​In this episode, I interview Summit Strength graduates Karen and Charles, who have just come back from 10 days and a successful summit of Kilimanjaro's northern circuit. Inside, they talk about their training, preparation and experience on this amazing mountain. 

At 74, Charles had spent over a decade climbing Colorado's 14ers. Karen an internal medicine physician, had never hiked before meeting him. Together, they set their sights on Kilimanjaro's Northern Circuit, a 10 day trek with a summit night elevation gain of roughly 4,000 feet, and trained through Summit Strength's online personal training for hikers to get there.

In this episode of the podcast, Karen and Charles walk through what their training actually looked like: adding strength and conditioning built specifically for hiking, tackling balance work for the first time, and staying consistent through a week in Italy, a family emergency, and a full year of preparation. They share how a personalised, flexible program helped them arrive at basecamp capable and confident, and how neither of them was ever out of breath on summit night.

This conversation is a real look at what it takes for an older hiker to take on a serious, bucket list adventure without leaving strength, balance, or confidence to chance. If Kilimanjaro, or any big trek, has been sitting on your list for years, read on to hear exactly how two everyday people got there, and what they would tell you before you go.

Mentioned in the episode:

• Thomson Treks ​

Episode Transcript:

Q: So to kick things off, do you just wanna give us a bit of a background? Um, where each of you from, what do you do, and what are your backgrounds in hiking?

Karen: I am from South Louisiana, which is below sea level. I am an internal medicine physician. I teach residents internal medicine, how to practice internal medicine, associated with LSU Medical School. I have zero hiking background until I met Charles, who took me up a few hikes in Colorado for a couple of hour hikes.
Charles: Thirteen five. I'm 74 years old. I'm a general surgeon, and also from Louisiana, so a sea level guy. My hiking experience probably goes back about 10 or 12 years, when I started with some buddies climbing 14ers in Colorado. I've done about 12 of those over the last 10 or 12 years. That's pretty much the extent of any of my significant altitude hiking.

Q: Before we started working together, what was each of your typical approach to training, whether that was hiking related or just general life related?

We had been in this routine of walking every day. We weren't really doing anything that got our heart rates into like zone three. We also weren't doing any balance work at all, and we weren't doing any significant weight training. So it was basically walking, on flat ground below sea level, at a comfortable pace.

Q: And then what was the big goal that you'd set for yourselves, and what was the instigator of this particular goal?

Charles: I had gone to Africa about 13 years ago on a safari, and I had seen Kilimanjaro at the time and really started to think, "I'd really like to climb that." The buddy in Colorado who I started doing the fourteeners with had also summited Kilimanjaro, and that really planted the seed for my interest in doing it. It took 13 years to get to the right point and the right time and be able to have the time available to train and then to actually get the hike done. We committed to this with Thompson Treks, or Thompson Safaris, the outfitter, last July. So we planned the trip almost a year in advance. Then we sort of just piddled around with our training all through the end of 2025, until I was just searching online for someone who could help us with training, because I knew that left to our own designs, I didn't think we would really be able to keep up the motivation for getting it done. We needed the stimulus of somebody overseeing us, and a logical planned program that included all of those things we were previously leaving out, like the weights and the strength and the balance, all things we really needed for the hike but weren't doing. I found Summit Strength, and the rest is history.
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Karen: And I was just trying to keep him alive. I wasn't gonna let him go by himself, 'cause we just got married in September of last year. So I was like, "I'm gonna go up this mountain to keep him alive one way or the other."

Q: So tell us a little bit about the training that you did do through Summit Strength. What did your program look like? What type of sessions were you doing? Talk us through that.

We had your app, and the recommended program was there. The flexibility was really nice, because on a day where it was raining, we could do the balance and the weight work inside and we wouldn't really get out of sync. We flipped the long hikes in, which were great, and typically did those on a weekend. We had access to a gym, so in inclement weather we could get treadmill time and StairMaster time. We also accessed a parking garage near us to just do stairs up and down, because we really didn't have any other way to do any sort of altitude work. The plan, the flexibility of the plan, and the fact that it encompassed all the components, the cardio part, the weight part, the balance part, all the things we recognized that we really needed and weren't getting before, really worked great for us. Summit Strength was perfect for us. It was flexible too. We spent a week in Italy back in March and had to adjust our training there. We had some family emergencies that required Karen to be out of town, and she was able to adjust with that. It really worked out great for us. It was the perfect fit.

Q: Through everything you were doing, was there anything in there that you hadn't really done before or was kind of new to you?

I think the balance work was really new. I don't think either one of us had ever done any sort of balance work. I hadn't really worked with bands before, the different strength or tension bands, so that was helpful. I did a couple of business trips, and I just threw the bands in my suitcase and did the work in my hotel room, which worked out really well. I'd say the big piece that I'm sure we would never have done on our own was the balance stuff.

Q: And then throughout the process, you know, no training journey's ever, ever linear or ever smooth, as I always say. Were there any roadblocks that came up along the way? And if so, how did you go about overcoming them?

