Autor: tdewille

As you know, I like talking to people 😉 One day i was walking around the Xmas market in Wroclaw and I noticed this strange looking jar. I asked what it was and the funny Turkish guy said with a crooked smile that it’s ‚good for a man’s health’. I was curious and bought a jar. I added a spoonful to my coffee and it was excellent. The best coffee I’d ever had.
Now, there is actually a story behind this paste. It is said that Hafsa Sultan, the mother of Suleiman the Magnificent was dying of a strange disease. Desperate for a cure, she turned for help to Merkez Efendi, an Ottman scholar. Merkez prepared a therapeutic paste that cured Hafsa of her illness. To commemorate this, the mesir festival is held every year.

I don’t suffer from an incurable disease but the list of ingredients is long enough for me to try this out while i’m preparing for my long march. I don’t drink coffee anymore so I’ll probably just eat a spoonful or i’ll spread it on bread maybe? Either way, I’ll report on the effects after a month. According to one review I found, it’s supposed to have one or more of the following effects:
Mesir paste has many beneficial properties that facilitate digestion, give strength, stimulate sexual desire, increase appetite, relieve fatigue, provide immunity against poisonous animal poisons, and are believed to cure diseases such as colds, flu and flu.”

Immunity against animal poisons seems a bit unnecessary in Poland. Maybe I can do without an increased appetite… but the other properties seem very interesting indeed. Taking into account my daily dose of Tribulus terrestris, my life might get very colorful.

P.S.
A year after the Xmas market I went to another market in a small town. There was again another Turkish guy selling all sorts of things. I said I want to jars of Mesir macunu and the guy burst out laughing: „That guy knows what he wants”, he bellowed. So I think it helps with more than just hiking.

Hello

Today I didn’t have a lot of time to train (job+kids) so I only focused on raw power. To increase strength I rely on a very simple Smolov jr scheme which in its ‚pure’ form looks like this:

Week 1:

Day 1: 70%x6x6

Day 2: 75%x5x7

Day 3: 80%x4x8

Day 4: 85%x3x10

Week 2:

Day 1: 70%+2,5-5kg x6x6

Day 2: 75%+2,5-5kg x5x7

Day 3: 80%+2,5-5kg x4x8

Day 4: 85%+2,5-5kg x3x10

Week 3:

Day 1: 70%+5-10kg x6x6

Day 2: 75%+5-10kg x5x7

Day 3: 80%+5-10kg x4x8

Day 4: 85%+5-10kg x3x10

For example, in week 1 on day 1 you do 6 sets of 6 repetitions with 70% of your max bp, then on day 2 7 sets of 5 repetitions with 75% of your max bp etc.
I’ve modified this program a bit: my program extends over 16 weeks, but I only add 1kg per week. I started with 84kg and i’m in week 8 now at 91kg on day 1. This means that tomorrow i’ll do 7x5x96kg, followed by a rest day, then 8x4x101kg and finally 10x3x106kg. Eventually I want to be able to lift 1x150kg, so in theory I should need 14 more weeks (because 70% x 150kg = 105kg), but in reality this should take another year or so because Smolov doesn’t scale long term too well. It puts too much strain on the whole system so you can’t extend this forever. And it’s boring.

Now, the whole training is quite demanding, especially the last 2 days of the week. I’m fortunate to have a garage so I put on some heavy metal and off I go. I make 4-5 minute pauses between sets, which gives me a bit of time to rest (and tidy up the garage because it’s still messy). I use an alarm clock (the round black box on the bench) to let me know when it’s time for the next set.

An obvious question is: how does this help me with hiking? I’m not sure it does when I hike alone, but when I started hiking with my son, I would sometimes carry him from time to time and I found that as he was getting heavier and heavier, it became more difficult for me and it took more time for me to recover even after 10-15 minutes of this ‚ride’. Of course it also helps a bit with backpacks, especially because I tend to take too much stuff with me.

