Trekking Annapurna, Nepal

After having booked a hiking trip to Nepal in my early 20s, I began to panic. I had done some light hiking in the past, but never anything like the hard full-day trekking I had just signed up for. I was concerned that my fitness wasn’t going to hold up. Would I spend my days gasping for air at high altitude desperately trying to keep up with a group of experienced mountaineers? And what if I couldn’t keep up? Would they abandon me?

I was doing short runs regularly and increased these to 20 minutes. I also added some cycling to the mix and started to spend my weekends hiking. I look back at my training now and it doesn’t seem anywhere near enough, but amazingly, it worked. I got to Nepal and my body withstood the abuse. The mountains were spectacular. My trekking group was energetic and feeling inspired by the scenery, progressed up the mountain well ahead of schedule. Even so, my travel partner and I raced ahead. Perhaps a little too fast. By the end of day three he had collapsed and I was having nosebleeds and altitude headaches straight from hell. We had felt strong but needed to slow down to let our bodies adjust to the altitude. When dysentery hit, I felt sick and depleted. I was in pain. Still, I could keep going, albeit more slowly now. By the time the trip was over, I was restored to full health.

I came back from Nepal a changed woman. I felt amazing — happy, strong, fit and lean — and I wanted to stay that way. I started running for 30 minutes, almost daily. It felt good. Towards the end of the year, I discovered I could skip the arduous bus ride to work, for a faster very beautiful cycle through natural reserves. I started commuting by bike. Before long even my weekends were crammed with cycling adventures. I was cycling huge distances and running fell by the wayside. But that didn’t matter, I was staying fit and while I wasn’t running, I now knew that I could run. It was still a tool I could turn to should I need a fast, easy way to get active or clear my head. And so it was when I moved to Edinburgh.

I had had a serious cycling accident, complete with concussion, slipping on metal tram tracks in crappy weather in Melbourne. Now faced with the icy Edinburgh winter, I didn’t feel inspired to hop on my bike. Without a pressing need to commute, I fell out of the habit. After a period of adjustment, inactivity and weight gain, I knew I needed to move again. So out came my sneakers. And wow, where Edinburgh had failed me as a cyclist it just blew me away as a runner. The hills, the lochs, the ocean, the old city — what a paradise. I was spoilt for choice and struggled to pick a route. Did I want to see the castle and city steps? Did I want to head towards the ocean for a vivid pink sunset? Perhaps Holyrood Park with its volcanic hills and 360 views of the city? And so my running habit was well and truly reignited.