Welcome to the elephant diaries

"I'lllll doooooo iiiiiiit" - seven letters in all yet the longest three words ever to leave my mouth.  It was like the world went in to slow motion, I had no control over any of my bodily functions and all I could hear was the sound of my own voice agreeing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.  Yes. That Kilimanjaro.  The highest peak in Africa.  The tallest free standing mountain in the world.  That Kilimanjaro.

Once the hot sweats had died down, the world had started to move at normal speed again and feeling came back to my limbs I spent the next few hours downing caffeine like it was going out of fashion and coming up with as many excuses as I could to get out of it.  Whilst I am not the worlds un-fittest person I am certainly not the fittest.  I have managed to do the odd 5k here and there and to be fair have been working on improving my fitness levels for a few years now.  So the more I let it sink in, the more I thought "why not?".  Thousands of people have climbed it so why not me?

So here I am, about to embark on an epic adventure.  About to shock my body into getting itself fit and strong.  About to challenge my brain to stay positive and overcome fear.  About to subject my heart to every emotion under the sun and about to treat my soul to the most amazing roller coaster of my life.

I have been thinking about blogging for a while now but just didn't know what on earth I had to talk about that people may be interested in.  I've set up the elephant diaries to document my training, fear, diet, panic, planning, shopping, blisters etc etc with you.  I hope you enjoy following my progress and learning more about what it takes to get from your couch to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.