Training For Larapinta - Interview With Mary

In this episode, I interview Summit Strength Graduate Mary, who has recently come off a successful adventure on the Larpainta trail. Inside, we explore her training and preparation, and chat about her experience on one of Australia's most iconic trails.

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right. Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking to Summit Strength graduate, Mary, who has recently come off

[0:08] a successful trip on the Lara Pinta Trail in the outback of Australia. And she talks us a little bit about her training journey and how she came into this adventure with a few long-term limitations and how she trained and prepared and overcame or moved those limitations forward and ended up having a really successful adventure. I think this is a really interesting episode for so many people out there who may be considering longer-term journeys and a little bit nervous about their physical performance, and it is definitely incredibly inspirational. So with that being said, let's get into the episode. All right. Hello, hello, Mary, and a big welcome to the show. So great to have you here. Thanks, Rowan. Well, I'm really, really, really looking forward to this chat today because, yeah, as I was saying literally just before we started recording, I think you've got a really, really, really, not only an awesome story about what you've accomplished and what you've done, but I think it's something that's going to resonate with a lot of different hikers who listen to this podcast. I think it'll be really useful for quite a few people. So, yeah, very much looking forward to today. So, I guess to kick things off, do you just want to give us a bit of background? Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do? And what is your background in hiking?

[1:24] All right. Thanks, Rowan. I'm from the Hawkesbury Valley, west of Sydney. It's a semi-rural area on the edge of the Blue Mountains, but not right on the mountains, more the valley side of things. I'm a semi-retired nutritionist. I'm 60. My husband retired last year and life looked good for him. So I thought I think I'll move towards retiring too.

[1:46] So my hiking background is that before coming to summit I'd done four multi-day hikes of between four and eight days in Australia and overseas um and I love the experience of seeing new places I've always enjoyed traveling and but I really enjoyed learning about those places at the slower pace of actually walking through the land but my fitness let me down and I'd always opted out at lunchtime wherever possible in fact I'd selected hikes where for the most part I could opt out at lunchtime and I really struggled if the day was any longer than about three hours, three to four hours, and then I just didn't enjoy it and just dreaded continuing. I guess before we started working together and we went through the journey to kind of, I guess, turn that around and help that move forward, what was your typical approach to preparation for these types of trips?

[2:40] Well, I didn't really prepare at all because I thought that my fitness was up to it. Um I've exercised all my life um pretty consistently um and like I walk my dogs daily for about two and a half kilometers and I'd go I've been going to the gym three three times at least a week for like 40 years and so I just hadn't done any hike specific work just general fitness and I really thought that that you know I was good to go for any hike until I actually got out there.

[3:14] So what was the turning point where you decided that you did feel like you needed a bit of extra help? Like what was the specific goal we had in mind and what were the particular things you felt like you needed help with?

[3:26] Well, on one of my overseas hikes last year, almost this time last year, I was on the eight day coast to coast walk across England. And I couldn't, I was so naive about hiking that I just sort of thought, well, any hike is good to go for other than Mount Everest sort of level and I didn't realise this is actually quite a difficult and long walk but I found on those walks I couldn't handle past the three to four hour hike in a day and on a particularly steep part that went on and on I struggled mentally and physically and I just really lost the belief that I could finish the day's walk and so I realised I wasn't as fast as the other walkers because I got too puffed on any terrain and I knew if I wanted to continue to walk further in further places I needed some help going on these multi-day hikes you meet a lot of people who've traveled in all different sorts of places around the world and I was like really just just really wanting to go to some of these places but on that walk I just realized they were just out of my reach if I ever wanted to do any more difficult walks so that's when I thought I've got to find yeah I wonder if there's anyone who can help me get better. Yep, absolutely. And when we kicked off, like what was the, I know obviously you've got lots of things you want to do, what was the immediate goal that was in your sights?