I had a big roadblock with my daughter getting admitted to the hospital, having a premature baby. The baby ended up in the ICU. I noticed there were like 14 flights of stairs at the hospital that I could run up and down a few times. It even had a whiteboard at the top that said you made it to the summit of the hospital floor. So I did that just to burn anxiety, even from the stress she was undergoing, and it kept me proud to report back, "Hey, I'm doing something even though I'm under this situation." But the baby's great now. 11 pounds and thriving.

Q: And so talk us through now. We talked about the training, we talked about the preparation, we talked about the inspiration. Let's talk about the trip itself. You flew over there. How did it all go? Give us the rundown. Tell us the story.

We committed to this in July of '25, and over the ensuing year, or a little short of a year, we got together all the items on the packing list. We did that slowly, made sure we had the things we felt we needed. We pretty rigidly adhered to Thompson's packing list. There were weight restrictions too. Porters can only carry 33 pounds, so you were limited to that in your duffel bag. The trip itself was easy. We initially booked flights on Qatar Airways through Doha, and once the war started, our flights got cancelled, so we had to rebook through Amsterdam, which worked out fine. Getting to Tanzania was easy, the visa process was easy, and we got picked up at the airport. We had about a day and a half on the front end of the trip, where we stayed at a game preserve. We got to see a lot of wild animals, elephants, zebras, buffalo, all sorts of things. Then we started the climb, and we did what Thompson refers to as the Grand Traverse, which I think is also called the Northern Circuit. It was a 10 day hike with a planned summit on the eighth day, which we did, and it worked out really great. We had plenty of time for acclimatization. We did use Diamox, which was recommended. We started at about an altitude of 11,300, and over the ensuing seven days we sort of went up and down as high as 14.5 and back down to 13, doing the acclimatization thing. On summit night we were at about 15,300.

We had about a 4,000 foot elevation gain on summit day, and I have to tell you, neither one of us were ever out of breath. Our training was great. We were never forced to stop because we couldn't go on. The guides paced us in the typical "pole pole" in Swahili, slow, slow, and that worked great. I never felt tired. I don't think you did either. We didn't feel tired out. We didn't feel like we couldn't go on. I never thought that I wouldn't make it. It worked really well. What we don't know how we would have trained for was the coming downhill. We descended about 15,000 feet in three days, and that was a little rough on the knees and thighs. I don't know how to train for that, because it's a very steep grade down, and the terrain is either scree, little small rocks, or big boulders you're stepping over, or slippery mud once you get into the rainforest. But we did it, and it was great. I could not be happier with the whole process.

I had no idea there were gonna be 29 people trying to get us up the mountain, and I was not gonna disappoint 29 people. They were so grateful, and their goal was to get us to the top. A lot of this is mental, and your attitude. The entire team we worked with had a positive attitude, and that was contagious, it bled over to us to stay positive. They never looked at us and said, "We don't think you're gonna make it." They were always very positive and encouraging, which I think is very important doing a climb like this, because you had two people going from sea level to 19,000 plus feet, and there's a huge mental component to it.

Q: Aside from what you've touched on so far, were there any other major challenges you faced on the mountains or issues that popped up or anything like that, that you had to overcome?

Karen: I was so cold that night. I was worried about frostbite, 'cause I had watched these YouTube videos of people complaining that they got frostbite, but they gave us a hot water bottle. They filled up our Nalgene with boiling water to put in our sleeping bag. But my only struggle was freezing cold nights and peeing outside, balanced on a rock. And I was the only female, and all the men were facing the other direction trying not to look at me. And I'm like, "Hey, I'm sitting here peeing outside for the first time, and I haven't had a bath in five days, but the world is good."

Charles: I'd say the cold, although we knew it was gonna be cold. I knew the summit night and day was gonna be cold, but it was cold every night. It was in the 20s at least every night. Two nights it snowed. One night it snowed and then froze, so the zippers on our tent were frozen. We had to fight the zipper to get out of our tent in the morning. But that was just part of the experience, I guess. I really wanted to enjoy the stars, but I was so cold, I'd look up real quick and think, "Okay, that's enough, I gotta go back in and get back under all these layers." Not the relaxing stargazing, hanging out for hours on end kind of thing.

Q: So talk me through afterwards now. So we've got to the top, we've got down to the bottom, we've come off the mountain. Once you finished up the trip, how did you feel? What was going through your heads, and did you do anything to celebrate?

We were ecstatic that we had done it. There's a tipping ceremony, I'm sure this is true of all the various outfitters that guide folks up the mountain, where you tip all the folks that have helped get you up there, the porters and the cooks and so on. That was really special, we got some videos of that which are really fun. Seeing all these folks get recognized and adequately compensated for the hard work they did was very rewarding for us. We each got a nice certificate from the Tanzanian government saying we successfully summited. We stayed at a real nice property after we got off the mountain, and he got his first massage at the age of 74. We did a couples massage, treated ourselves, and each took about a 45 minute shower. So yeah, it was fun. And he bought me these tanzanite earrings.

