From when I was a young girl I have always enjoyed exercising. More often than not it was with a goal shared with someone else, from running Round the Bays as an 11-year-old with my cousin, to training for half marathons with my husband. There’s something about training for a goal and then sharing the achievement with someone else that makes my heart sing with the added bonus of justifying that piece of cake!
When I had children I wasn’t sure how exercise was going to fit into my life but found I could spend many a happy hour pushing children round the neighbourhood in the pushchair. In the last few years though I have been exercising by myself, which I have found a little ironic that I am out keeping fit while my children sit at home on the couch.
My daughter’s cross country earlier in the year provided an incentive to get out running together although she doesn’t share her parents love of running just yet and it was a bit of battle to get around the block.
So when a friend mentioned a group was walking Tongariro Crossing (a wee 20km hike considered by many to be one of the best one day treks in NZ ) with kids, I was super excited about the possibility of sharing that experience with my children.
I try to walk with the kids to or from school a couple of times a week, which is a good walk for a child at about 2km, but wasn’t going to cut it for working up to a 20km goal. So when I picked them up from school I started progressively walking a little further on the way home. We are lucky we have some lovely bush that we can add to our walk so (after a little grumbling at the detour) they are distracted by counting the possum traps.
Then we started making our walks (if you can call a two hour, 10km urban trek a walk) a family affair in
the weekends, with my husband joining us. We have had so much fun exploring far and wide and I really enjoyed spending a couple of hours uninterrupted time with my kids holding my hands. While it may be a challenge to get out of the house, they never complain once we get started. It’s amazing how far we can walk and the kids love saying they walked from our house to the city.
I loved sharing the sense of achievement of walking 20km with my children, and eating a piece of cake or two!
Tips for exercising with kids
- choose fun places for the kids to walk or walk to. We love walking around the local wildlife reserve and watching the birds or walking to the library and catching the bus home.
- of course a cafe always makes a walk more fun.
- my kids enjoy tracking their walks/training on an app like Mapmy run or Polarbeat.
- although I would prefer peace and quiet, thats never going to happen with kids so sometimes we will listen to music.