[4:52] Well, the immediate goal I had was to try and walk an eight-day Larapinta trail of 100 kilometres thereabouts in the middle of Australia. Awesome, man. Yeah, and for me, we've done a couple of episodes on the Larapinta for long-time listeners. They've probably heard of it before if you're not an Aussie, but an absolute, yeah, fantastic adventure, middle of Australia,

[5:18] very rocky, very rough terrain, but absolutely beautiful. So, how good. So, tell us a little bit about this training then. So, when we started working together through Summer Strength, yeah, talk us through the training. What did it look like? You know, what was included in the program? Give us the rundown.

[5:35] Well, there were three things that were really helpful for me with the training with Summit. I really just dived in because I liked the podcasts and thought that they seemed helpful and maybe I could get all of the information put together a bit more practically for me, more specifically. But once I got into it, as I got into the program, I started to understand what the rationale behind what I was doing was. And then I got really excited that this was actually going to make a difference for me. So it was divided into three parts. There's probably a whole lot more than this, but these are the parts that stuck out to me. First, there was increasing strength, focusing on hike-specific exercises. Before I'd gone to, that's the first one, I've always gone to the gym, as I've said, always lifted weights and even lifted weights like heavier and heavier over time. But I just I don't think it had gelled that okay if I practice on lifting weights that are going to strengthen these muscles this is going to make it easier for me to go up hills but if I work on this muscle it's going to make it easier to go down hills and so suddenly it was all coming together in my head that oh this is actually going to make a big difference for my hiking am I going to make the whole trip all the trips easier and so it really focused me much more on what I was doing at the gym. So the second part was endurance and cardio.

[7:02] And so that I could keep going longer without tiring. So in the past, my cardio had practically just been walking the dogs and chasing five kids around as I raised them. And so I hadn't done a lot of cardio, I've had leg problems all my life that I'll get to later.

[7:24] And I just really, I just got tired after not too long. So Rowan had me doing a lot of exercises like both steps and exercise rowing. And that just helped my cardio endurance get much better. So I could walk and walk and walk for like six, seven, eight, nine hours without really getting a lot tighter. Third was overcoming specific physical weaknesses I'd had from previous surgeries. And so we ended up working a lot on ankles and calves to the point that I started to think that the first time for the first time that perhaps the reason I couldn't hike fast enough or far enough without tiring was not was not because of inherent weaknesses I've had all my life but rather because I'd never been given specific training for these problem areas and that's something that Summit was so much better in than a lot of the hike training programs I looked up online in that it found out what my weaknesses were and how to focus in on getting over my weaknesses so that they wouldn't be hindrances for me in the future to the extent that they had been before.

[8:41] And then on that point, if you're okay with it, would it be possible to share a little bit more specifics on that? Like what were the actual weaknesses going on and what were the actual exercises or approaches that you did to help with that when you've had some sort of a physical disability and i'll get into what that is in just a moment um over time you tend to build up internal excuses that i can't manage this or that exercise is going to be too hard for me i can't do that one um and so i had like 40 years of excuses and i've always tried harder to, overcome things but on my own but if if i ever told a gym trainer or a pt or anything look i can't do that because i've got this issue they just be okay okay well you do something different instead and that's what how i'd always handled it but at summit that's not what happened um And we started to actually find ways to work into those difficulties. So the issue with me was that I was born with hip dysplasia. And that's what... That was back in the 1960s. There's a lot of people like me in the 60s where it was not being...

[10:06] Diagnosed when a baby was born whereas these days or for the last like 30 years or more anytime when a baby's born they do all these tests on the baby immediately including the clicky hips test to check if the femur the top bone of the of the leg is in the socket of the hip properly if the hip socket has grown around it properly and for quite a large percentage of babies, it hasn't quite got there. And so the babies are put in a sort of a cast for maybe a few weeks while the hip socket continues growing around the femur properly, or sometimes up to several months. And then when they take the cast off, it's all good. And the baby develops quite normally and can walk normally. But back in the 1960s, they hadn't developed that diagnostic test in many, many country areas of Australia. And I've seen around the world too, in England and other places and um so a lot of um so what happened was that the if the hip socket hasn't formed around the femur properly um it means that the body compensates by making the leg shorter um the gait or that's the walking of that baby or child becomes like a skippity skip sort of a, walk um and the diagnosis is basically that they'll be and i was given this same diagnosis that by 40, 45, you'd have a cane and by 50, you'd be in a wheelchair.

