I promised I'd come back and fill you in - so here I am!

My friends and I headed off about 0830 yesterday morning. By the time we got there I was so stiff and sore in my legs (I drove)! It was a wee difficult to get moving plus it was super cold there. I was wearing a singlet, short sleeve shirt, rugby top, gortex jacket, baseball cap, and gloves and I was STILL cold!!!! I contemplated adding an extra shirt but wanted to keep it in the car in case we got rained on. It rained most of the trip down and the clouds were bad! We headed off and walked the short (about a Km?) to the quarantine station and by that time I was slightly warmer. We spent far too long walking around there (considering there was little information available and next to no buildings were open). But we found out some interesting things along the way and then headed off for the Fort. I estimated it was about 6Km to the Fort... and it probably was from the car park... the second car park. It's about 1.5Km from where we parked to the second car park so we probably walked about 7Km I guess...

I remember the walk from last year as being somewhat easy. This year it was a struggle at times because my legs were so stiff. Last year the weather was gorgeous. This year it was about 9 degrees when we arrived and wouldn't have climbed much higher than that throughout the day. I actually only took my gortex off on a couple of occassions (although I did get sweaty and had to change my shirt when I got back to the car!). One of the girls had trained with D the day before and done a million squats so was struggling to walk anyway (I will kill him when I see him! He knew we were going hiking!) but she really struggled with any steps or inclines. I was ok just slow because of stiffness. And I was getting out of breath easily - damn chest infection! But we took it easy and took a load of photo's along the way. 300 to be precise! I had my SLR and my friend took my pocket camera... so we were both snapping away!

We arrived at the park at 1030. Set off about 1040. We arrived at the tip of the park (Fort Nepean) about 1330. Considering the duration we spent at the wuarantine station and other stops along the way for photo's, I don't think we did too bad for time. We had a brief lunch break at the Fort before looking around down there, taking more photo's, and then me convincing the girls we WERE doing the 150 stairs. If you don't know what I'm talking about... it's 150 stairs down to the beach (except you can't access the beach). It was were the Engine House was during the Fort's occupancy. It is a STEEP gradient but the stairs aren't high, they are fairly shallow. During the operational stages of the Fort, it was the only way down to that area. I wanted to do them last time but my friend piked. This time I wasn't taking no for an answer so poor C had to suck it up and deal with her pain. I have photo's of me doing the climb. Surprisingly it didn't burn as much as I anticipated but I did get puffed and tired. I could have easily done another 150 though!!! Mind you, had the girls not been so CHICKEN, I would have liked to have done them a couple of times! Even dropped my bag and (had I been wearing gym pants instead of my jeans) turned it into a PT routine! BUT, the rain clouds were looming (and had been threatening us all day!) and we wanted to avoid being rained on. Plus we knew it was a long walk back!

We opted to take the road back down as C was really hurting and we figured it would be easier on her legs. We did take a detour via the beach where that PM went missing. We spent ages there until the rain clouds came chasing us again! Then we hightailed it out of there! Despite all the rain on the way and out at sea, we only got a slight drizzle on the way back and that was in the last couple of Km.

In total, I estimated we did about 15Km return. At times I was sore in the hip but held up well. I did cramp on the way home but I figure that was just being in the car. We did a small stretch session before we got in the car to come home. Some guys parked down from us were watching like we were oddballs! We got back to the car and started stripping off our jackets and shirts (down to singlets) and putting on fresh shirts... then started stretching in the car park! all that was missing was the pushups and situps!

This morning I woke with a sore left glute (as always) and did some major work with my nobbly ball. And stretched. My quads are super tight - more so in my left. I've been massively tired all day and felt the urge to nap this afternoon. But mostly my body has been good! Some minor stiffness in my legs and a slight sore shoulder from my pack (I gather). But after dinner tonight I jumped on my treadmill and did 25 minutes. My heart rate monitor has crapped itself so I have no idea about how many calories I'm burning at the moment... but I'm feeling good back and hip wise. Now to shrink my tummy and really get control of my diet!

Thoroughly enjoyed yesterday and am looking forward to doing Wilson's Prom later in the year!!!

If anyone wants to see any of the 300 photo's (well, I didn't put quiet that many up because FB went haywire on me!), PM me and I'll add you on FB (I have strict security settings).

MG