived as we needed to descend fast so as not to get caught in the dark. This meant no stops, we had to keep powering through. We finished the day just in time but when we got home I felt like crap. I had just walked 18km, something which I had never done before, yet I wasn't proud or excited or even happy! I was just tired. I felt completely demotivated, disappointed and filled with dread about having to do it all again tomorrow. I am a very competitive person so maybe that's why I didn't enjoy myself; there's no competition when you are constantly at the back. I ate my dinner, barely spoke (which for me is rare) helped to organise the walk for the next day then dragged myself to bed. I didn't sleep very well that night.

I am absolutely gutted to not be joining the remaining team members in the Pyrenees but it was the best thing for me and more importantly for them. One apology I have to make is to Fiona: Dealing with Doug, Craig and David together as the only girl…good luck! What it has allowed me to do and something I needed to try before writing this blog is the chance to go out on the hills for recreational purposes rather than to do training.  Today I walked up Ben Lomond with Clara and David and I can’t tell you how much enjoyment and sense of achievement I gained. I needed to make sure that I knew what I wanted and after today I am confident in the knowledge that I am more than capable of walking up a hill. I may do it at my own pace but I will reach the top. I can enjoy the scenery, take pictures and just enjoy the company I’m with rather than walk at the back of a group. I have decided to keep hillwalking to build my strength and speed and maybe one day not so far into the future I will rejoin the team if they will still have me or I will take on my own mammoth challenge. I may have had to pull out of this walk but I certainly haven’t given up! Sorry Doug for the lack of bitchiness, I’m sure that will come with time but I have something important to say to the team and that is thank you. My stepdad George told me that when you look back on what you have done you will see certain people you meet and certain events that took place as cornerstones that influence and possibly change your life. I can say without a doubt that Doug, Clara, Craig, Fiona and David and the adventures we have gone on so far are certainly one of those markers. Being part of LeftRightRepeat has allowed me to grow as a person and hopefully will continue to do so in the future.

Whatever happens from this point onwards, the benefits of joining this great project will stay with me and I have no doubt that the experience that I have gained throughout the recent months will make me a better, more learned man. Coming to know yourself can be one of the most difficult processes in the world but once you manage it, you realise that it is the most important and rewarding thing that an individual can do. LeftRight Repeat has helped that process and I will be forever grateful.

So, LeftRight Repeat started over a year ago for me. I was travelling around Australia, and was kind of stuck in Melbourne. It struck me that when I went home, people were going to ask me what I’d done, and frankly, aside from drink and meet other people drinking, I hadn’t done anything spectacular. Sure I’d seen some amazing views, palaces, temples in Vietnam and Thailand. I’d scuba dived with whale sharks and run a bar on a tiny island, but I hadn’t done anything. I felt that I had nothing to say that I hadn’t heard already from the countless people I’d met travelling. I wanted something to talk about for the rest of my life, so I decided to try something epic and walk 1,000km from Melbourne to Adelaide alone. LeftRight Repeat 2014 Once back in the UK, I really did have something to talk about, but once I went to uni I assumed that was it for LeftRight Repeat, and then I got talking to people, who said “yeah I’d really like to do something like that”. From there on out I wanted to stop just talking about what I’d done, but show and share it with people. Ask my mum or my flatmates, I don’t like to share things, but this experience, this lifestyle, is something I want everyone to see and feel, and this is where I want to take my life now. It isn’t all that easy however. Australia was tough yes, but I was alone, which although lonely, is pretty easy because you have very little choices, you walk or you don’t walk, it’s up to you and the only person who has a say in the matter is you. When you have company, when you’re a team member, everything changes. There’ve been many an argument already, and a lot of them come from my struggle to relinquish control and work as an equal part of a team. It’ll be even more an equal share of responsibility on the mountain. This rose a new set of benefits to the surface. LeftRight Repeat 2015 is teaching me to deal with people; it takes no master of deduction to see that a guy who spent 2 months living alone in a tent in Australia, may prefer his own company. This adds to the challenge for me. Ultimately, to me LeftRight Repeat is about going and challenging yourself, and doing it for yourself. It’s from the ground up, you dedicate yourself to a group, you have a place and a role to fulfil. You have to plan a whole expedition, find funding, plan travelling there, get fit and stay fit, go on training walks, work well in a team. LeftRight Repeat is a constant challenge, that I believe will give a life long reward.

