A black toe and a tale of woe

Starting our beach hike at Marina Walk

While charging around barefoot, early on Friday morning, I closed a door on my little toe.  The expletive that followed woke up my husband who was trying to have a lie-in; I cursed myself for being so stupid, while hobbling round in pain for the rest of the day.  I thought it might prevent me from doing the next Gulf for Good training session.

The day before, with great trepidation, I went to the gym for the first time in over 15 years.  Lovely Ann Harrington at Emirates Golf Club offered to devise a training programme to prepare me for going up and down the steep inclines on my trek in Lebanon.  It was a really good session and I left full of confidence as I wasn’t quite as pathetically unfit as I thought I was (above average fitness said Ann).  Therefore I was quite looking forward to the stair climb that G4G had organised and if I tell you that I always played goal keeper in netball and hockey at school to get out of overly exerting myself, you’ll understand what an unusual state of affairs this was.

At the top of 55 floors - that's a grimace not a smile!

Saturday dawned and thankfully, although my toe was a lovely shade of deep blue, I managed to get my boot on without hitting the roof.  Quite a large group met at the Marriot Dubai Harbour Hotel and after dodging the Sufouh traffic we walked to the beach, along to the Sheraton and back again.  Then we went into the Marriot to climb the stairs (drum roll) to the 55th floor!  Everyone was encouraged to go at their own pace and I kept up with the front group until the 20th floor but gasping for oxygen, boiling hot, with lungs on fire I slowed down a lot to plod up to the top.  I found it really hard and felt sick and dizzy from going round and round.  My toe was probably the only thing that didn’t hurt!  The nice thing about this training is that everyone offers encouragment to each other and I did feel a sense of achievement getting to the top.   It would’ve been great if we’d been able to follow Jo’s suggestion that we slide back down the bannisters. P says we will do a stair climb again as it is really good preparation.  I hope she forgets.

Here’s another thing that started as a tale of woe.  The Hotshots team decided to do a parachute jump for charity last year and started fundraising.  Their main sponsor went bust, one of the team got DVT, the airport was closed for safety reasons (yikes!), the original charity closed and then Charlotte from Hotshots broke her foot.  At this point she decided that kind donors would understand if they didn’t actually jump but donate the funds to a worthy cause anyway – and they chose to support this challenge.   I visited the studio to pick up a fantastic contribution and glean a few photography tips for my trek from the experts.  Massive thanks Hotshots for choosing to help vulnerable children in Lebanon; a happy ending.

There are several ways you can help support this trek (see Give your support and Gold for Good pages on this site).   Have you ever done a stair climb and have you any tips (as I’m sure P won’t forget)?  Please write your comments in the box below.