First Sinhagad Trek

Its now been a month and half since I started personal training, and so far it has been a wonderful experience. Before starting the sessions, I'd started having a pain in my neck from all the sitting in front of a computer. Also, had knee pain from an old injury. Actually the injury was in my left knee, which had recovered. But to compensate, I'd gotten used to stressing the right knee, and now the right knee was causing problems. The weight wasn't helping the knee. I also remember my back pain...once I got into bed, turning around was a big affair. It really hurt to turn, the sleep quality was bad - I was getting up 4-5 times at night. During the first session itself, my trainer assessed all the pain areas, and before starting any exercise, he addressed the pain. Gradually, with the stretching and the strengthening, the pain started to reduce and I started feeling more energetic. Pain is like leaking energy - it just drains the energy out of us. Once the pain stopped, I realized how much more energy I started to have. We could then concentrate on the strength training. Focus was on core strength, hands and legs. I started getting stronger..

One day, within a month of training, he suggested we go and trek up Sinhagad. I didn't really feel ready, but decided to go ahead with the plan. And we made a plan to go on a Saturday afternoon. He kept the atmosphere light, no pressure - and we started. Our goal that day was to just trek up, not check how long it took us to get there. We stopped at multiple times on the way, but stopped before feeling completely drained. So there was never a need to sit down. After 2 hours and 40 minutes, we reached all the way up. I think even after I reached up, there was still disbelief that I actually climbed all the way up. That was on Feb 10th 2018.

To me, that was a big achievement. Esp given that just the Dec before, we had an office party at our Sinhagad farmhouse. We had some guests who were visiting from US, Israel etc. So the plan was to take them on Sinhagad by car, and then drive down and have dinner at the farmhouse. But someone had told me that even after going by car, there was still a lot of walking/climbing that needed to be done. And I didn’t have the confidence to even walk that much, so I didn’t even go by car! And I just waited for everyone at the farmhouse.

So go to from this state in Dec to actually climbing up Sinhagad was indeed a wonderful and great achievement for me. And if I can do it, anyone can!!