It’s been great for us to read together the fitness preparations of (then) kids like Jordan Romero and Alyssa Azar achieving their goals.  Hearing their accounts of appreciating the amounts of training they did, helps the kids to stay motivated when they have to get up early on a Sunday to beat the heat climbing a mountain 🙂

Which is what we did this Sunday to climb Mt Cooroora, in Pomona.  Only 439m, but straight up, so a very steep climb. It’s one of our favorite climbs, requiring full concentration whether going up or down to scramble over big rocks, and the chains to help balance and hoist give you an upper body workout too! The views are spectacular the whole way up, and especially at the summit 🙂

We will probably include Cooroora many times over the next few months as we crank up our training.  Kathmandu sits at 1400m, Basi Sahar where our Annapurna trek starts is around 760m. So living at sea level and climbing to 439m doesn’t even come near to where we start our trek, so can’t help us with our altitude training…but the plan is to at least improve our cardio and physical fitness…it took us (well me…the kids were way ahead constantly waiting for me) 56 mins from bottom to summit.  So the goal is to try and do it faster next time.

Australian Curriculum Links

I love the Health and Physical Ed Curriculum, it is soooo good covering so many ways to help kids have a sense of well-being.  Unfortunately, often there is no time in school to cover these…the little time HPE receives is often competition based and can really put off so many kids from enjoying physical activity for the sake of well being.

Our training over the next 5 months will encompass so many of the HPE outcomes. One thing that really stood out to me climbing this mountain is the support we give each other as a family and team, we encourage the slow one (me!), knowing it’s the trying and finishing, no matter how fast or slow, and each one of us can feel comfortable in our team knowing we are always doing our personal best, and that ‘best’ is encouraged with a ‘well done’ by all team members, but here’s the year 5/6 outcome for this anyway:

discussing the importance of social support and a sense of belonging in promoting mental health and wellbeing

Yeah we do this yr 5/6 outcome all the time…

Participate in physical activities designed to enhance fitness, and discuss the impact regular participation can have on health and wellbeing

Lee, the coach of the family is initially setting our training activities, but the kids will be ticking off this yr 7/8 outcome as they become more involved in setting their weekly activities to build up to their trek fitness goal :

designing and monitoring a personal fitness plan that proposes realistic strategies for maintaining fitness, health and wellbeing

I reckon we will have covered every HPE outcome as we prepare for our adventure by the end of the 5 months 🙂