Q: And then coming off after all of this, what's the plan of attack for hiking moving forward? Is this like, got the bug, I wanna go do another mountain? Is it like, you know what, I've done that, I'm ready for some more relaxing holidays? Or what's the plan of attack there moving forward?

We both enjoy being outside and we like hiking. We vacation a lot in Colorado, so we're planning to head there in September. I'm sure we'll continue, we'd like to try to maintain the physical fitness level that we've gotten ourselves into by working with Summit Strength and using that program. My hope is that we can continue to do that, maybe not to as rigorous a level, but nevertheless to the point where we can continue to enjoy hiking at some altitude, 12,000, 13,000 feet.

I wanna stay physically fit enough to where I'm not like my mom in her eighties who can't hardly move around. I wanna be able to get myself up off the floor no matter how old I am.

Q: So if anyone was listening to this and they were considering Kilimanjaro or an adventure similar to this, what advice would you give them?

Good preparation. And that's both physical preparation, like we did with Summit Strength, mental preparation, and then get the right gear. I'm sure that most of these outfitters have a recommended packing list, and I'm sure they're all comparable. There are some probably odd things that we either brought that we were glad we brought, or various little small items that turned out to be useful. But I think the biggest thing, as I said earlier, I'm 74, I think if anybody's interested in doing this, if you train for it and you prepare for it and your attitude is right, anybody can do this. It's an achievable goal for anyone, if you do the right preparation. You can't halfway it, because it's not something you can do that way. But with adequate preparation, I think anybody can do this climb.

Looking at the campsites that we were at when there were other companies, if I ever did it again, I wouldn't choose any other company but Thompson, because I feel like we had so much support with that company. Our tents were deemed larger. Our guides would point it out to us, and say the other companies' guests would often ask, "Why do y'all have all these accommodations and tents and dining tent and all this other stuff that we don't?" I feel like that company took really good care of us, and they were also very good to the porters.

Q: Before we wrap up, was there anything else that we kinda haven't had a chance to cover today that you'd like to add about the trip or anything else?

Bring Lume deodorant wipes, 'cause you're not gonna have a bath or a shower for 10 days. We did not stink with Lume, and I have no interest in Lume beyond this, but it saved me from stinking.
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For anybody that listens, it's an achievable goal. Don't give up on it.

For women in their 60s managing joint pain, arthritis, and years of stop-start training, Jenny's story will feel familiar. At 62, with two knee replacements and significant arthritis throughout her body, she had all but accepted that her best hiking days were behind her.

Then she booked 12 days at Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia, signed up to Summit Strength with a six-week lead-in, and completed every single activity on her itinerary, including three grade four hikes, four swims with whale sharks, and getting herself back into a kayak from the open ocean for the first time in her life.
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In this episode of the Training For Trekking Podcast, Jenny joins Rowan to talk through her training, what surprised her on the trip, and how she managed it all without needing a single anti-inflammatory the entire time.

Episode Transcript:

Q: So to kick things off, do you just want to give us a little bit of background? Where are you from, who you are, what do you do, and what is your background in hiking?
I live on the Central Coast, which is about an hour north of Sydney, in New South Wales in Australia. I am retired now, which is lovely. I was an academic librarian, and previous to that I was a psychiatric nurse, but that is a long time ago.
In terms of hiking, I will go back a bit of a way. In my 20s and early 30s I was hiking regularly, but it was totally unplanned. I had the youth about me, so I would just put a backpack on and go. I was famous for taking cans of vegetables on the Overland Track. At the time I did not know any better.
Then around my mid-30s I started to get physical problems. The back went for about five years, and the knees have never been good. I have what doctors say is a lot more arthritis in my body than you would expect for somebody my age. I am 62 now. I had two knee replacements when I was 56 and 57, and a significant joint problem in my foot at 59, 60.
I have given that history because it gives an idea of what I have been dealing with in terms of hiking. Through all of it I kept hiking to what I could do, generally 7 to 10Ks. But following the knee replacements, the last five years has really been about recovering and losing all of my fitness. I have been scraping up to try and get to a 5 or 7K hike, and just been knocked back all the time by injuries occurring. Trying, stopped, trying, stopped. The injuries are all minor things, just an arthritic joint that has decided to play up.
I did meet my husband at 35, and he is a hiker. He would plan trips and talk about having a light pack, and I was all geared to do all that. And then that is when my back went. So now I feel like at 62 I am back to 35 and thinking, yes, I can do this and start from here.

Q: Before we started working together, what was your typical approach to training or physical preparation? What did that sort of look like for you?
Being a librarian, I am a very good researcher. So I would spend about a week trying to work out a program around what was happening at that particular time in my life. Looking back, that is a week when I am not actually doing anything, just trying to work something out.
I would then start the program. I have always done strength training, weightlifting, that kind of thing. I would incorporate walking, hikes to a certain extent depending on my fitness, swimming, pool walking, pool lap swimming. I have even tried Pilates, exercise bikes.
Inevitably I would start the training program, something would play up, and then I would be in the problem of do I stop, do I keep going? I usually stopped, rested, then started again. If you look over the last two or three years, it has been a start, stop, start, stop sort of pattern. Not getting the consistency, and not getting the progress.

