Madder MadaTraining...

Ahoy chaps

You're (we're) all fucking lazy (all being the 4 people that read this blog I think :D).

I've pretty much finished my stuff in Madagascar now, I'm chilling out for a couple of days before flying back home. After the last bout of trekking I entered a rather lazy Christmas week comprising of travelling to a beautiful island in the North East of Madagascar (google Ile Sainte Marie or wait for facebook photos if you're interested) where Fickling and her frog-friends were too lazy to do any exercise. I did undertake to cycle three quarters of the length of the island and back (roughly 20-25 miles each way) in one day while they rented motorbikes, but fell foul of a few problems, most notably that the ratchet was broken on my bike such that by the time I got to the end of the island the pedals didn't turn the wheels round, the 'road' would give most mountain bikes a good hiding it was so rocky, whereas my bike had no suspension and pretty much no brakes, and we arrived at the other end of the island with an hour and a half of daylight left (me with no lights) so I ended up having to settle for cycling the 20ish miles there and getting a lift back. Other than this the majority of my training was sweating profusely in the 35°C or more heat on the island and eating fucking nice food.


Once back I bid farewell to Fickling (after an epic 4 plate buffet lunch for 3 quid) and toddled off on my own for some hard trekking in the rainforest. This is how it panned out:

Day 1 - Arrive in Fianar after an overnight bus journey (i.e. no sleep) and head out to Ranomafana national park. Arrive at Ranomafana, walk 7km uphill in flip flops then do a é hour circuit of the rainforest and walk back (roughly ' hours, a warm up walk :) ).
Day 2 - Proper day in Ranomafana. 7 hours of walking but pretty broken up so not really too hard, although quite steep. Meet my guide for the 2/3 day trek starting the next day. Go to bed at 9pm on New Year's Eve (boooo).
Day 3 - New Year's Day. Leave at 5:30 am and begin hike from Ranomafana to Andrambovato. Arrive at first village, where we're supposed to spend the night, at 11:30am. Because I am not a wuss I point out that we are not stopping and should keep going, Especially once the guide points out the final destination in the distance. We end up doing the whole trek in one day, arriving at 18:30 in the evening, at which point my guide tells me we've done 72km in a day. Pretty chuffed, especially as I was carrying my own pack (12-14kg probably) and it wasn't nice flat roads but proper trails with river crossings etc. Also no other tourist has ever done it in one day, apparently (I have been impossibly smug for several days about that).
Day 4 - VERY gentle 6 hours of walking around the village, legs were absolutely KO'ed.
Day 5 - 25km hike to Sahambavy to get a bus back to Fianar.

So, that's my training (and haha look what I've been doing this winter :P), like before it's pretty good for my legs but I can feel my heart and lungs not really getting a proper work out, gonna need to do some 80' when I get back to Cam on Sat...