1. a short 1 mile run, interrupted because of an old injury. Had to go back home
2. The trapbar walk: 1.2km with 2x10kg weights (32kg in total)
3. A short stamina training: 21x63kg benchpress, 21 crunches and 21 dumbbell pullovers
4. a 5km jog (finally!) in 38:30.
5. 1x115kg benchpress to retain muscle memory. In other words, for fun. I find that if I don’t put on >110kg for a while, i begin to have an irrational fear of an injury (because i’m old and fragile 😛 ) . so… 120kg a day keeps all fears away 😀

All in all, quite a good day. Tomorrow it’ll be a 6x6x91kg benchpress training, a short run and a stamina training (2 sets).

I know it was supposed to be the ‚shoes day’, but I figured that since I did a trapbar walk today, I can write about this briefly.

Ok so this is a trapbar. I put 2x10kg on it so that it makes sense. The whole thing weighs about 32-35kg.

My training is quite simple: every 7-10 days I take this trapbar for a short strolll around the neighborhood. I started with 200 meters and then slowly increased the distance. At the moment I can walk the first 200 meters without stopping and then I make 20-30 pauses after 60-80 steps.

This is what I did today. It was slightly longer than usually, but I didn’t want to push myself because the last 3 days have been a bit difficult for me at work. My current best time is 22 minutes.

Every yellow line is a short pause, the walk becomes a bit tricky around the middle because then I have to climb the hill again. As a result, I start with about 115 beats per minute but finish at 160.
My original plan 3 months ago when I bought this thing was to increase the weight slowly but I just can’t do it. It may not look that way but it’s quite exhausting even with 2x10kg only. Don’t be surprised if you have blurry vision for a while after a particularly strenous session. I do.

Photo: My breakfast 😉

1) The blue and shit-color pills on the right are vitamins and minerals (Olimp)

2) The white pills is L-carnitine to increase fatburn efficiency

3) Tribulus Terrestris, to give life a bit of color 😉 Try it for 2 weeks every day and see how your mentality changes in all sorts of interesting ways.

4) Creatine, new research shows that it’s good not just for your muscles but also for your brain. I take about 7g a day, so 1g for every 20kg. I suppose I could take more than twice that but I’ve grown rather fond of my kidneys

5) Citrulline: a small spoonful with a lot of water to reduce muscle inflammation

To be honest, all this is something i’ve taken up recently and even after 4 weeks of this pill regime, I can already see an immense difference in how I feel. The level of energy is astounding. I feel 20 years younger.

so…

In next episode… Shoes 😉

This is what i’m doing at the moment:

A) Weight trening

I do benchpress 4 times a week, where on day 1 I do 6 sets of 6 repetitions with 75% of my max, on day 2 it’s 7×5 with 80%, day 3 is 8×4 with 85% and day 4 is 10×3 with 90%. Currently my max is around 120kg so on day 1 i start with 6x6x90kg and so on.

My old equipment, I use it for stamina training

…and new equipment, with metal safety bars that will probably save my life some day. I use it to do benchpress more than 90kg.

B) Daily stamina training

2 sets x 20 crunches, 20 benchpress x 63kg, 20 dumbbell pullovers x 20kg, 20 dumbbell floor press x 12kg
I do this 5 times a week, Monday through Friday. Every day I add 1 repetition, so today I did 20 reps in each set and tomorrow it’ll be 2 sets with 21 crunches each etc. Every 2 weeks I will be adding 1kg to the weights, too.

C) Light Cardio

Either 20 minutes on my training bike, a solid training where I burn about 300kcal, or a 20 minute jog, 3-4 times a week.

D) farmer’s walk
Once per week with about 32kg, 1.2km. Extremely tiring but I feel that it helps me with mental resilience. This takes me about 22 minutes at the moment.

E) random fun stuff at the gym. I used to go the local gym but I don’t have time anymore (kids, work) so it’s been on hold for now. I want to go once a week starting next week.

Day 1 summary:
1) daily stamina training,
2) bike training,
3) a jog,
4) benchpress training (day 4: 10x3x105kg).

Tomorrow it’s farmer’s walk so i’ll probably just do that plus my daily stamina training, because the walk is super exhausting so no jogging or bike.