Q: Before we got into contact, what was the adventure you had decided on? What did you have coming up, and what made you decide on this particular trip?
I have always continued to travel. If I could not do the hiking, I love being in the national parks and out in the wild, so I would go with my husband wherever we went and turn back when I knew I had done enough, which might be after a kilometre if things were particularly bad.
We planned Ningaloo. The Ningaloo Reef is a 600-kilometre fringing reef on the mid-west coast of Western Australia, and I had always wanted to go there. To swim with the whale sharks, to swim with the manta rays. And because it is open ocean, getting in and out of a boat, it requires a level of physicality. Kayaking over the reef, snorkelling, and then there are walks there too. I was really keen to do the walks.
We planned to go in June, which is the prime time, and to spend about 12 days there.

Q: What made you decide to reach out for extra help leading into this? What were the specific things you felt like you needed help with?
I have actually been following your podcast and your Skool app for probably about five years. I have looked at the Summit program a lot before, but always felt I could sort it out myself.
I had reached that point where I thought, I am not getting anywhere. I have been trying for one, two, three years, I have lost count, not really progressing anywhere and struggling. And I thought, if I really want to do this, I have to try something completely different. And this was the completely different.
I wanted to get rid of the noise. What do I do if there is a problem? How should the program be put together? I wanted to get rid of all that noise from my head so that all I had to concentrate on was just doing the session. Because it is not only putting the program together or troubleshooting when something goes wrong. If something plays up, you have got to put a couple of days into research to find out why that left foot is hurting and what you can do about it, and then how to change the programming. It is just a vicious cycle. I wanted to have somebody else deal with that, and all I had to concentrate on was just doing the workouts.
I think I had a six-week lead-in, and I thought that was a good lead-in. If I can make the walks at Ningaloo, it is a good goal to aim at. I knew I would not necessarily be able to do them, but I hoped to.

Q: Tell us a little bit about the training that you did through Summit Strength. What did your program look like? What types of things were you doing?
I had five sessions a week. Two strength sessions. I did one in the gym with weights because that is what I like to do, and one at home. The home one actually turned out to be a real highlight for me because it helped with mobility and flexibility, and it was surprising how much difference home workouts without the heavy weights made. The two complement each other, and it is quite good to have both.
Then there was the cardio side of things, which was different to what I was used to. Loaded pack walks, interval training. They were structured differently to what I had read about before, and as I did them they worked really well for me. I was impressed with the improvements I got from them. At no point did I come away thinking that was really hard, too hard. Nor did I come away aching and thinking I cannot go back, which is something I would get with my own training.
There was also a hike a week, and we changed how I thought about hiking. I used to base it on distance, and I now realise I was walking too fast. Basing it on time made a big difference because I was not thinking, I have got another kilometre to go, I must speed up. It was nice to flip it over and do it against time.
And recovery and mobility, which I will confess I do not think I have ever really done in my life. The shortest session, but the hardest one to fit in.

Q: Throughout the process, were there any roadblocks that came up along the way? And if so, how did you go about overcoming them?
It did exactly what I wanted. Whenever I hit anything physical, and for me that can be just a joint starting to ache, which is nothing in the moment, but if I do not address it quickly it can become something I cannot walk on in a month's time. Anything like that, I just hit it straight back to you, and you would alter the program accordingly to what was needed. That was just fantastic.
A really simple example was calf raises. I have done calf raises for years, and it was playing up my foot. And you said, well, don't do 10, do seven. In all this time I have never thought of just cutting off a few calf raises. It is such a simple solution, but I had never done it. That is really where it paid off.
And then things like the lack of motivation, or life gets interrupted. Having it all pre-programmed and laid out for me gave me a different mindset. Just go and do that. It is an hour. Just go and do that, then you can lie on the settee. Because I did not have all the other noise associated with it, I could just focus on doing the workout.
The accountability matters too. Somebody else to report to changes that focus a little bit. And I will say the money. You pay for something, you are going to do it.

Q: How did the trip go? Give us the rundown.
The trip was just fantastic, absolutely fantastic. The main reason being that I was able to maintain the activities with a reasonable level of fitness and achieve what I wanted to do.
I did the swimming with the manta rays, two different trips with manta rays and whale sharks, which I have to say was the most awesome thing. Swimming with these creatures is just beautiful. Silence in the ocean is just wonderful. Whereas I had gone thinking if I get one swim that is great, I got four swims with whale sharks, which is a lot, so I was really pleased.
Kayaking, I actually physically managed to get myself back into a kayak from the ocean, which I have never, ever been able to do before. I had a very good guide who talked me through the techniques, but it was the physicality that made it possible.
Then lastly the three walks. We had four walks planned, but sadly the biggest one, which would have been six kilometres, was closed because of cyclone damage. The other three were two to three kilometres each but took two hours because of very short, steep sections up and down. Grade four. They were a challenge for me, but I am pretty certain I would not have done them if I had not done the six weeks of training. I was able to do the walk, feel confident going up and down, and then feel confident to go on to the next one. Twelve days of very, very active, and the walks were just so lovely.

