20 for 2020: week 47

Week of 16 November 2020

Here’s my 20 for 2020 list.

What did I want to do better this week?
Keep working on the “replace phone use with movement” thing. That means instead of checking my phone at times when I’m between tasks or places, I get up and move instead.

So, how did that go then?
This week hasn’t probably been the best week for this because I’ve been working basically full time on coordinating papers and briefings for budget estimates week, which is next week, so I haven’t had a moment to sit down and catch my breath, much less check my phone. The good thing about this (if there is one) is that I am constantly on the go rather than sitting down all day.

Things will return to “normal” after next week so that will be the time I’ll need to start watching out for “just checks” of my phone. I did stop myself a couple of times during the week, and I think that’s the first step. Just being aware of doing it rather than mindlessly picking up the phone and scrolling through whatever feed I fancy at the time.

On to 20 for 2020
This week mostly taken up with work so I didn’t look at any of my 20 for 2020 things, other than my 50 mm challenge (thing 9). I’ve been carrying my camera around with me a lot more since I started it and looking for interesting things to photograph. I’m a bit behind on the editing but I haven’t missed a day of actually taking the photos.

50 in 50 day 24

I have a bit to catch up with on my photoblog, with those photos and also the photos and posts from the Open House Hobart weekend so that will be my focus over the next week or so once things calm down at work.

I finished the Bored and Brilliant challenge (thing 12) and you can read about it here.

Yes, I watched a pot of water come to the boil

What did I achieve this week?
My regular check in: I stayed up to date with my weekly photojournal (well, at least the journal side of it, the photo side not so much) and with the Hobart Street Corners project.

This week’s big news story in Tasmania

Kramstable and I signed up for the virtual Point to Pinnacle challenge, which started last Saturday. This year’s Point to Pinnacle was cancelled because of Covid. Kramstable had been looking forward to it because it would have been the first year he’d have been able to do the full event. Last year he was only allowed to do the 10km Point to Pub, as participants have to be 14 to do the Pinnacle event.

This challenge was designed to make up for not having the event in 2020, by challenging people to reach a total climb of 1271 metres over the week. It didn’t matter how you did it—presumably you could walk up and down an elevation of 10 metres 127 times over the week if you wanted to. The main issue we had with it was that it was all tracked on Strava, which neither of us had. So we had to sign up there and then manually put on all of our activity over the week. Which would have been fine if we’d remembered to track it in another app. Neither of us did.

Nonetheless, we had already decided that we could walk to the top of Mt Nelson to give our elevation stats a boost. We weren’t able to do it over the weekend because we had things on both days, so we decided to to it after school one day. I had previously walked up Nelson Road to the Signal Station and I remember it taking a while but not being too strenuous. A bit like the walk up the road to the kunanyi summit. However, it’s a very bendy, narrow road, with lots of cars and very little in the way of footpath infrastructure, so we decided to take the stairs up the side of the road.

I was aware of the stairs’ existence. They go up the side of the university. I’d never walked up them. I discovered there was a reason for that. It was a warm afternoon. For whatever reason, the hours after school that used to coincide with a walk up a beastly hill to pick up Kramstable when he was in primary school are the hottest and most uncomfortable hours of the day in Hobart and this day was no exception. Hot afternoon sun plus steep stairs do not equate to a pleasant afternoon stroll. Especially when greeted with a bunch of sweaty teen boys from the nearby school, which obviously uses the stairs as some sort of fitness torture for the students.

The steps from hell

We complained about it. A lot. At one point I said to Kramstable if we got too uncomfortable we could stop and go back down. He didn’t disagree but suggested we get to the top of the section where we were and then reassess.

On the way up

Once we got there, I could see the water tank that marks the end of the Nelson Road bends. That was not what I’d been expecting. The actual stair climb, although torturous, had been relatively short compared to walking up the bends. To say I was overjoyed that the torment was over was an understatement! When I told Kramstable that the worst bit was over and that the rest of the walk to the Signal Station, if we decided to go there, was going to be easy, he was as relieved as I was and agreed we’d finish the walk to the end of the road. I figured we hadn’t come all that way and undergone that much agony to not see the views at the end. So off we went and had a lovely afternoon walk, both agreeing that if either of us ever suggested we walk up those stairs again, the answer would be no.

The view from the Signal Station

We never ended up tracking the walk on Strava but our other app told us it was only a 400 metre climb, so we’d have had to have done it at least three more times to get to 1271 metres. That was never going to happen, so we left that challenge undone. Consider our entry fee a donation to making next year’s Point to Pinnacle happen.

What didn’t go so well?
I don’t think anything went particularly badly. I did feel sorry for the new guy at work who had to put up with me getting somewhat flustered at the work I was doing and telling myself to stay calm and to go through one document at a time.

What do I want to do better next week?
Let’s stick with the movement breaks instead of phone breaks thing.

Summary for the week

• Things completed this week: 1 (12)
• Things completed to date: 15 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21)
• Things I progressed: 1 (9)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 5 (7, 11, 13, 17, 22)
• Things not started: 1 (19)
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 6
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 0
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 6
• Days I went for a walk in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5

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Point to Pinnacle: D-day

322 days ago, on 31 December 2017,  I posted a photo of kunanyi from near the bottom of the university with the caption, “One day, Mountain, I will walk to your summit”.

Today, I did it.

