I am going for my first training hike this weekend. It's been a while since I've been out bush. Damn achillies. We are doing the Olinda Valley walk which is graded med-hard and a good 3 hours - a nice warm up choice, I think. It's a Trailwalker & Kokoda training hike and hopefully there will be about eight or nine of us.

I am a little worried about my achillies as it's still tender and the early part of the hill is straight up, which is never great for my tight calves and achillies. I'll just have to make sure I'm plenty warmed up before starting out and give it a good stretch as needed.

I can't keep waiting and waiting for it to be perfectly healed. I think i have to just test it a little, recover and test it again. Sometimes I think I was over-optimisitc when I committed to TW and Kokoda.

IWDA is having a lunch time presentation next week with a special guest talking first hand about the direct impact climate change has had on her small island in PNG. Should be really interesting and I hope some of the other trekkers are attending so we can meet.