Sandi hates training walks, but I am convinced that they are a good thing (even if they are a little boring to do, over and over). We didn't do a lot of training for The Bibbulmun, but we did a lot for the Australian Alps Walking Track. Though, I distinctly remember thinking at the end of the first day, which was an especially easy day, that all the Furber Steps up and down we'd done after work, me with sacks of potatoes in the pack, had not made much of an impact in how exhausted I'd felt at the end of the day.

To be successful, or even do-able, the daily walks need to be local, with enough variety to allow some variations through the week. Katoomba is a 20-minute drive, so slipping a 1:45 walk with 0:40 travel is not going to be easy any season apart from summer. Mind you, I don't mind a bit of night walking, and our Lawson Loop is often done after dark (as it's all on the road).

In my mind the training walks seem to classify themselves:

• Short ¼ Day walks: from ½ to 2 hours – often squeezed in at the end of the day.
• Medium ½ Day walks: ˜4 hours in length, either before or after lunch; mostly on a weekend.
• Full Day walk: Anything longer than 4 hours and requiring a lunch break; always on a weekend.
• Multi-Day walk: Overnight and requiring camping; we'll need to slot some of these in for testing our new gear.

Training Walks

Walk	Count	Length (km)	Ascent (m)	Descent (m)	Duration (h:m)
Lawson Loop	4	4.009	97	97	0:41
Turtle Rock Loop	1	3.240	153	153	0:48
Furber Steps - Giants Stairs Loop	2	6.226	375	374	1:44
Turtle Rock Figure 8	1	7.287	347	347	1:55

Walks per Week

The aim is to eventually get to around the same weekly values as what we'll be actually doing on the walk, for comparison our first week's totals are (see the full weekly itinerary):

Hours	Length (km)	Max kg	Ascend (m)	Descend (m)
49	136	17.69	2,425	2,314

The first week of the Heysen is probably the most critical, as our track fitness will be kicking in after that (Sandi generally laughs when I say things like that…). Also, it will be near impossible to clock up that number of kilometres, as we don't have all that free time just for training. But it will be interesting to see how close we get. The most important targets, in my mind, is the weight and the ascent & descent: If we can get close to those averages I'll feel a little more comfortable.