Oxfam Trailwalker 2008

This year's trailwalker has been and gone, yet I still have found that fourth team certificate elusive. This year's trail was the hardest I've been on. It took my team, the Fenner Rabbits, 23 hrs and 43 mins to traverse the rocky paths twisting through the thick forests of northern Sydney.

Fenner Rabbits team 338: Dave Sprinkle, Ben Williams, Phillip Gatt, Phil Byron

Unfortunatey a team member had to drop out at checkpoint five due to cramps. Not just the annoying cramps that plague the tired football player. Oh no, these cramps clutch at the muscles with the vice like grip of child and his lollies. Its not so much that every step is painful - its just that with every step your leg collapses making it impossible to walk. Still - at least we weren't wearing skins...

The team and Support crew: Andi Halliday and Yan Zhao (Support - Liz not shown), Dave, Ben and Phil (team mates)

The day of the even dawned bright and sunny, it was a bit chilly to begin with but a fast walk warmed us quickly. At the start we could not believe how many competitors were wearing skins - for those who do not know they have next to no effect upon competitors of our level. One trooper was not only wearing skins top and bottom, but refused to be polite enough to wear anything else. So snug fitting, just the bulges I wanted to observe at 6:30am. We now had a mission destroy team 070.

Its like a mutilated baby, you don't want to look but you just can't help yourself

The event got underway and we trekked through the picturesque scenes shown below. The trail was thin, steep and littered with organic tripping matter. Running was an option but we decided early on it wouldn't be worth the danger to our ankles. Anyway, we were already ahead of 'Mr Skins' and team 070. We amused ourselves frequent traffic reports (we crossed the Newcastle Freeway a few times), grotesque renditions of American Pie, Joy to the World, and any other song we knew more than the chorus to. Not only that, we were frequently reminded of Man's ability to generate electricity.We were joined by support crew member Yan at checkpoint two, a marathon runner from Singapore who wanted to see some Australian forest and we taught him 'A home among the Gum trees".

Yan and Ben in a fuzzy photo. Yan did 50 kms of the trail with us!

Bad jokes came out *moo* after the 50 km mark but fortunately not many can be remembered. At one point we broke free from the oppressive bush to be greeted by some lovely people who offered us cordial and lollies.

These are the best people ever! If all inhabitants of Earth modelled their behaviour on this family their would be no hate, prejudice or crime. I like these people.

We finally arrived at the finsh line just after the sun had come up, in which we returned to our base camp (Sprinkle's house), slept and then ate breakfast/lunch of fish and chips at Dee Why Beach. Injuries suffered to the team include blisters, blisters and more blisters, largely swollen knees, ligament soreness and muscular fatigue. However it was another great year - lets see if I'm keen again in 12 months.