“STOP! Think about what’s working and what’s not,” instructs my friend Hilary. There’s a lot for our small group of 60+ year-old women to think about. In a few weeks we’ll be walking an average of 20km per day for six days on a multiday pack-free guided walk in WA. We’ve been training independently, with regular daily suburban walks, local bush trails and pump classes. I walk up and down our 90+ uneven stone steps ten times a day.
With the WA walk fast approaching, we need to do more. I put a call out for the others to join me on a few bushwalks. This will put our track fitness to the test and enable us to try out our gear to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Poles or no poles? Long or short sleeves? A camel pack or water bottles?
We’ve all bushwalked in the past. Toni recently walked NT’s Larapinta Trail, so she’ll be fine. I walked Spain’s Camino de Santiago but that was a very long time ago. I’m apprehensive about the long days, the dune walking and the 8km stretch along the beach. Soft beach sand is not my friend. Hilary, Toni and I meet at Cowan Station, just north of Sydney, full of enthusiasm for our first training bushwalk from Cowan to Brooklyn, part of the Great North Walk.
