The most Easterly situated Munro and one that just makes the cut height wise was a very good place to start the challenge. Over the next year I am going to bag every Munro in my Wonder Woman costume to help raise awareness about gender inequality.

Study after study has shown that the empowerment of women is the most crucial phase of development in a struggling economy; evidence of this is clear in  Malawi where newly elected Joyce Banda immediately made drastic changes to how the government works. The presidential fleet of cars was sold on her appointment to office; Banda and her staff travel only on scheduled transport. The world bank have recently donated $150m to aid the economic recovery of Malawi and the US donated $49m to Malawian agriculture...steps in the right direction that may never have came under the former greed riddled male president.

It was a nice morning, Saturday the 27th August 2012. Nice for Scotland anyway. Not exactly warm but not too cold to stand comfortably without shivering in a lycra leotard. At the bottom of the mountain...

We set off at around 10.30am; Wonder Woman speeding along the road with the cape flying in the wind; very quickly we were off road and climbing into the Cairngorms. One small hill to go over meant we got a decent descent before we even got onto Mt Keen which we stopped for lunch after speeding our way down. A wee taster of what downhill mountain biking was like and a good warm up for the challenge ahead.

The next section was the killer...the ascent up Mt Keen! I've never had to carry my bike before; I've had to push it up the slopes on the West Highland Way but I've never taken it on a surface where it was easier just to sling the thing over the back of the shoulders and traipse. Damn I love mountain biking now though...the downhill bit wasn't as fun to me as the struggle up the hill with the bike. Going fast down the side of a mountain by bike is cool but it doesn't last very long; you'd be lucky if it took half an hour to get from the summit to being off the mountain and I'm kind of more about endurance and the unusual than I am about speed. My favourite bit of the weekend was going over my handlebars into a peat bog. Getting tangled up in my bike whilst half submerged in thick sucking mud, thinking "HELP" but seeing your mates turn round and laugh at you is what it's all about. That was on day 2 during the cross country multi-terrain section we did. Never saw it coming, front wheel straight in, head first into the quick stuff - Class!

I have to admit that I didn't climb all the way up the mountain in my lycras...I couldn't have done that without getting pneumonia, nothing sensible about that. I put my windproof jacket and trousers over the suit till we got to the top when I stripped off for the final ascent and the boys took a couple of pictures. Have to say I looked every inch the superhero standing beside the cairn with my cape flapping horizontally in the gale force wind.

The team from www.singletrackbikes.co.uk who took me on the trip provided some expert guidance on the trails and good mechanical support before taking off each day; I'm now a lot better equipped for servicing and repairing my own bike but doubt I'll ever be as fast as them going down the way...they are rapid. Proper mountain bike experts though, I've only just begun! Thanks to them all, Coco, Dave  and C-Mac for taking me up there and showing me the way and thanks to my mate Fras for introducing me to them and setting up the trip. Fras is the managing director come CEO of Edinburgh Cleaning Services http://www.cleanse.uk.com/ and is a really busy guy so what a way for us to get a good catch up; here's to many more. Fras sent us all a text listing a dozen things that he had done for the first time that weekend including bag a Munro, carry his bike on his back and eat a bowl Kichi of noodles; and it all happened within a 3 hour drive of his front door. Here's to home adventures!

The challenge is set; a picture at the summit of every Munro dressed as Wonder Woman within the next year. I have no free weekends left to get any in before I start running marathons every day in October but who's to say that has to stop me;  I'll just have to run a marathon in the morning and go bagging mountains at night! 

Here's to the great outdoors and keeping girls in school in Africa!

This is Paulo, Blogging happy but very tired, stiff and covered in bruises!