Status:PreparationTrekkingChilling

Walking from Johannesburg to Cape Town

Hi, my name is Gregory Gerhardt. I work for Drupal agency Amazee Labs. After three years of employment we get one month off to free our mind and do something really extreme. My project? I'm walking from Johannesburg to Cape Town. See my route

28
Feb
2012

Trekking Equipment (2): Shoe inserts

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Getting the right shoes was my first concern. Making sure that my foot gets the perfect mattress to rest and roll my second. René recommended Switzerland's first address for ambitious runners and sports professionals: NUMO Systems in Dietikon, Zurich. Based on a clinical testing routine the NUMO team defined the target arch support and shaped it 3D. After a few weeks the inflammation of my right achilles' heel disappeared. And that's how my high-rech rubber looks after approx. 1000 km of training.

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24
Feb
2012

Trekking Equipment (1): Shoes

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This is the first post in a series about my equipment and the considerations. Let's start with one of the key articles, the shoes. The advice that I received unanimously in sports and outdoor shops: "Wear some trekking boots to protect your ankles from twisting". "Get Goretex boots to stay dry when it rains." And that's what I did, - at first. After some extensive hikes with my La Sportive boots I realized that (especially after a few hours in the sun) the internal humidity would be too high to keep my feet dry and resistive to blisters.

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20
Feb
2012

One month to go

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While the big adventure is approaching inescapably, training pressure has increased: Only one more month before I stop and go into pre-chill mode. The daily routine looks about like this: 1) Get up at 06.00 and eat myself through more food than ever before. I got to 78kg so far (from 75 kg); another two kilos I want to add by mid March. 2) Work throughout the day and enjoy the evenings with my family.

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28
Jan
2012

Death March

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How nice. While I'm battling to squeeze my training sessions into daily work and family life, my friends haven't been shy to increase the challenge with dark-humoured nicknames ("old man" ranking high), survival-probability calculations, sketching of failure scenarios and the provision of unsupportive literature. The latest arrived tonight: Todesmarsch (Death March) by Stephen King (aka Richard Bachman). Guys, I love you too.
 

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25
Jan
2012

La Grande Bouffe

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If you expected to read more sports on this blog, don't worry. It's just a question of time. If you expected to read about a healthy lifestyle, there's more bad news: Let me follow up on an amazingly ugly part of my project: BEEFING-UP. Like I wrote in this post I'm trying to put on an additional 6 kilograms of fat as energy reserve, plus some muscles. It's more difficult than I thought. Despite constant eating mode I only managed to put on 2 kilograms of fat within one month (from 75 to 77 kilograms) - hardly doing any sports.

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From Johannesburg to Cape Town

On the left you can see my route through South Africa. The pins depict the milestones on the fastest possible way from Johannesburg (top right) to Cape Town (bottom left). Milestones will be: Johannesburg, Wagterskop, Parys, Viljoenskron, Bothaville, Hoopstad, Hertzogville, Boshof, Kimberley, Hopetown, Strydenburg, Britstown, Vosburg, Pampoenpoort, Loxton, Fraserburg, Sutherland, Inverdoorn Game Reserve, Ceres, Wellington, Cape Town.