My motivation at the gym

Here is the picture that I keep in mind when I'm on the stairclimber at the gym. It is the section of the Great Wall of China that we will be climbing, about 90 minutes north of Beijing. It is a very steep section of the Wall. This photo was taken by another CAWLI family during their trip about a year ago. They took a few shots from the bottom looking up the mountain, but somehow they don't seem as intimidating as this shot from the top down. And, "down" is back to the parking lot and buildings in the upper left corner of the shot, not that little guardhouse on the right! I get dizzy just looking at this photo.

According to the travel packet we received earlier this week, you only get about two hours at this location, so that means I have about 40 minutes to get to the top, 40 minutes to recuperate, and 40 minutes to get back down. Hmmm...thus far, I've only been training on level 4 (of 20) for about 20 minutes at the gym. Time to kick up the training a bit...