[11:32] And indeed, I have met a lot of people my age who are in wheelchairs with that exact same thing or have terrible back pain from walking with a cane all the time. And even two or three weeks ago, I had to go to the doctor because I'd sprained the wrists and my normal doctor was on holiday. So I went to a different doctor and he's looking at my form and he says... You just told me you've sprained your wrist on a hike and you're about to go on another hike, but your form says that you've got hip dysplasia. He says, I've got many clients like you and they can barely walk in here and you've just walked in here normally. So I've really worked really hard all my life to try to keep moving.

[12:21] But at the same time, I would always end up getting like headaches and back aches and leg aches and all that sort of thing because I just couldn't, stop that so I was always back and forth to the chiropractor like every three weeks all my life pretty much I'll be to the chiropractor and that's kept me sane about three and a half months of working with Summit Strength on specific exercises to strengthen the calf muscles which had just not developed on one side due to bot surgeries that they used to try in the old days for this sort of condition um something clicked in my head um that i actually was was going to be able to start to move forward with it and it's like i think that's one of the biggest things that's happened like specifically i've got a calcified achilles tendon on one leg and developed calf muscles on the same leg as well as a shorter leg and so I couldn't do certain exercises so all my life I've been compensating resulting in imbalances that actually affected the ability to do endurance exercise without eventual pain so I think because Rowan wouldn't take no for an answer.

[13:38] In me doing certain ankle exercises foot exercises calf exercises and he didn't say oh well you're not able to do that one which everyone has said to me in the past um he'd say okay so let's just make it simpler let's make it simpler and if you can only do like three um.

[13:58] Reps in a really mild way just do it anyway and um or if you can't balance on one leg with with um your eyes shut just do it just um let's make it really simple so that you can at least do three reps and like i was just i was just so hopeless at doing so many of these exercises but i thought well i'm just going to commit to the process and just try to do them and after about well as i said it took me at least three months to think wow i am actually getting better at a lot of these things in fact i found that like balance exercises that were um something that i just thought were out of reach before i could balance fine on the right leg but the left leg was just like hopeless absolutely hopeless um i found that a slow and steady approach every day led to a lot of success which i wouldn't have thought possible and now on recent hikes i found that normal able-bodied people many are not capable of doing the balance moves that i can now easily do because we've taught we talk about these things as we go go around on hikes and like I can balance better than a lot of them so it's just um it's been really really helpful in working.

[15:14] On my own weaknesses and so now like I just went to Larapinta and hiked for um like several nine-hour days lots of seven-hour days on rough trails out in the sunshine a lot of uneven ground and I did not get one headache not one backache not one leg ache not one ankle ache nothing at all and that's just absolutely unheard of for me for my entire life.

[15:44] Wow that's so so amazing to hear mary and it's such a full credit for you for working through it all and i fully understand how frustrating it can be when you're trying to do those exercises and you're like oh my gosh this doesn't work and then oh my gosh this doesn't work or this is this and full credit for you for sticking with it because it's uh it does take so much just purely for that so let's let's take a little step back before we get into the trail and talk through that, as we always say, you know, through any type of training process, it's never a smooth sailing journey. There's always things that come up, things get in the way or whatever it may be. So during the training process itself, were there any particular roadblocks you ran into or any sort of like major challenges you faced that we haven't touched on so far? And if so, how did you go about overcoming them?

[16:29] I think the main two roadblocks were first, the mental roadblock of thinking that I was not able to do that and I would have to find some other way to compensate and it took me several months to realize that actually I can work on things I can get better and one physical one exercise physiologist did tell me years and years ago that even though I have a calcified Achilles tendon and it's been x-rayed and um every kind of ultrasound and everything to confirm that.

[17:03] She said that with very consistent exercise I should you can often get a little bit more movement back in it and since the Achilles tendon is apparently part of the um the calf muscle it's actually it is the calf muscle it's just the bottom part of it um it's that was really important to be able to go up hills and so on and not just have in the past I've only had one leg doing the job and the other leg just kind of plods along. And so –.