Next up: vitamins and other ‚boosters’

A lot of people think that kids are not capable of walking long distances. I disagree. My son is now 8 and I started hiking with him 2 years ago. Last year we walked 63km in 5 days, and a few weeks ago he managed an amazing distance from Międzylesie to Międzygórze, a 24km trip that took us a whole day to finish (see map at the bottom). His stamina is unequalled and he’s such a fun person, too.
Obviously, hiking with a kid means that you need to be prepared for everything, take more food, more water, more clothes etc and there’s no guarantee you will walk the whole route that you have planned, but it’s so rewarding to look back on photos like this.

Przejście Kotliny is a hiking event that takes place every year in September to commemorate two rescuers who died in an avalanche in 2005.

The ‚full’ version is a 140march around Kotlina Jeleniogórska (south western Poland), where participants have 48 hours to finish while the ‚mini’ version has 70km. Over 500 people take part every year because it’s one of the greatest hiking events in Poland.
I completed the mini version in 2021 and it was a real struggle, especially near the end but also the greatest hiking experience i’ve ever had.

The march starts from Lysa Góra, a small hill to the north east of Jelenia Góra, and is a gentle and picturesque path through the hill of Szybowcowa (about 2 km away from where I used to live as a child), further to the west, through the western part of Karkonosze and finishes at Szklarska Poręba, a lovely tourist town. There are some checkpoints along the route as well; the march is very well organised, with firefighters, police and volunteers participating en masse to make sure that the event is safe.

Photo: the 2021 me, just before the start.

And the reward…

In 2022 I got Covid and it took me quite a while to recover fully, both physically and mentally. This year I feel fit again and I would like to do the ‚mini’ distance in September. I’m absolutely thrilled, all the more so because last year the event was canceled due to disastrous floods in the area.

Before making a training plan I guess it’s a good idea to have a look at where i’m currently at, 76 days before the trip.
To be honest, things don’t look good now because there’s very little time and a lot to do. I’m fat as f… and i’ve gotten lazy what with a demanding job and 2 kids. But I still believe I can march those 70km in under 24 hours (that’s the deadline).

So, onto the details:
Age/Height/other
I’m now 42 years old and and I weigh about 145kg. I’m reasonably fit all things considered but I definitely need to try lose at least some weight before the trip. Last time I did this was in 2021, I weighed 120kg and I finished the trip in just over 21 hours. After recovering from (a bloody long) Covid in 2022 I haven’t had any further health-related setbacks.

Current fitness level:
This year I’ve already completed several shorter trips (30+ km) in winter and one longer trip (42km) 2 months ago. The winter trips are difficult to compare because hiking in deep snow is so much more difficult, but the May trip was quite easy, and I completed the hike in 13 hours without much difficulty. Sometimes I also go hiking with my 8 year old son, who can already do 20+ kilometers and he’s not even tired.
I can jog up to 10km (albeit at a very leisurely pace of 12:30 per mile), in total i did about 80km in May and 60km in June.

What I do to keep fit
I lift weights almost every day, I jog a bit and i’ve started a bit more comprehensive stamina training with crunches, barbells etc. On average I walk about 8k steps a day. I’m terrible at keeping a diet although i’ve recently managed to give up on coffee (+sugar +milk) as the caffeine was seriously messing with my system. My job is quite (100% actually) sedentary but I work from home so I can squeeze in a training here and there.

Goal:
To finish the event on Sep 20 in under 20 hours (thus beating the last time by 1h)

How I want to achieve this goal:
I would like to do longer runs (up to 100km a month) and increase the intensity of my everyday stamina training. The weight goal is 138kg before the trip.

In my next post: what is Przejście Dookoła Kotliny Jeleniogórskiej and why I like this event (and hiking in general)

Photo: My winter trip earlier this year. It was horribly, horribly cold but absolutely beautiful.

My name is Tomek De Wille and this is my blog about getting fit, hiking, and (quite surprisingly) powerlifting.
I created this blog in June 2025 as a way to document my preparation process for a 70km march in the Karkonosze mountains in Poland at the end of September ( https://przejsciekotliny.org/ ) . I did this back in 2021 and then tried again in September 2025 but this time I dropped out after 43km.
I’m now preparing for the 2026 edition of the march. Keep your fingers crossed (again) and follow my blog.