Sergey Lukyanov, 60, has come to Rio de Janeiro to watch the Olympic Games and then further go to be back to St. Petersburg some months later within his incredible two-year walk race tour across the globe. He reached one of the milestones of his expedition for which he had been preparing his entire life, the aim worth even an early marriage.
On 1st of April, 2015, Sergey Lukyanov, then 58, was standing at the Dvortsovaya Square in St. Petersburg. A high tourist season was still yet to come, but the Hermitage museum has never been short of visitors. Lukyanov wasn’t a visitor, he was a traveler, and of an unusual kind. With just a 5-kilo backpack, he started a race walk which now has ended up in Rio and is to end finally at the same square on 1st of April, 2017.
Sergey Lukyanov started exercising and training race walk in 1965, since then he has participated in a huge number of walking tournaments and competitions as well as day and two-day walk race “marathons”. Among his achievements are St. Petersburg – Moscow (700 km, 6 days), St. Petersburg – Vyborg (200 km), around the Sea of Marmara (800 km, 12 days), trans-European (2500 km, 50 days) and other you-could-hardly-imagine routes.
But all this darkens in comparison to his entire life’s great idea: to walk 32 000 km around the world for two years.
How is he doing that? Well, the first step toward the aim is not the first move he did at that day in April 2015. Lukyanov started preparing long before. He chose professions that could provide an earlier retirement, of firefighter and subway builder, and, besides that, he early … married as he said in an interview with the Gorod magazine.
After retirement, he built his expedition with his manager and packed his backpack with only strictly needed things. The route started in St. Petersburg goes through Moscow, cities of Kazan, Ufa, Petropavlovsk (Kazakhstan), Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Chita, then countries such as China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, then by plane to Santiago (Chile), Argentina and Rio. On 1st of April, 2016 Lukyanov was in Singapore and in early August he reached the capital of the Olympic Games. Thus he needed 496 days to get to Rio. Then by plane he would reach Dakar, further to the north and from Lisbon he will move to St. Petersburg.
Some equipment and food advices from Sergey Lukyanov (might be useful for hiking and surviving):
• The most important thing in a backpack is a sleeping-bag;
• The weight of the backpack should be no more than 5 kilos;
• Food: Coca-cola (namely Coca, not Pepsi!), sneakers, cheese, bread and meat;
• A pair of training shoes is enough for 3,000 km;
• Walking should be along the road and in the opposite direction to traffic;
• Clothes should be equipped with beam deflectors.