The Challenges Ahead!
Firstly, to recap - the goals are:
$2000 in donations
120kms to walk
20 hours to do it across the five day period
80 litres or less of water usage a day
Seems simple? Yes and no. The rules are firm that I must still continue my day to day business and commitments. After all, the people I am doing this for have to do the same right? So I have some planning to do to work it all out. Before we knock into the challenges, please understand my own rules of engagement and principles for the challenge:
- Everything must be incorporated into the spirit of living/embodying the struggle of water access that I'm trying to raise awareness to
- As such, whatever I do must have to be sustainable and viable and must pass the "pub test"
So I wont be allowing myself to just lose sleep for a week to fit the time in, that's not sustainable. I wont just call in sick for work for a week - that's not in the spirit of the challenge. It has to be fair, reasonable and honest.
Health and Wellbeing:
I will have to do some pretty handy scheduling to ensure I still maintain my own physical and mental health, keeping me at top performance for home and work. I want to keep the routes spontaneous, but accessible, to ensure I stay engaged. The pace figures set up around 6 kilometres per hour, which is sustainable for me from prior challenges. I have a bonus challenge - but that's for another post. I will aim for 4L of water intake per day, 3-5 meals per day and will make sure I still maintain cleanliness as usual.
Growing Time
As I mentioned above, time commitments make this challenge very tricky. I have 120 hours across the five days. Immediately I lose 30-40 hours for sleep. Another 40 - 50 for work. Another 20 for the goal itself. So you can see, I only really have 10 hours to play with - that's eating, doing chores, spending time with family, spending time looking after my own mental health, and all the like. Making this more complicated - I have committed to a camping trip with the family on the 4th, taking away critical time to get this challenge over the line. The easiest way is going to be to do two things at once wherever possible - but good luck walking 6kmph with a 3 year old. I'm confident I've got a good solution for this - time will tell.
The Water Conundrum
This one may prove tricky as well. I'm guilty of a long shower like everyone else! Some mornings you just want to take it slow. I inhale coffee, I love a good beer and you use water for cooking and lets not even get started on cleaning. Basic math is I have 80L per day to spend. I NEED to intake 4L to replace what I am losing and just generally be healthy. Showers run around 9L a minute, taps run around 5L a minute, each load of washing will be about 50L on average and each set of dishes will be around 15L per cycle - don't forget a toilet flush is a quick way to lose 11L. So my day should look something like:
3 minute shower 27L
Healthy intake 4L
Toilet breaks: 22-33L
Cooking/Cleaning usage: 24-35L
Water usage will be TIGHT.
So these are the big three. Ill address how I am making them work in the near future - stay tuned and thanks for reading!
Get the dogs!