Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Mobile Workflow

After a bit of fine-tuning (and a bit of buying and selling on eBay) I think I now have my mobile computing kit all sorted out for the long walk starting in a couple of months.

While the Clié PEG-UX50 I'd procured for the purpose was a lovely litte PDA, the fact that it only had a Memory Stick slot restricted my choice of camera somewhat to.. well, Sony or Sony. While I was going to take a Sony camcorder with a MS slot and reasonable stills performance this wasn't a problem, but test-driving this arrangement more or less disabused me of the notion and I exchanged the camcorder (selling on eBay and adding a leeetle bit of cash) for the D70. Of course, the D70 takes Compact Flash cards..

So it was time to replace the PDA. The PEG-NZ90 cost me less than I sold the UX50 for (hurrah!) on eBay, is extremely rugged and has this slot on the bottom which Sony put there for a wi-fi card. As it's actually a standard Compact Flash card, it didn't take long for people to come up with a third-party device driver which lets it mount CF cards inserted in that slot. This takes care of getting the pictures off the camera. It also has removable batteries, meaning that I can carry a spare or two for when I go several days without hitting a power point.

Images can be commented on and posted to Flickr and onto my various blogs via email (through the Bluetooth interface on the NZ90). While my Sony-Ericsson 3G phone is shiny and has a colour screen, it also has absolutely diabolical range and terrible RF performance. It also has appalling battery life. Orange didn't seem terribly interested when I asked them if there was anything that can be done about this, so it's back to the good old Nokia. It does GPRS rather than 3G, but as the Orange 3G network is not yet terribly extensive outside major cities that isn't much of a worry. As anyone will know who's ever owned one, the 6x10 series of Nokias have absolutely fantastic battery life, and given that I have a spare battery already I don't think I'll need to charge the thing more than about once ever 10-12 days.

The last question is whether I'm going to actually take the D70 with me or the lighter but not so nice to operate Coolpix 8700. They both have their pros and cons, but one major advantage of the D70 is that DSLR batteries last for yonks while those on cameras like the 8700, well, don't. One is heavier, but the other is slower and less sensitive. One is lighter, but the other will go for the best part of a week without running flat. I'll probably just toss a coin three days before I leave...

Fitness

With 2.5 months to go before the start of the End to End, I'm finding myself starting to think seriously about the fitness level it requires. As I'm just recovering from a marathon I'm pretty fit in general - I can, after all, run 42km in one go and take under four hours to do it. My legs are pretty muscly and I've got a lot less excess body fat than I did a year ago. In general, therefore, I'm in good shape both from the cardiovascular and the endurance point of view.

Walking 35-40km a day, on the other hand, is a different thing to running a long distance in a few hours, especially given that it's going to involve carrying about 20kg of rucksack and that it's going to be happening day in, day out for a couple of months. The good news is that I can walk until my feet fall off. The bad news is that doing this for more than a couple of days at a time is uncharted territory as far as I'm concerned.

The conventional wisdom from End-to-Enders who've gone before me is that after the first couple of weeks your body gets used to pounding along incessantly, but the trick is to be able to get through those first couple of weeks. If you're still feeling sore every day after a month, you're much less likely to finish than if you started in good shape. So what I'm finding myself wondering is how I'm going to be sure to get through those first couple of weeks relatively unscathed. An added complication is that I want to keep running in at least some form. So how to balance this? I've also got a fairly busy schedule between now and 14th August, so I can't just block a week out in my diary and go and walk the South Downs Way.

I think the answer lies in a combination of the sort of long-distance running training which I've been doing for the last nine months and long walks carrying heavy loads. It might even include a bit of running while carrying a lighter load for good measure. Mixing some hills into my regular runs should help prepare for the first couple of weeks along the famously undulating South West Coast Path, and a couple of two and three-day walks towards the end of July should make sure I'm in good nick for when the real thing starts. At least, I hope that it'll make sure.

In the meantime, if you're in the vague vicinity of London and fancy a long day walk (or even a two-dayer over a weekend) sometime, drop me a line. "Long" in this context means 30-40km (20-25 miles in old money).