Walking for a cause

Words: Adrienne Matthews

Every week hairdresser Jenny Manton walks sixty-five to seventy-five kilometres, training hard for the 2022 Oxfam Trailwalker event as part of a team of four which will take place in Taranaki in March.

Since 2006 the event has been raising money to help local communities in the Pacific lift themselves out of poverty. When Jenny first read about it on Facebook, her heartstrings were soundly pulled. “I have never been much into fitness and couldn’t offer money but felt very strongly I wanted to do something to help people in need and, through getting sponsorship from anyone who wanted to offer support, this was a way I could do it,” Jenny says.

Last year Jenny and niece Sara Mischeski successfully completed the fifty kilometre event but this year the stakes are much higher with the hundred kilometre Trailwalker route in their sights. They will be joined by Jenny’s husband Andre and friend Eve Lives.

“The project is so far out of my comfort zone,” says Jenny. “Starting the training was daunting. I began in lockdown, walking the streets of my local Richmond community. It’s a real mind game. You start out doing five kilometres which is hard enough, wondering how on earth you are ever going to manage twenty times that but have to keep the goal of what the money you raise will do for people firmly in your mind.” She now walks four to five days a week with her major training day on Sunday. The mind boggles when she describes some of her routes such as Richmond to Wakefield then into Nelson and home again, a distance of around fifty-five kilometres. Other epic walks have included Richmond to Kaiteriteri. “I’m not a fitness freak and only a beginner-tramper so this has been a huge mental and physical challenge,” says Jenny. “I am always super conscious of the condition of my body. The slightest irritation on my feet can cause blisters. I have to monitor my posture carefully or I can get really sore hips. Eating right is important. I’ve discovered that regular small amounts of food keep my energy levels up.” On the fourteen hour walk to Kaiteriteri she stopped for two ten minute rest breaks and a slightly longer one for lunch. Anything she takes with her, including extra clothing necessary for a change in weather, has to be carefully considered so that no extra weight is carried.

The project is so far out of my comfort zone.

The actual event will take at least twenty-four hours and go through the night which will provide extra challenges. “We will be covering a wide variety of terrain including parks, farmland, beaches and roads. By then I will have to be used to walking by spotlight. It certainly slows things down,” says Jenny. “This is a huge personal challenge,” she says, “and there are times I wonder why I am crazy enough to do it when I already have my full-on business, HAIR-itage Studio to run, but it is good to be part of something much bigger than myself that I know will make a positive, life-changing difference to people who really need it.”