Walking to greater fitness helps produce improved peace of mind

Megan Tordoff and Verity Froud, in Sydney’s Centennial Park, say walking has become a favourite part of their week and also improves mental health as well as fitness. Picture: Britta Campion

On a gloriously sunny Wednesday in the middle of last winter, Megan Tordoff and another mother from her children’s school hatched a plan to spend the day walking.

The women were training for the Bloody Long Walk, a 35 km trek along Sydney’s northern coastline from Palm Beach to Manly, to raise funds for mitochondrial disease, but the training day was largely an excellent ­excuse to spend a day on the lam.

Tordoff’s two older children were at primary school and her third was in her final year of preschool; after a decade of intense child-rearing, some freedom was in sight.

“We wanted to do the Hermitage Track around Sydney Harbour through Vaucluse, then to the Gap and down to Bondi,” she says.

Constrained by school hours of 9am to 3pm, they cycled to Bondi Junction and set off along the streets towards the harbour. Many kilometres later they were a little delirious as they stepped on to the famous sands of Bondi Beach and were dazzled by the aquamarine waves crashing against the sand.

“It was so glorious, we really wanted to have a swim even though it was 2 o’clock,” Tordoff says. “We dived into the water in our knickers and gym gear then ran to catch a taxi to our bikes, from where we raced back to school for pick-up.

“My highlight was the swim; it was exhilarating, one of those ­moments you feel really alive.”

A few weeks later Tordoff completed the Bloody Long Walk with ease, a high point of a walking ­career that started five years ear­lier with twice-weekly 6am catch-ups with neighbourhood friend Verity Froud.

Originally Froud and Tordoff set out to achieve some fitness but the walks have evolved into a ­favourite part of their weeks.

“We talk the whole time,” Tordoff says. “If we don’t do it we feel like, ‘I don’t know what’s happening.’ That regular walking is as much about the exercise as the mental health.”

A few weeks after they skived off on a weekday, Froud was among a group that met before dawn on a Sunday and walked about 15km through the suburbs before settling into a champagne breakfast arranged as a farewell for some families who were ­moving overseas.

Janet Verden planned the walk expecting a small group but it snowballed into 18, with another seven who skipped the walk and joined the rest for breakfast.

Verden says: “I think walking is the new girl’s night out.”

She is only half joking, saying it is the ultimate multi-tasking ­opportunity “to exercise, get the latest lowdown plus the obligatory coffee. Stunning Sydney views along the way make it a perfect package.”

Then there’s Sue Cato, a media strategist who for the past three decades has risen most days at 5.30am and spent the next hour or two before sunrise walking Sydney streets. As much as possible she avoids traffic and takes new routes through the urban jungle and alongside the water lapping at it.

“My preference is to walk on my own so I can walk at my own pace,” Cato says.

“I don’t listen to music because it’s absolutely thinking time; it’s about taking a thought process from beginning to end, but I do have a Fitbit I adore.”

The activity tracker generation has certainly arrived.

All four people in my house have an activity monitor tracking our exercise and also our sleep and heart rates. Activity trackers show that walking is an excellent calorie burner.

As some acquaintances are ­preparing to walk the Camino Trail in Spain, another friend is nursing ­injuries sustained during Oxfam’s 100km walk and others have tackled the Kokoda Track.

Has walking become the ­exercise of our age or merely the ­exercise option for people of a ­certain age?

Sean Murray says the answer is a bit of both.

Murray is chief executive of the Australian Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, a small charity dedicated to raising funds to support research into finding a cure for the debilitating disease and to ­support people battling it and their families.

Sufferers of the mostly hereditary degenerative condition are unable to completely burn food and oxygen to generate energy. Symptoms might include poor growth, developmental delays and muscle weakness. There’s no cure for mitochondrial disease but physiotherapy and medication can manage symptoms.

Murray lost a brother to the ­disease and took over as chief executive of the organisation some time after. As a fundraiser, he was looking for an event simpatico with the condition.

“We tried a 5km walk and it didn’t work out, and there’s a million runs out there,” he says. “We needed a challenge and yet something that was achievable, so we settled on Palm Beach to Manly, and it takes people about a day.”

In 2013 there were 350 participants, and the following year the foundation also launched similar events in Melbourne and Brisbane attracting 2300 people in total.

Events in Adelaide and Perth came on line the next year with 7000 participants in total and then last year there were 10,000 participants, including at new walks in Canberra and Sydney’s east. Funds raised in 2013 topped $100,000 but by last year the total was $1.6m.

“Our differential is it’s relaxed, a bit of fun and not too serious, so it’s open to pretty much everyone,” Murray says.

And who’s walking?

He says with a grin: “Eighty-two per cent of participants are ­female but we’ve had walkers aged from nine to 80 years old.”

Jane Read is a trainee general practitioner and dietitian who says she has not actually observed a greater awareness of the benefits of exercise among her patients ­despite the rise of the activity tracker generation.

“Thirty minutes a day of ­moderate exercise at least five days a week is necessary to maintain good health and reduce cardio­vascular disease and diabetes,” Read says.

“Walking is a great exercise, it builds muscle around joints and is not as harmful as running can be.”

Kimi Anderson had no idea she was “on trend” when she began joining a friend last year on long morning walks.

“I went from zero exercise. I did absolutely nothing and a friend said, ‘Do you want to do (the Oxfam 100km walk)?’ and I said, Absolutely no way,’ ” she laughs.

“So we trained every second weekend, starting with 5km, then 10km and we got up to about 60km,” Anderson says.

“The walks at first took two hours but eventually took 26 hours because we were so unfit (to begin with) we might have overtrained.”

Anderson’s new-found fitness has opened her eyes to an entirely new view of her city, seen by her on foot and often in the early morning hours.

She has reset her sights in ­recent months on running and planned to attempt a half-­marathon until was she sidelined by a stress fracture in her ankle.

Maybe therein lies the rub.

“Are you saying I should have stuck to walking?” Anderson laughs. “Once I get rid of this moon boot, I am going to return to walking.”

MICHAELA BOLAND