Training

We have already started training for the AAWT.

I am a great believer in training in the same way as what you intended to do. For the AAWT, this means walking with a heavy backback up and down steep hills in the bush. In particular, the emphasis is on the hills bit.

My objective is not to become super fit. I don't think it is realistic to be as fit at the beginning of the walk as I would be at the end of the walk. The only way to be that fit is to take on a training resume equivalent to the walk itself and given time and other constraints it just not practical to do that.

Instead, I expect to build fitness during the walk itself. My main focus is on "softening" the blow. I hope to take the first week fairly slowly and try to easy myself into it - even though the first week is probably the hardest section of the walk. As such, I want to provide myself with a level of fitness that will take the shock out of the first few days of walking. I don't want to go from a low level of fitness into the walk and "pay dearly" in the first week. I just want to have a level of fitness which will allow me to progress to a higher level of activity without feeling that I am going to die.

So my main focus is to find hills and climb them to build up general strength and to use those muscles that are needed to climb hills so that those muscles do not scream at me during the first week.

I have read somewhere that on average you climb 600 vertical metres up and 600 vertical metres down on average when doing the AAWT. It does not sound a lot but it is a long way up and down with a heavy back pack combined with the additional 20kms per day that you have to do.

I look out my lounge room window and look at Mt Tennant. I believe it is just over 1300 metres high and the base near the visitor centre is about 640 metres. This means that Mt Tennant is nearly 700m vertically. I look at it and think that I have to climb that day after day for six weeks.

So the main part of training is to climb the hill behind my home - Tuggeranong Hill. The hill is a 850m above sea level and my house is about 640m above sea level. This means it is roughly 200m vertically from top to bottom. Sometimes it is straight up, sometimes it is up via the fire track and other times I take the scenic route and go up and down all over the place. Normally, it takes an hour or two to complete - depending on the route that I take. It gives a pretty good work out even if it only about 1/3 of the daily planned quota. All in all it is pretty tough going - especially some bits - but not too bad. However, I sometimes think what it would be like to do three times a day instead of just once.

I try to climb it once or twice a week with a backpack with weight in it. A total of 25 kilos. In the past I threw in a 20 kg bag of paving sand but recently I have been trying to fill the bag with my real gear. For some strange reason it seemed much hard with my real gear than with the bag of sand. I am not sure why but I think that it was because I now have a different centre of gravity. I found it very difficult in some patches with the weight on my back. I felt like a drunk falling all over the place. Some obstacles like rooks and logs on the steep slope were major challenges and took several attempts sometimes.

Otherwise I try to supplement my training with other excercise - walking around the lake (with a backpack), riding the bike to work and back (40kms return) and the odd game of squash. I certainly feel much better and stronger for all the training but I notice that it takes me a few days to recover from some of it - especailly the hill climbs. I am stiff and sore in the legs. It makes me wonder what it will be like when I don't have any recovery time!