Travel restrictions spark epic 5 million step challenge for round-the-world adventurer and 24 fellow participants
- As Torbjorn Pedersen attempts to be the first person to visit every country without flying, he passes the time in Hong Kong with a tough challenge
Torbjorn Pedersen was having coffee with a friend when they decided to connect via their Garmin app. Immediately, it asked if they wanted to challenge each other. Little did they know it would spiral into an epic five million step challenge, ending last Sunday night, with 24 budding plodders.
“I’ve seen more of Hong Kong than I’ve seen of my own home,” Pedersen, 41, said.
Pedersen and his friend accepted Garmin’s offer and decided to see who could do the most steps in a week. Both amassed around 230,000.
“We laughed but we are competitive. So we decided to do it again and with 12 people. The winner took over 400,000 steps this time. We also decided that this time there had to be more sense. It couldn’t just be this alpha male competition.”
The group raised money for Red Cross. And still this was not enough to satiate Pedersen’s appetite for a challenge.
“We thought let’s do the ultimate one. A really hard step challenge. We invited 24 people and had the overall goal of five million steps in seven days,” Pedersen said, adding the challenge was in collaboration with the Danish Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong.
As the creator of the challenge, Pedersen thought he should try to win. He aimed for 500,000 steps, confident it would be enough to claim first place.
“It is somewhere between 13 and 14 hours walking a day. With my stride, it was about 54km per day. For someone who is not an athlete, it was tough. We had so much rain last Monday, so I was soaked and got so many blisters. But I kept walking, walking, walking.
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“Four people did more than half a million. Some of those people have full-time jobs. You have to wonder how they managed it. It’s only now I’m beginning to walk normally again. I slept well last night for the first time. I’d wake up and feel like acid was running through my feet.”
The challenge was far harder than he anticipated.
“I was interested in seeing where my limit was. I think my limit is 500,000 steps in a week,” he said.
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“My body wasn’t fit to do it. It was a mind over body thing. At one point, the mind started to ask ‘why bother? We are going to reach the five million steps any way’. So I had to push myself. On some days the sun was there and that was a killer. On some days it was the rain, the blisters. On some days, the aching.”
Pedersen hit his 500,000 target, but the winner registered over 600,000 steps. In total, the group amassed 6,368,808 steps, covering 4,596km, the equivalent of crossing the US or more than 11 per cent around the equator. They raised around HK$80,000.
For now, Pedersen has scratched an itch. But he is desperate to get on with his adventure and tick off the final countries – Palau, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu, New Zealand, Australia, Sri Lanka and The Maldives.
“I grew up in a world where everything had already been done. People have been to the top of Everest, around the world, to every continent. I felt like I was born too late. Whatever I wanted to do had already been done,” he said.
“I was quite surprised no one had got to every country without flying. I believed I could do it, and I got some friends together and did about 10 months of planning and left in 2013, hoping it can be my name in history.”
You can donate to the step challenge’s Red Cross page here.