[17:36] I guess getting over the mental disbelief that I was able to make any improvements, I would say that by far was the biggest issue and even though Rowan didn't talk about that, didn't really say much about it at all, just the consistency with the exercises had dawned on me. It became a belief that changed for me. Once that was changed, I felt like I can change anything really if I want to put in the work. I mean, to, you know, to the extent, I don't mean I'm going to be climbing Mount Everest, but you know what I mean. I can go, I can do a lot more than I ever thought I could do before. So that was the first big challenge. The second big challenge was, as I said before, the balance exercises.

[18:23] I really just could not do it. And I think everyone in the gym must have been laughing a bit to themselves when they'd see me trying to balance on one leg for 30 seconds and falling over constantly. Um and i i just um as it gradually got better and better and better until i realized oh i'm actually doing this now i can go up to the next level um and still it is wobbly compared to the average person but it's a lot better than a lot of people and so i think they were really big roadblocks and i said to rowan at one stage what's the point of doing these balance exercises I mean when are you ever going to stand on one leg out on a trail like a stalk and um he he said it's a matter of like prior perception of knowing where you like if you step on a rock and it's a bit wobbly then that you're not going to fall over because your body's used to balancing itself and it's um and to be honest out on the Larapinta trail I felt felt the found the balancing, exercises were more helpful than just about any of the things that I'd done because I was often on uneven sort of ground and having to be on one leg for a bit longer than I would have wanted to be. So that was great. That was a big roadblock.

[19:44] I think they're the main roadblocks for me.

[19:48] So let's talk about the trip now then. So, yeah, give us the rundown. How did the trail go? Give us the journey. Give us a story. Tell us all about it. Well, I was actually really scared that this trail would be too hard for me. I'd chosen it because I've never been to the Australian desert before. Strange that I've lived here all my life and never been out there.

[20:12] And I'd just seen some pictures and heard people say just how stunningly beautiful it was. Thank you. And I'd never been to any sort of a desert where it's icy cold at night and hot in the daytime. And I just thought the whole thing just seemed like a wild adventure. But I was really scared that it would be too hard and I'd conk out in the middle of it and I'd just make a fool of myself. And that's why I worked so consistently to get ready. So first I knew it would be challenging. The roughness of the trail worried me. Would I be able to balance? Would I get hurt feet? I've had a lot of feet problems in the past, all to do tied back to the hip dysplasia. Would I fall over on uneven trails? Would I.

[20:57] Like by the second day when we were on rocks that were just so jagged coming up from Ellery Creek where there were like vertical rocks on the trail everywhere, like not just every foot or every half metre, but they're like wall-to-wall vertical rocks on trails that you just had to put your foot on them and walk across them for hours and hours and hours. And the guides actually said, right, take your hands out of the hiking pole straps because if you trip and you fall, you won't be able to get your hands out quick enough and you'll fall on your face and that's worse than falling on your hands. And that's how sort of sharp and rough it was. And so I was necessarily concerned about would I be able to cope with that. Also, I was very concerned because there was no midday out there. And I knew that would be very long days and it made it clear on the itinerary that you just had to go all day.

[22:03] And 12 kilometres was my longest comfortable walk pre-training. And I knew that I'd have to do 17 to 22 kilometre days, many days out there. I was also worried about the steep climbs. My endurance, was I just going to be exhausted the whole time? Because I hadn't coped very well in England on long, steep climbs. And so in the in the end the result was that like six and a half out of the seven days I actually found quite easy the ascents were easy for the most part and even while many of the others in the group I was with actually slowed down to very slow paces I felt these going up the inclines were easier than the summit steps um program the program that i'd done with summit training, um like at one stage we got up a steep climb that we've been warned about was a steep climb so we're going to be getting up early in the morning and getting up there before it got too warm and by the time we got through the top and the guide said okay we can sit down now and wait for everyone else to get there i was like don't we have further to go he was like no no we're here now i thought i I would have done double as much of that at the gym doing the summit strength steps exercise than this. This is like a breeze.

