Across six stages in 22 days, 96 individual participants took part in the challenge accumulating a staggering 3,683 km overall – more than enough to virtually walk or run around each of the La Trobe University campuses – Albury/Wodonga, Bendigo, Bundoora, City, Mildura, Shepparton and Sydney.
The Team La Trobe Campus to Campus Challenge was organised by La Trobe Sport in order to encourage the La Trobe community to connect and be active together as part of the ‘Lock Down with La Trobe Sport’ campaign.
While wary of the numerous challenges and restrictions facing La Trobe students and staff at the outset of the challenge, event organiser and La Trobe Sport Senior Coordinator, Sport Partnerships and Engagement, Andrew Pettigrove, said he had no doubt that the Team La Trobe community would be able to complete its goal.
“We were a little nervous at the start about setting such a large goal, but we were also confident in the Team La Trobe community banding together to achieve it,” co-event organiser Andrew Pettigrove said.
“Now that it's over, we’re so proud of what Team La Trobe has accomplished.”
Stage one began at the City campus, which saw the participants embark on a 317km journey to the Albury/Wodonga campus. With the largest participant count for a stage, the 67 contributors tallied up 533.42km – 216.42km more than required.
From Albury/Wodonga, it was off to the Bendigo campus for stage two, where it was hoped the participants could accumulate 277km. Again, this was easily achieved with an extra 163.06km achieved.
It was off to Shepparton for stage three, and with the 124km journey being the shortest of the event, it allowed participants to take advantage of the free daily online classes and regular health and wellness tips offered by La Trobe Sport.
The challenge kicked up a notch over the following two stages, with a 444km journey to Mildura preceding the challenge’s largest stage – a 1,012km journey to La Trobe’s Sydney campus.
Not only was the target to the Sydney campus reached, but an extra 130km was achieved by the participants, truly making this the biggest achievement in the challenge.
For co-event organiser and La Trobe Sport Program Delivery Supervisor, Hayden Atherton, one of the memorable moments of the challenge came from this stage.
“A memorable part of the challenge would have to be Jef Pethybridge, who completed the 27km max on the first day of stage five, a huge effort and a big contribution to the challenge,” he said.
Participants were on the home stretch for the sixth and final stage of the challenge on the trek back to the La Trobe Sport Stadium at the Bundoora campus. Although falling just short of the 861km target for the stage, the achievement of reaching the overall target kilometres was achieved nonetheless.
“We ended up easily surpassing our target of 3,035km which was really great to see; especially with the 5km radius restrictions that were put in place half way through the event, it was great to see the Team La Trobe community tackle the challenge head on,” Atherton said.
“In particular, it was really encouraging to see so many staff taking part in the challenge and focusing on their physical health and mental wellbeing in what is a tough time for so many.”
While the Lock Down with La Trobe Sport campaign may have come to an end, La Trobe Sport is pleased to announce that our free online health and fitness classes will be extended by another week (until Saturday August 29) as part of La Trobe University’s Wellness Month initiative.
For more information on how to register for our free online classes, please email sport@latrobe.edu.au.
