Here’s how some Walk1200km participants have racked up their kilometres over the past year.
Walk anywhere
Morley Williams has climbed enough this year to summit Mt Everest twice – and mostly it’s been done from the comfort of his home.
As well as Walk1200km, the 73-year-old has been taking part in the Everest Anywhere challenge.
Morley started Walk1200km last October, averaging 10km a day to reach 1200km in February.
“The great advantage of the approach I adopted was that the moment I left my door I was accruing kilometres,” Morley says of his daily walks on lakeside tracks in Cromwell.
Those walks were on the flat, so from February his attention turned to ascent.
There was the backyard circuit, something Morley started doing during lockdown.
The 20m circuit repeated 200 times took him about an hour and equated to 140m of climbing. Going up and down the stairs inside his house 53 times each Friday added 158m.
By July, he’d climbed the equivalent of two Everests – 17,696m – and 14,500m of that was achieved at home.
Morley says he doesn’t get bored. “I’m always thinking about things.”
In fact, he has had to repeat circuits a couple of times when his mind has wandered and he’s lost count.
He thinks he’ll end up walking about 1800km in his first year of Walk1200km, and plans to take a more relaxed approach to the challenge in 2022/23.
Find your happy place
Lachlan McKenzie has caught a few curveballs in 2022.
He had a seizure in June, which has stopped him driving for a year; that put paid to solo tramping trips.
Then, in July, he came down with Covid-19 and took several weeks to fully recover.
Wilderness first caught up with Lachlan in March, when he was three months into the Walk1200km challenge and aiming to do an overnighter every month.
Solo adventures were a big part of the challenge for him, but out-of-town tramping now requires a ride with friends.
Despite the setbacks, 41-year-old Lachlan is forging ahead with Walk1200km and says he’s been taught some valuable lessons.
He has always walked to work along Wellington’s waterfront. He considers it a chance to be mindful and it leaves him clear-headed.
But Lachlan now realises the backcountry is his happy place.
“Walking 1200km in the city would be easier but not as enjoyable for me.”
The challenge has also turned his attention to goal-setting.
“It has made me think about what I want to achieve in the outdoors by the time I’m 50.”
Be part of something
Jennifer Andrewes started Walk1200km with some confidence.
She’d planned this year to walk 800km on the Via Podiensis, a pilgrim trail across France.
What she hadn’t anticipated was the community spirit.
“It’s that sense of being part of something,” Jennifer says. Through the Walk1200km Facebook group, she’s met other pilgrim trail walkers.
Wilderness first spoke with Jennifer in May as she was preparing to travel to France.
A European pilgrimage had been on her to-do list for a while, but following a diagnosis of early-onset Parkinson’s disease in 2019, it became a priority.
Jennifer walked the Via Podiensis with a friend in 39 days. She says all the exercise and the simplicity of life on the trail – walk, eat, sleep, repeat – left her in great shape, physically and mentally.
After beginning Walk1200km late last year, and combining the Via Podiensis, Jennifer achieved 1200km in June.
The pilgrimage also helped her raise almost $3000 for Parkinson’s New Zealand.
Next year, without an 800km walk on her progress tracker, Jennifer thinks she’ll find it tougher to accumulate 1200km.
She walked in all weather on the Via Podiensis, and it’s a lesson she’s now applying to her 3km commute to work in Wellington.
“I always feel better when I walk.”