Something I learned over the course of the whole Kilimanjaro journey is how much I am driven by accomplishing something, ticking boxes or reaching a goal. I knew that before, but it has never been so obvious as it is right now. Winter is coming and so the days will be shorter and colder and weather conditions in the mountains will be even less predictable. Knowing that and combining it with the recommendation from our guides, Mike and Christine, that we should simply walk as much as we can and aim for long hours rather than a lot of altitude gain, triggered a new November goal for me. I will walk from Frankfurt (where our new offices will be) to Aschaffenburg at the riverbanks of the Main. In total that’s a distance of over 60km and the individual legs of the hike can be easily reached via public transport from where I live.

With that idea in mind, I started walking on the weekend and made it to a total of 30km already! And it is so satisfying to mark the path I already walked on a map.

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A big thank you goes to my husband, Christopher, who always picked me up or dropped me off and followed me virtually to know where I was at the moment. On Saturday he joined me for the hike in beautiful weather conditions and we enjoyed pursuing our common hobby of Geocaching together, something I put aside a bit over the past months in order to focus on my training. I promise to be back in the game in 2019! And when I log the Geocache on top of Kilimanjaro, of course.

My legs were surprisingly sore yesterday evening, even though I was only walking in flat terrain. Am I already transformed into a mountain goat who finds it less strenuous to walk up- and downhill???