Q: Were there any major challenges you faced on the trip? Anything that came up along the way that you had to overcome?
The steep sections were an issue for me because I do not do stairs a lot given where I live, everything is single storey and flat. So the steep sections were something I was quite hesitant about, particularly going down. I just concentrated on the techniques, using poles, taking small steps, thinking about the muscles I had available to do that particular thing.
One thing I did not mention is that I did not take any anti-inflammatories. In every single trip I have ever been on, I normally start on anti-inflammatories within a day or two and take them for the entire trip, and that is without doing the physical activity I did on this trip. So taking into account that I have got quite a lot of arthritis happening, and yet I was managing to do all that, it is for me quite significant that I managed to do it all without needing any anti-inflammatories. That was excellent.

Episode Transcript:

Q: Can you give us a little bit of background about yourself, who you are, where you're from, and your background in hiking?

I'm Mark, from Melbourne, Australia, 47 years old. I work in finance technology, so it's a pretty office-based, stay-at-home sort of job.

In terms of hiking background, I've been hiking for over 40 years, started off at Scouts. Over the years I've done various hikes, some highlights being the Overland Track, Annapurna Circuit and Everest Base Camp in Nepal, a little bit of the Lycian Way in Turkey, and more close to home I try to get down to Wilson's Promontory whenever I can for a quick overnight hike.

Q: Before we started working together, what was your typical approach to preparing for hiking trips?

Training is probably the wrong word for what I used to do. I grew up playing a lot of tennis so I had an okay base of fitness, but generally speaking my preparation before decent-sized walks was a couple of extra gym sessions that weren't really targeted to hiking, a little bit of legs but just overall sessions. And generally speaking I'm a bit of a crammer in life. In the last month before a trip I'd try to do a couple of overnight hikes, but they were probably more focused on making sure my gear was okay than on fitness. So I'd class myself as winging it, to be honest.

Q: What was the big goal you set for yourself, and what was the instigator for this particular trip?

I've always read about the American thru-hikes and the various Australian ones. The Bibbulmun Track is known as probably the most accessible long-distance walk in Australia because of the facilities, so it's something I'd been researching for a couple of years. With a young family, I knew it was something I'd have to plan a few years in advance to get the time.

The goal was to do a 1,000 kilometre thru-walk, and I chose the Bibbulmun because of the infrastructure and because I wasn't sure whether a seven or eight week walk was for me. That led me to do some research on the training side, because I knew I couldn't just wing it this time, which led me to reaching out to you.

Q: When you decided to reach out, were there specific things you felt you needed help with?

I knew it wasn't going to be a year-long training block, because that's not really how I work. But I knew I'd never covered that kind of distance continuously over multiple days, so I was interested in things like walking more efficiently, which led me to a couple of your videos online. I also just tend to work better with a plan, because without one I could do the same gym session for 20 weeks and stay at exactly the same level. And on top of the fitness, I was looking for gear guidance, particularly around lightweight options, which was a bit of a whole new world for me.

Q: Tell us a little bit about the training you did through Summit Strength. What did your program look like?

A typical week included a couple of strength sessions, which were not what I was used to from a gym. They were more tailored to someone without a lot of equipment at home, using things like loaded packs. There was also a weekly mobility and recovery session, which was pretty foreign to me other than some tennis-specific stretching. Then there was tempo walking, including nose breathing, which I definitely wasn't familiar with. And then a fortnightly dedicated hike, which was good because weekends are typically taken up with kids' sport, so having those placeholders with guidance on distance and pack weight was really helpful.

Q: Was there anything in the program that was particularly different from what you'd done before?

The stretching was very different. I remember the knee-to-wall stretch, and the world's greatest stretch, both completely foreign to me. And I'd never thought to carry a weighted pack around the suburban streets, which might look strange to some people, but I'd use a coffee shop as my halfway point. It made absolute sense after doing it, and I noticed a gradual difference as the pack got heavier each week. The real focus on ankles and knees was also new territory for me, but really valuable.

Q: Were there any roadblocks along the way in your preparation, and how did you deal with them?

I think it was around the second or third week when I managed to do a grade one calf strain playing pickleball, which I'd only recently started. I was really worried and thought I'd have to delay the walk, though it was still 30 weeks out at that point. I ended up giving up the pickleball. Between the two of us we decided to delay training by a week and then tailored some exercises around what my physio was recommending, so I could gradually catch up over time. I was lucky it was only a grade one, but it was a timely reminder that having a structured program matters, because I'd have hated to pick up that calf strain on day one of the actual walk.

Q: Preparation done, training done, tell us how the trail went. Walk me through it.

I should mention that the education videos were something I got a lot of value from in the lead-up, including realising I'd been using hiking poles wrong for years. On the trail, the anticipation was definitely there and the weather was really good to start. Walking northbound on the Bibbulmun, the coast near Albany down to Denmark is probably some of the prettiest section but also some of the hardest with the sand dunes.