[23:25] So the exception was the last 15 minutes of an eight kilometre continual hill climb on the very last day. And like I'd been doing training with a friend and we'd done like a half kilometre hill climb. And I said, oh, this is going to be like Mount Sonder. She said, no, it's not. It's eight kilometres on Mount Sonder, just like this. And so lo and behold when we actually got there and did the eight kilometers I was pretty good till about six and a half and the last kilometer and a half I just had to dig deep and push on and wheel my way to the top but then I was perfectly fine I wasn't like knackered and then I was fine to walk down the next the eight kilometers back down to the bus again so um, yeah probably the hardest part for me was camping and sleeping in a sleeping bag when it was freezing cold and just coping with all the challenges of not getting the sleeping bag tangled.

[24:22] So that was it. And then outside of obviously the last challenging climb that you mentioned and the sleeping bag, were there any other major challenges you faced or anything you ran into out on the trail that you needed to overcome? I think probably the main part where I really felt at sea on this hike was that I hadn't considered how to turn up my head torch to maximum brightness before a night hike. So I did two-thirds of the night hike with a gloomy half light and tripped over quite a bit, and that was a bit scary, wandering off the trail in the semi-darkness. So just a simple, silly thing like that that I hadn't prepared for was probably the scariest part of the whole week. I felt like I prepared well for the temperature control with layers and trail nutrition, which I'd read a lot up on the podcasts and the Summit Strength information, and that turned up, that worked out really well.

[25:26] Yeah, so those were my main challenges. But when the hike was finished, I felt sad that it was over because most days I could have kept going, which was a first for me, but I felt really exhilarated that not only had I succeeded at walking 110 kilometres on a not easy trail, but it meant that with a specific training plan, I could go on to other adventures I previously felt were out of reach. So it opened up a lot of new doors. And I celebrated with four days at Kakadu with other family members, relaxing and eating. And then once I got there, I felt so tired and very hungry and spent a lot of time sleeping and eating.

[26:11] And then you mentioned that it's maybe opened up a few doors or whatever. Like, what is your plan of attack for hiking moving forward? Have you got anything else on the agenda, anything else you're aspiring to? Talk us through that. Well, going forward, I'd already booked three more overseas hikes before I went to Larapinta, but two now look to be a little bit too easy i could have picked more challenging options so i will enjoy them one's in the north of scotland and one's in um or two up there and two in together in japan um but the other third one it's in part of the european alps i can see won't be as hard as i thought it might be when i booked like before i thought wow that's going to be a real stretch but now i can see that yeah it'll be a bit of a challenge but i i think it's well within my reach now and now i'm also able to accept invitations to go on longer hikes with friends knowing that i'm better prepared to carry more load and potentially camp on hikes in the near future um i feel confident my own ability to handle hiking situations um and therefore to solo hike and I've got some solo hiking planned ahead so yeah I just feel much more better much better prepared to handle lots of new hiking situations now.

[27:36] Yeah, fantastic. You know, that's so good to hear. And in all honesty, as I think I said to you the other day, I really do think like the world's your oyster, you know, in regards to tar hiking in the sense that, you know, you've shown what you can accomplish on the Larapinta and there's just so much out there which is, you know, so within your reach. So it's going to be super interesting to see, yeah, what you end up doing, you know, in the journey ahead. So I guess for anyone listening to this today and they were like, you know what, I have been thinking about the Larapinta for a while. It has been on my list and, you know, maybe I am thinking about what I'd like to do. If anyone was considering this particular adventure, what advice would you give them?

[28:15] Whatever weaknesses you have that stop you hiking to amazing places that are not reachable by road, that there is help available to either overcome weaknesses or find ways around them in many cases, as long as you're willing to put in some consistent effort for 12 to 16 weeks to prepare.

[28:33] And the interesting thing was that the actual program that i did with summit it was not like um like this really grueling training program it started from where i was at and gradually worked up so that i didn't feel like i was really doing much more just being consistent and continuing turning up you know from my side of things it was such a pleasure having you on board um you know the whole journey. And it's been so good having you to talk through a little bit on this podcast today, because as I said before, I think, you know, a lot of people listening may very well resonate with what you've been talking about today and find it, you know, quite useful. So, I really do appreciate you taking the time to share this and give us some insight.

