Life, lessons and laughs rolled on like a tumbleweed. A friendship formed through the computer screen.
The noise from the streets told me life was going on but for me it seemed to stop at this lounge. Get up. My dream was over, smashed into splinters earlier that morning. Why bother?
Preserved in my mind is the moment my friend blind-sided me with a question and I was too catatonic from fear to answer.
It was like watching the most extraordinary ballerina in full flight, her stage the Andean mountains, back-dropped with the white snow caps of the Cordillera Blanca, Peru.
The Incas didn’t have a written means of communication so became expert runners, passing verbal messages across huge distances Kirrily Dear re-traced some of these ancient footsteps.
During late 2016 I had been developing my training plan for my 1300km / 19 day run across NSW and the primary focus of that plan was to work on my mindset; to challenge my mental boundaries, to extend them and reshape them. This became the catalyst for seeking out and eventually participating in the Andes Challenge, Peru.
I could barely make the shape of the roof of our refuge below us. We had started our climb during the night and the circle of mountains around us still wore heavily its cloak of darkness. Its gracious, silent peaks bearing witness to our labour. Each step was a lung-burning triumph as the trail twisted its way up through the morena.