I was very conscious of not doing double hut days early on, except that on day two the adrenaline got the better of me and I pushed too far, which was a good reminder to slow down. I was really stoked to be out on trail, my gear was good, my supply boxes were where they should be, and I felt quite confident.

In the first two weeks I was really dedicated to looking after my body, rubbing lotion on my legs each night, doing the mobility and recovery work at camp. Then it got a bit looser after that as I started feeling part of the hiker community, making friends along the way at a similar pace.

I was genuinely taken aback by the range of ages on the track. The first person I met was a lovely 77-year-old woman doing it for the fourth time, which put a few things in perspective. The first half had all the wow moments I'd hoped for, the big karri trees, the coastline. The second half became more of a mental grind, what people call the green tunnel effect, lots of enclosed similar scenery. The mindset content I'd watched beforehand helped, and I kept myself going with badly practised singing along the way.

I had some great animal encounters too, snakes, emus, kangaroos, feral pigs. I was really lucky with the weather at Lake Maranup, which was a campsite I'd been looking forward to, and the famous canoe crossing on the Bibbulmun was a highlight, though it also happened to be one of my hardest days because of bad weather and sand dunes. Some lovely people called Wombat and Donkey helped get canoes back across for me and took photos while I paddled, which was incredibly kind. They also gave me my trail name — Jack Black, because I had music blaring as I walked into camp.

The last couple of days I deliberately slowed down to reflect on the experience and ease into thinking about normal life again. By and large the walk was absolutely amazing.

Q: What about body issues along the way?

I got blisters on day two, started taping my feet every day after that and had no further issues. The main physical challenge was around halfway through when I started getting really sore big toe joint pain, which turned out to be inflammation. It would flare up reliably once I ticked past 23 kilometres in a day. I managed it with ice and soaking in water at the huts where I could, and I ended up taking an extra unplanned rest day near Karrion Resort, which is a beautiful spot if anyone ever gets into trouble around there. I was a bit worried heading into the Donnelly River section after that because the downhill sections were punishing on the toe, but I managed it.

Q: Were there any challenges on trail you hadn't really anticipated before you set off?

I was surprised by how bored I got some days, especially towards the north. There were stretches of six or seven days where I'd only see three people, and conversations were brief. I found myself having a bit of an internal debate about whether to just head to Perth and call it done, which I was surprised by because I'd always thought any struggle would be physical rather than mental. The mindset content I'd read and watched beforehand helped more than I expected.

I also realised I'm not a fan of road walking. There was one stretch, Dog Pool Road, about 12 kilometres of straight gravel road walking, and there were some colourful words used that day. Music got me through it.

Q: When you got to the end, how did you feel and did you do anything to celebrate?

The last day is actually quite rocky and uphill for most of it going northbound, which I wasn't expecting. I took a video of myself walking up the final hill, which I watched back later, though I couldn't remember what I'd said at the time. My wife and three young boys were at the finish line, which they came down to a little early to walk the last bit with me, and I was really stoked to see them after 46 days.

I'd given myself a 50-50 chance of finishing, so I was genuinely proud. There was actually a small part of me that didn't want it to end, I could see a service station across from the finish line and briefly considered restocking and walking back the other way. We had a quick meal in Kalamunda and then spent a week in Perth for a family holiday, seeing the quokkas and the Rockingham area. I deliberately didn't fly straight back to Melbourne because even arriving into Kalamunda felt strange with all the cars and the noise. It took some adjusting.

Q: What's next on the hiking list for you?

I've got a bit of a wish list. The Heysen Trail in South Australia has moved up it, that's a bit longer than the Bibbulmun and goes through the Flinders Ranges down towards Adelaide. Beyond that, I've never been to the Dolomites and a lot of people I've met have strongly recommended hiking there. I've also had the Fan Mountains in Tajikistan and the Hunza Valley in Pakistan on my list for a long time. More immediately, I'm hoping as the boys get a bit older they'll want to come along on some of these.

Q: For anyone considering the Bibbulmun Track or a long-distance thru-hike, what advice would you give them?

One of the biggest mistakes I made was around food variety. I was very meticulous about hitting my calorie targets but basically had the same snacks every single day, and by week two or three I was giving them away to other hikers and raiding hiker boxes for anything different. If you're human and not a robot, you can't eat the same thing every day for seven weeks. Be realistic about variety.

The other thing is to allow some slack in your itinerary. I know that can be hard if you're travelling interstate or overseas for a thru-hike and are restricted by timing, but the Bibbulmun in particular is known for prescribed burns and section closures. Having a buffer means that if you're not feeling well one day, or want to slow down and enjoy somewhere, you can do it without stress.

And don't underestimate what the training beforehand can do for your enjoyment on trail. You just feel more mentally confident knowing you've done the work. On the Bibbulmun especially, with the huts, water, and toilets taken care of, you can really just focus on the walking itself — but the fitness still matters a lot.

You've booked the trip. Or maybe you're close to booking it. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a  question keeps surfacing: am I actually going to be ready for this?

