[pct-l] Training for a thru hike - it's simple

[jennifer]

What we did, and I am VERY glad we did, was hike 5 miles every other day gradually increasing our pack load till we got to what we thought we would be carrying (we did this in the park which was flat, but gravel - it was the best we could do). I found that this eased into the weight we would be carrying, and I found over 20 lbs of weight on my back and my feet were ruined trying to use light weight trail runners. So I definitely needed more heavy duty support than they gave me. Even with super feet. I am positive if I wouldn't have trained with weight in my pack I would't have made it. We would have gone home after a week, if that, because my feet would have been too painful to walk on. And we were used to the weight that first day, and I never had a blister (but I think that is more to do with taking a break often and changing out my socks for dry ones than with training :) Raytron only had one blister where his toes rubbed against each other and he got
 toe socks and fixed that. But yeah I was surprised how many people had crazy foot problems....But I would definitely reccomend training with weight in your pack and the gear you plan on using to make sure that you will be wearing the right gear!

Fembot