Mike's Hike

I've committed myself to carrying out a crazy idea. I am going to walk around New Zealand's South Island. This walk is about 2100km long. All the details of the route aren't sorted yet so I don't know the exact length. I have 71 days to do it.

I'm not going alone. My 2 dogs will be coming with me but they will share the walking between them while I walk all the way. I also will have need a support crew to drive a van (when I find one).

I hope to raise at least $20,000 for Plunket. The walk will probably start in August 2010 but it may need to be delayed until 2011. 2011 has some appeal as it means I will have my 60th birthday during the walk.

This all started out when I joined my co-workers in a team in the Global Corporate Challenge in 2007. This is a virtual walk around the world. I managed to lift my walking from about 6,000 steps a day average to 12,000. When it finished I had thoughts of doing a virtual walk around New Zealand "visiting" every branch of the bank. Nothing came of it and within months I was back to old habits - walking the dogs 2 or 3 times a week, even though I fooled myself I did it most days, riding the bus all the way to work. In 2009 I was again part of a GCC team and this time I'm doing much better with an average of 18,000 steps a day. Once again I thought about setting up my virtual walk around New Zealand to keep me motivated after the 5 months of the GCC finished. I started plotting out the course around the South Island on maps and then had a crazy idea. Instead of walking it virtually I would do it in reality.

I've now told lots of people and shared my idea with the bank's sponsorship programme controller so there is no backing out now. I need to lift my game from walking 18,000 steps a day to 50 - 70,000 steps a day.