That question is completely normal. And if you've got an ache or a niggle on top of it, or if your last hike left you wiped out for a week, that question can start to feel pretty loud.
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Here's a simple way to work through it. Rather than guessing, run yourself through these check-ins. They'll show you pretty quickly whether you're on track, or whether something needs to change.

Start With Your Hiking Plan for Your Adventure

​This is the first thing I do with every single hiker I work with, and it's the first thing I'd recommend to anyone training on their own.

Sit down and work out your longest day on the trail in hours, and your heaviest expected pack weight. Those are your two targets. Then look at your calendar between now and the trip, and ask yourself honestly how often you can actually get out and hike. Every weekend? Once a fortnight? Once a month? Whatever's realistic.

From there, schedule a long day hike two weeks before you leave. It should match your longest day and your heaviest pack weight, maybe with a kilo or two extra to give yourself a buffer. Then work backwards from that day hike through all your available dates, building the slowest and most gradual progression you can manage.
Realistically, the build shouldn't feel scary.

If you're looking at the plan and it feels a bit intimidating, that's a sign the progression is too steep and something needs to adjust.

Once you've got that plan sketched out, any time the nerves start creeping in, you've got something concrete to look at. Are you where you need to be right now? If yes, keep going. If not, that's useful information, because now you know what to change.

If you don't have a hiking plan yet, that's your first job. Do that before anything else.

Check Your Strength Training Is Covering the Right Areas

A lot of hikers I speak with are doing some form of strength work, which is great. But there's a difference between doing something and doing the right things.

So, are you consistently working on your quads (front of the thighs), hamstrings (back of the thighs), glutes, and calves? All four, every week?

And are you working those areas with both double-leg and single-leg exercises(or at least working towards single-leg work?) Because on the trail, you're dealing with uneven ground, step-ups, scrambles, descents, and single-leg demand is constant. Bilateral exercises only get you so far.

Finally, are those areas actually getting stronger over time? Not hitting a specific number, just moving forward. That's what matters.

If you can say yes to all of that, you're in a good place. If you're missing some of those areas, or one or two are progressing but the others have stalled, that's worth addressing.

Make Sure Your Conditioning Covers Pack Weight and Elevation

Most hikes are going to throw two big challenges at you: the weight on your back and the hills. Both need a plan.
For pack weight, do you know your target weight and are you actively building towards it? This doesn't have to be on trail. Even walking around your neighbourhood with a loaded pack once a week is enough to start conditioning your body to that extra load. Every kilo you carry adds significant demand through every single step, and that accumulates fast over a long day or a multi-day trip.

For elevation, you don't have to be doing hills all year round. But you do need to know when you're going to start introducing them and how you're going to build them up. The goal isn't just to be able to do the uphills and downhills, but to do them in a way where your breathing stays under control and you're not completely cooked by the time you reach the bottom.

And then there's the combination: can you handle elevation with your pack on, at your target weight, by the time you get to your trip? If you've got a plan that progresses towards that, great. If you don't, that's something that needs to go on the list.

What to Do If Something Isn't Ticking the Boxes
​If you've gone through all of this and things are looking good, that's genuinely reassuring. You're on track. Keep doing what you're doing.

If something's missing, though, the fix depends on where you're starting from.

If you're training on your own, this is the time to sit down and sort it out. Build a strength program that covers those four lower-body areas and progresses consistently. Build a hiking plan with a clear progression towards your target day and pack weight. Build a conditioning plan that introduces elevation and pack weight in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming.

If you're already working with a professional, it's worth having a direct conversation. Tell them about the specific demands of your trip, and ask them to map out a plan that covers those things, in writing, over the months ahead. It doesn't have to be a detailed week-by-week breakdown. Even a broad month-by-month overview is enough to show there's a plan.

If you're getting vague answers, or the plan never quite materialises, that's probably a sign you need a bit more structure than you're currently getting.

There are dozens of other factors that go into hiking preparation. Pacing, nutrition, terrain, recovery, mindset. All worth thinking about. But if you're months out and just have a question mark around your readiness, this is the right place to start.

The hikers I work with who come in with a knee that's been flaring up for years, or a hip that's never quite settled, or who just haven't trained properly before a big trip, they don't need a generic fitness program. They need something built around what hiking actually demands, and around what's specifically going on for them. That's what the Summit Online Program is built to do.
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If you're looking at a big adventure and you want someone to help you build the plan, track the progress, and make sure you actually get there confident and capable, then follow the link below to check it out. 

Yours in trekking,

​Rowan 

​Training for Everest is no small undertaking. It requires months of structured preparation, the ability to manage setbacks without burning out, and the kind of personalised support that generic fitness programs simply cannot provide. 

In this episode of the Training For Mountaineering podcast, we are joined by Summit Strength client Shika, a Sydney-based climber who recently stood on top of Mount Everest.

Shika has been climbing in South America and the Himalayas for eight years, with Everest always in the back of her mind as the ultimate goal. 

Following a successful ascent of Ama Dablam in late 2025, she spent four months building toward Everest with a personalised strength and conditioning program designed around the specific demands of high-altitude mountaineering.

