Liz Christie Alive: Lofty oh Lofty!!

Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Lofty oh Lofty!!

The day I started thinking about Lofty

After almost a year of procrastination, I finally did it!! Last Sunday, I finally made it up the mountain to the Mt. Lofty summit!

The idea came to mind in April last year. My mate Claire had just done it for the first time and it was quickly becoming ‘THE’ thing to do in Radelaide. She was telling me all about her severe case of DOMS as we drove to TTP to meet Michelle Bridges and Commando Steve Willis, this was also the day I reached my 10kg weight loss goal and I was starting to feel really good about myself. After being put through our paces by Mish and the sexy beast (you all know who I’m talking about!), there was the standard Q&A time for the public. A sweet young child asked, “Have you done Lofty? My best time is fifty five minutes.” I remember Commando asking “what is Lofty?” and Mish replying, “oh it’s like ‘THE’ thing to do here in Adelaide apparently”… Somehow, having my good mate and fitness idols talk about it, on the same day made me determined to give it a go.

Then came ten months of excuses… “I’m too unfit”, “I’m in too much pain from yesterday’s training session”, “I don’t have enough time”, “it’ll be too busy”…yep… ten months of excuses whizzed by and I still hadn’t done it…So last weekend, I decided that I had to do it. No more excuses, just JFDI and put a big tick next to “Climb Mt. Lofty”. I gathered another good mate and gym buddy, Kat to do it with me…So we set off, a nice cool Sunday morning fighting the masses for a car park and then setting off up the mountain. It was a 3.8km trek…UP… the summit which rises 710m above sea level.

So we got a great park and started walking…I was quite nervous, but really excited at the same time! It was finally happening, and in such a great location, with Katty by my side. At the first steep bit I wondered what on earth I had gotten myself into…crap! My heart rate had hit 170bpm pretty quickly! But there was no turning back, I had started, I was damn well going to finish! There were some nice gentle parts and then some real shockers where it took all my mental and physical strength to keep myself on my feet and moving up. The scenery was stunning and I soon got into a rhythm, just one foot in front of the other, and crazily I actually loved it! I didn’t want it to end! I felt so alive, the cool wind and drops of rain…the dirt and gravel under foot, hundreds of other locals running and walking up and down, it was just great, so relaxing and just what I needed! Surely this is how Sunday mornings should be spent!!

Getting pretty steep!

Anyway, the final stretch was tough…yep gross, horrendous, disgusting and I almost let the negative thoughts back in… “I can’t do this, it’s too hard,” but I quickly realised what was about to happen, reversed it and told myself to “believe I could”… and I did! Katty and I made it to the summit within fifty five minutes! Under an hour, we were stoked! The views were amazing. At the top, it occurred to me that I had never seen Adelaide from a look out point before. I mean, I’ve looked out over cities like, London, Rome, Florence, Iguazu, Queenstown and many more, but never my own city. It was a stunning view, and nice to stop, sit and stretch a bit before heading back down. Well it is safe to say that going back down was not necessarily easier. It took a lot of muscles working hard to keep us upright and not topple over…that’s how steep some parts were! But it was fun, and we ended up running part way down, almost got run over by cyclist crossing the road and then it started to rain…oh well I thought, better on our way down, than on the way up. Seeings we were chatting the whole way down (probably because we could actually breathe) we reached the bottom before we knew it. I actually could not believe I had done it, like seriously! It was a huge tick and fitness goal smashed for me! Next time, we smash under the fifty minute zone!