I didn’t specifically have the Point to Pinnacle in mind when I posted that photo and I didn’t have a time frame for doing it. It was just in the back of my mind as a “someday” thing.

When I signed up for the Point to Pinnacle in August I had every intention of following a training plan leading up to the event, doing lots of hill walks and feeling completely prepared to do the walk. I didn’t stick to the plan, I didn’t do lots of hill walks and, in the past month, have done very few morning walks at all. For someone who normally walks every day, I’ve found my lack of motivation very unusual and out of character, especially leading up to a 21.1 km walk up a 1270 metre high mountain.

So I didn’t feel prepared and was not-so-secretly worried that I wasn’t going to make it. There’s a time limit of 4 hours 40 minutes for the walk and I wasn’t at all confident about my hill-readiness. However, I’d signed up, I’d told people I was doing it and I’d found someone I knew a couple of days ago who said she’d walk with me. I was going ahead with it.

When I got to the casino, I could see the top of kunanyi was shrouded in mist and it seemed so far away. How was I going to do this? I’ve wondered this every time I’ve walked along Sandy Bay Road and looked up there. How is this possible?

I’m walking up there???

The reported temperature on the summit was “feels like minus three”. I packed a jacket and gloves in my gear bag, which the bus takes to the top so the participants don’t have to carry stuff they don’t need on the walk (or run).

The walk started at 7am, after a warm-up and briefing. I have no idea how many walkers there were but there were a lot and I was in the middle of a huge pack of people trying to make their way as quickly and efficiently as is possible for a huge pack of people to get through a not-very-wide timing arch. It was happening. I was doing it.

Getting ready to go

I caught up with my friend along Sandy Bay Road and we kept up a steady pace as we made our way to Davey Street. I felt a bit (not) sorry for the cars who hadn’t gotten to the Southern Outlet before it closed and were banking up along the road. I have no idea what happens in these situations; whether they let people through when there are gaps in the packs or if the cars just have to stay there until the roads reopen.

The walk was just as I remembered it from two months ago but without the cars and the fear that I could be run off the road at any time by a driver who wasn’t paying attention. This was definitely the way to do it! Allowing for the congestion at the start, which slows things down a bit, my revised goal was to get to the turnoff to kunanyi in one hour 45. We did the 9.7 km in one hour 48, leaving two hours 52 to do the final 11.4 km. We were both confident of making it, but the hill was the unknown. I knew I could easily walk 11 km in three hours. On the flat. But the lack of hill training was scaring me.

On the run photo of reaching the turn-off

There was only one way to find out!

Not far up the road, we were informed we’d passed the half-way point, and soon came to a 10km sign. I initially thought it meant we’d walked 10 km, which made no sense if we’d already passed half-way, but my friend pointed out that this was actually 10 km to go. Ohhhhh. I’m not at my brightest in the morning. We were walking through the mist we could see from the bottom and it kept it very cool and was nice conditions for walking in.

I was grateful for the bathrooms at the Springs because I needed a break and told my friend to keep going rather than wait and I’d catch her up because her pace was a bit slower than mine. I power marched up the hill to catch her. She’d said a couple of times that if I wanted to go on ahead to go because she was slower. I felt bad leaving but she said she didn’t mind and I hadn’t actually factored doing this with anyone else when I was planning, so I said if that was okay I’d see her at the top. And continued my power march.

Brief photo stop

Six km to go and it was nearly 10.00. Three hours in, one hour 40 to go. At my normal pace, I would easily do six km in an hour. On the flat. For some reason, my lack-of-sleep addled brain thought that this meant I should be able to cover a kilometre in six minutes and I was expecting the five km sign in six minutes. I was very put out when it took just over ten. I finally clicked to the actual rate I was walking and set myself a goal of the final five km 50 minutes.  Every time I saw one of the red signs I was a little bit more relieved. The mist had gone in one spot and we were walking in bright sunshine for a brief period, but that was short-lived and the rest of the ascent was in mist. Much better for walking.

The mist and the not-mist

A brief sunny spell before the mist again

I was a bit horrified at thinking I was nearly there, and then seeing the last big turn in the road to the pinnacle and OMG people walking up there!

Finally, there was one km to go and the end was in sight. I got a bit muddled as to where the finish line was and I was trying to take photos as well as look glamorous for the race photographer and I’m sure the photo of me crossing the line will be me trying to work out why my video wasn’t working. Ha!

It was great crossing the finish line with all the people standing there cheering and, because the race bibs have your name on them, they’re calling out encouragement especially for you! What a way to end. I had the biggest smile on my face and was so happy to have made it to the top. I didn’t feel like I was going to collapse in a heap like I’d expected! I felt like it had been a nice, somewhat more strenuous but not impossibly so, walk than some of my usual Sunday walks. It certainly hadn’t justified the fear I’d felt before the event. My final time was four hours, two minutes, which, if you subtract the toilet break, would have been under than four hours.

Thank you, unknown person, for taking my photo

I never thought I would do it in that time and I have a niggling thought that maybe, just maybe, I might want to go back and do it again next year so I can break the four hours.

I have 12 months to talk myself out of it!

On the way back down on the bus with my friend, who also made it in the time limit, yay!, we commented on how it seemed so unreal that we had walked up there. Back at the casino, looking up where we had been, it was like it had never happened.

I suspect my legs will tell a different story tomorrow.