In this conversation, Shika shares exactly how she trained, how she managed the competing pressures of work, and a budy life, and what it felt like to finally stand on the summit after years of preparation. 

She also speaks candidly about the physical and emotional challenges on the mountain, and what advice she would give to anyone else dreaming of a serious adventure. 

This is a fantastic conversation about confidence, consistency, and the value of having the right people in your corner.

Q: Could you give us a quick introduction - who you are, where you're based?
My name is Shika Raju. I'm based in Sydney, Australia. Over the last eight years I've been climbing mountains in South America and the Himalayas, always with one big dream in the back of my mind. And on 21st of May 2026, after years of preparation and a lot of lessons along the way, I finally stood on top of Mount Everest.

Q: The last time you were on this podcast you'd just come off the back of a successful Ama Dablam expedition. This time around, Everest was the goal. Talk me through the scenario - you're off the back of the last expedition. How long until this next climb? How were you feeling? And what did you feel like you needed to work on as you built up to Everest?

After Ama Dablam, the goal was always Everest. In fact, Everest was the reason I signed up with Summit Strength back in 2024. So everything we were doing was building up towards one objective. But what Ama Dablam did was give me confidence. I didn't treat it as just another mountain to climb. I treated it as a full dress rehearsal for Everest. I wanted to test everything, the training, the nutrition, the gear, and probably most importantly, how I responded when things got bad. So I paid close attention to what was working, what wasn't, and where there was room to improve. It was almost like gathering pieces of the puzzle before taking on Everest.
So while reaching the summit of Ama Dablam was special, the bigger win for me was coming away knowing that the training system we had put in place actually worked. By the time Everest came around, I wasn't going in hoping for the best. I was going in with a lot more confidence because we'd already done the homework.

The one thing I knew I needed to work on was hiking endurance. Although I trained for Ama Dablam, the distance between camps was shorter and the expedition itself was only a few weeks long. Carrying a heavy pack for hours was probably my biggest weakness. Coming from a running background, I was used to moving quickly and covering distance. I found those long, slow days with a heavy backpack much tougher than running a marathon. So I knew I needed to improve my endurance and go for hours, spending six or seven hours just grinding it out. Which we did, leading up to Everest.

Q: Let's talk about specifics of the training leading up to Everest. What did that training look like initially, and how did it progress? Was there anything new or different in there?

Initially it was very gradual. I remember coming back from Ama Dablam, we had a debriefing session and you were very kind, you gave me some time off and we slowly built things back in. One thing I really appreciated was that the program wasn't just handed to me. You were there to guide me throughout. We had conversations about what I could realistically fit into my week, so it always felt like a partnership rather than a one-way discussion.

Because I came back in November 2025 and Everest was in May 2026, my last training session was end of March. So we only had four months to train. But having the sessions in the app made a big difference, I could schedule them around my work and family life. For example, I'd do my runs on Saturday and then follow that with a long hike on Sunday to really load up the legs and train under fatigue. As we got closer to Everest, we gradually increased the pack weight and the duration of pack carries. But nothing was random. There was always a progression, loading and deloading. Everything had a purpose and built on what had come before. Looking back, that structure gave me a lot of confidence because I knew I wasn't just training hard. I was training smart.

Q: Was there anything new or different in there compared to previously, or was it a pretty similar route to what we had last time?

I think it was similar. It just was longer. Everything was longer in duration. But in many ways, a similar approach to what we'd done for Ama Dablam. I think that's one of the things I really appreciate about the program - we didn't suddenly reinvent everything just because the goal was Everest. We trusted what had worked before and just built on it.

What changed was really the volume. There was more emphasis on endurance, more time carrying heavier loads, and more focus on building strength and resilience over a long period. I also did back-to-back sessions to get used to training on tired legs because that's the reality of being on a mountain for weeks. And what changed was probably me. By then I had developed a lot more trust in the process. I wasn't questioning every session or wondering whether I should be doing something different. I just focused on being consistent and letting the program do its job.

Q: Through that preparation period, were there any particular roadblocks or challenges which came up? And if so, how did you work around them?

There were definitely challenges along the way, but thankfully nothing major in terms of injury - which I think was a credit to having a structured program and not trying to do too much too soon.

For me, the biggest challenge was balancing everything. During this period I was also completing my master's thesis, which involved conducting research and writing while also working full-time in a high-pressure role. There were weeks where work was demanding, times when I had university deadlines, and days when I was simply tired. I also had to learn to let go of the idea that every session had to be perfect. Sometimes life got in the way and I'd have to move sessions around within the week. Having a coach and the program really helped me because I never felt like I was failing if things didn't go to plan. There was always flexibility and a bigger picture. I could always reach out, which made a big difference.

Mentally, one of the biggest shifts for me was learning to trust the process. Early on I would sometimes wonder whether I was doing enough. But over time, as I realised that consistency matters more than perfection, I didn't worry about that too much. It was all about showing up and getting things done. Looking back, I think that's one of the reasons I arrived at Everest healthy, motivated, and genuinely excited to be there rather than feeling burnt out.