Looking back, LeftRight-Repeat is one of those things I’m not really sure why I signed up for. I mean, I love it; the team, the training, the outdoors, challenging myself, the whole process, but its not very me. I’m not really a fitness orientated person, I’d always shunned the gym a little, and though I eat healthily, I’d never even considered inserting specific doses of protein into my diet, let alone entered the weights room. I couldn’t help but be daunted by exercises called ‘skull crushers’ (it’s a weights training term for those, like me, who didn’t know) and looking back on my earliest blog post, my sentiment when we started the training was that I felt ‘utterly pathetic’. I’ve come a long way since then and am actually enjoying working out. But most of all, the practice walks we’ve done have reminded me, clichéd as it may sound, how much I love the great outdoors, nature, beautiful weather, the lot. LeftRight-Repeat has offered me something above and beyond travelling the beaten track, and that’s a raw sense of adventure. Aside from the physical fitness aspect, I had other reservations about LeftRight-Repeat too. Being in a group of people would mean having to rely on others and not being in control of situations, something that I’m not very good at dealing with, generally speaking. My need to be in control was why I decided to go travelling on my own last year. On your own, you have no one to rely on but also no one to rely on you. There is a conscious free-spiritedness, knowing you can up and go if anywhere or anyone becomes too much or too little for you. I’m not going to pretend that LeftRight-Repeat has been a perfect group dynamic; we’ve had our fair share of ups and downs (and we’re not even on the bloody walk yet). There have been arguments. I won’t point fingers but I think we will all contest to the fact that communication in a group like this is absolutely paramount. Otherwise, all those niggling little annoyances you have with someone’s behaviour will eventually rear their ugly head and manifest themselves. I mean, signing up to spend two months of your lives, all day, every day, with the same set of people, who you will have to deal with when you are grumpy and tired, and they are grumpy and tired, and they will have to deal with you too, that’s a lot. That’s like having a whole new family, except this time you’ve chosen to live with these people and you only have yourself to blame. But the process of dealing with others (and them having to deal with me) has actually taught me a lot about myself. I don’t always need to be in control, it’s not good to play little miss contrary, but at the same time keeping quiet about things that bother you is never going to solve anything. It’s with this view in mind that we’ve all agreed to make this blog a space to share and vent, knowing that at the end of the day, we’ll all still be friends, or maybe not, but at least we’ll have been honest about it.

Back in Glasgow, Doug's been teaching me the new body weight circuit training for over Easter holidays and we've all been training and running as usual, despite the blisters.

Thankfully I still had Fiona to cheer me up and she didn't let me down. LeftRight Repeat has met and overcome many hurdles since it begun but we had never had to deal with a dozen stubborn cow’s who didn't seem very keen to move off the path we needed to walk along. Doug and I took the approach of scaring the cows into surrender and hoping that they would eventually get out the way. Fiona on the other hand took matters into her own hands and chose to go around the cow’s. Clever you might think. However this plan backfired almost immediately. After only 2 or 3 steps Fiona began to sink into the cow crap. This didn't stop her though, she persevered on into the ominous looking cow crap. By this point Doug and I had got 2 or 3 of the cows to move and we had watched them sink knee deep into their own crap. Fiona saw this but still thought that her approach was the best approach. After about 3 seconds she ended knee/thigh deep in the mud. In the process she lost her balance and submerged her hands and forearms into the drink. As she helplessly looked round Doug and I were both trying our upmost to contain the uncontrollable laughter, but it was impossible. There was plenty other drama in the day, however the weather was really the defining factor. It was either driving snow of beaming sunshine.The issue was that the weather forecast tonight and tomorrow are appalling and more snow and cold weather is forecast. Unfortunately the team were not kitted out for weather like that and camping in -3 wasn't an option. Once we got to Tyndrum we came to the decision that it wasn't clever or safe to try to keep going so we jumped on a train and hot footed it home. It was annoying but at the same time it was the right thing to do. LeftRight Repeat has unfinished  business with the WHW, that shall be fixed.