TRAINING

We’ve been clocking up the kilometres around our local streets and on bushwalks wearing our day packs.  Haven’t yet started to train wearing our full back packs, but that is about to change.  The hard training we undertook prior to walking the Camino Frances across northern Spain in 2014 proved invaluable and I’m certain that I would have struggled at the start of that walk if I hadn’t trained.

Gone are our pedometers and homemade computer templates to record daily distances used for last year’s training.  Instead, we have both invested in a ‘Fitbit’, a device worn on the wrist which displays the time, the steps walked each day, the kilometres walked each day, and the equivalent number of floors walked up each day.  At the end of the day, the data from this device can be wirelessly transferred to a computer or phone.  The ‘Fitbit’ program appears on the screen by way of a ‘dashboard’ which not only displays your daily stats, but also identifies the level of your activity throughout the day as either mild, moderate or intense.  We love our ‘Fitbits’ and have found that by wearing them constantly and checking our step totals throughout the day, we’ve become motivated to continually strive for higher step counts.

The computer program also has a fun component which gives out virtual badges for new achievements such as the ‘Skyscraper Badge’ for climbing the equivalent of 100 floors in a day, or a ‘Trail Shoe Badge’ for walking 30,000 steps in one day.  I recently received my ‘London Underground Badge’ for walking 402 km since strapping on my Fitbit!

We recently had a break from walking the usual local streets by taking off with our caravan for a couple of weeks to bushwalk in Girraween National Park near the Qld/NSW border and Torrington State Conservation Area in northern NSW.

Steve relaxing in camp  -  Girraween NP

The Granite Arch  -  Girraween NP

Bald Rock Creek  -  Girraween NP

Bald Rock Creek Circuit  -  Girraween NP

Mt Norman Track  -  Girraween NP

view from Castle Rock  -  Girraween NP

the climb to Captain Thunderbolt's lookout
Torrington State Conservation Area

Torrington State Conservation Area

Mystery Face Rock  -  Torrington State Conservation Area

Our Fitbits, showing Steve's 18,000+ steps for the day,
sitting atop our guide book,
 which although written in French, is proving invaluable