[pct-l] question about training

[Jeffrey Olson]

Having done numerous section hikes of two to seven weeks over the last 
30 years, I have lots of experience "starting" the trail.   I hike for x 
number of weeks, get in shape, lose 20 pounds, and then stop. 


I usually start a trip in relatively poor shape, especially as I head 
into my late 50s.  The next trip I will make more of a concerted effort 
to get my cardio-system ready.  I've learned the hiking muscles will 
come, but it's having a strong heart and extended capillary system that 
makes the first couple weeks easier. 


Just imagine that when you elevate your heart rate you are lengthening 
capillaries that terminate in the muscles.  With cardio work you are not 
only growing capillaries you are creating spaces in the muscles to 
deposit glucose, what the muscles burn. 


When I get off the couch and start hiking I spend three or four weeks 
expanding my capillary/glucose storage system.  Rather than depositing 
glucose in the creation of belly fat and love handles and cottage cheese 
butt/thighs, and worst of worst, in muscles like marbled beef, glucose 
is transported to the muscles along capillaries, ready to be burned in 
exercise.


The first three or four weeks are always fairly low mileage because I 
learned to let my body tell me when to stop for the day, even if it's 7 
miles and 2PM.  No glucose reserves in the muscles... 


I think what's happening is that at some point during the day, I've 
depleted the glucose stores in my muscles and am making my liver work 
harder - ketosis.  Ketosis has a unique smell - you know when you're 
ketotic... 


After four or five weeks, I found I was doing 15 miles by 1PM, and still 
had energy to walk - that was in 2005.   My capillary system had 
extended by miles, and glucose stores in the muscles had exponentially 
increased. 


My experience says that it is the "head games" we inflict on ourselves 
in our planning that has us expect to hike x number of miles a day.  
I've heard it over and over here that once you start hiking, you 
can/should just throw any planning you've done on how far to hike, how 
to hike, etc., out the window, or into the breeze... 


It might be that's the greatest hurdle to satisfying hiking - letting go 
of the need to be somewhere at some time, or to average x number of 
miles a day and just listen to your body.  And if you haven't done this 
before, then the learning curve will be steep and "being-in-the-moment" 
will be harder to find.  At some point most of us, even those in our 50s 
and 60s wake up inside of doing a relatively effortless 20 mpd. 


For young people with parents who worry, your big job will be to 
convince them  you are capable of doing this hike, and that your contact 
times/dates may vary by days.  I remember checking in late with my folks 
on a hike, and they hadn't thought twice about it - I remember being a 
little hurt they weren't more worried!!! 


Having started long section hikes numerous times has my planning be 
fairly minimal now.  I like to control what I eat and so have food 
shipped to me.  It's taken years and years to know what I like to eat, 
but I now do.  It only takes a couple hours now to shop for a month, and 
a couple hours to put food in baggies, and another hour or two to box 
the food and address the labels.  In 2005 I didn't start this process 
til three days before getting on the bus to Manning.  On my first long 
section hike in 1992 - planned for 75 days - it took my girlfriend and I 
two months to get everything together. 


For the absurdist perspective in long distance hiking, read Bill 
Bryson's, "A Walk in the Woods." 


Jeffrey Olson
Martin, SD