[29:19] So, I guess before we do, you know, wrap things up for today, and I'll let you get on with your day, was there anything else that we kind of missed in the podcast? So, anything else you'd like to potentially add or anything like that um yes i think so um first of all um if you are thinking of joint of coming along to summit strength first of all um and i've talked to many people about this um about summit so i know the sort of issues that people bring up um or they brought up with me first of all the cost of it um if you're if you're australian it just seems a lot of money because in American dollars and most people are like whoa would you pay that much but when I sat down I thought about it that paying for a three three and a half day guided walk which if you're not an experienced hiker you probably will be taking a guided walk to start with at least.

[30:14] That's what you might be paying for 16 weeks and, yet you're going to be gaining like advice and specific help that you're going to be able to use for like potentially years or decades to come. And so really when you look at it in the light of three days of a guided walk, that's like, that's not very much. It's very, to me, when I thought of it like that, it was quite very worthwhile. The next thing is that like some it works a bit differently to like a personal trainer in that it's all an online app system. You don't meet up with the trainer. I've never met Rowan at all or any of the staff and the other people because there's a number of the team members.

[31:00] So at first I thought, oh, I wonder how this is going to work because I've joined up with many online things before and some are better than others. But this actually works better or I thought it worked better than face-to-face because we had a Zoom at specific junctures in the training and communicated via the app with Monday to Friday support and was sent a lot of information that was specific to my questions to like quick little videos at three or four minutes that would answer my question a bit more fully um and also um the other thing I really liked about summit and I have tried other programs to get fitter in different areas but including hiking actually um that just didn't work for me but some it did work was because first of all um Rowan found out what my schedule was and what my exercise program.

[31:56] Already was and fitted it in around somehow it could fit into there and make a hike specific plan to fit inside my current schedule so all I ended up um altering was going to the gym half an hour earlier on the three days of the week I already went and adding one hike on the weekend and when I was at the gym I altered some of the exercises I was doing to summit's recommendations and cut out some others which didn't help with hiking and otherwise my life looked pretty much the same and I mean that is so helpful because if you have to make like some massive change where you're having to get up like three hours earlier which I I know some hiking programs you have to link up with the people living in another state or even another country in order to be a part of the exercise program.

[32:47] After a while it's really hard to keep that kind of thing up. And this just fitted inside my own schedule and so it was not difficult to keep going for the long run. So I'm just thinking that I just want to say that Summit, just the way it runs is it will really help with success. So it's really worth it's really worth um giving it a go.

[33:16] I love to hear that. And I just want to say again, Mary, thank you so much for being a part of all this. Obviously, being a part of the training journey and helping me contribute in my small way, but also coming on and sharing all of this and talking through it. And I think it's going to be super useful for a lot of people. So, thank you so much once again for coming on the show. I really do appreciate it. And yeah, really looking forward to seeing all the adventures in the months and years ahead.

[33:47] Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for inviting me on. So there we go, guys. I really do hope you've enjoyed today's episode and I really do hope you got some good insight and hope this story resonates with a few hikers out there. Last thing I will sort of say coming off the back of today, if anyone was interested in learning a little bit more about the training program that Mary used to prepare for her adventure, what you can do is you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash online. Now on that page, there's a big video which talks about this particular program, explains what it's all about, what's included. And if it does sound like something you would wanna explore about, explore a bit more, have a bit of a conversation about, there is a link on that page where you can book a free call with our team. We can have a bit of a chat, learn about you, your training, your hiking, your aspirations, and any limitations you may have and see if and how we may be able to help you out. The call is completely free. So if you were interested, feel free to book on. We can have a bit of a chat and take it from there. So you can check it out at summitstrength.com.au online. But aside from that, thank you so much for listening. I really do hope you've enjoyed today's episode and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

​Want to get
fit, strong and resilient
for your hiking adventures?

Check out
The Online Summit Program