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| Trying to get my body ready for my early April Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike departure Album for these photos All photo albums |
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| Nursing an achilles strain |
It's important to get your body ready for a thru hike:
- REI: How To Train For Thru Hiking, Hiking Training, Training Tips and Exercises
- Early Riser: Pre-Hike Warm Up Routine
On a thru hike everything is going to hurt. It's hard to know when you should keep walking through a pain and when you need to shut your body down to avoid real injury. Everyone says to go slow to start - maybe 8-10 miles a day for weeks in order to let your body acclimate.
It's hard to go slow. You're excited. You're there to walk not sit around. You have 2200 miles to cover and if you want to finish in 6 months or so then you need to average over 12 miles a day and there will many days where, for various reasons (weather, rest, injury, logistics, etc) you won't hike any (a zero) and other days where you will hike very little (a nero). 2-3 miles an hour is pretty standard pace, so that means you'll only be hiking for about 4 hours in order to go 8-10 miles. That leaves a lot of time to sit around and think about why you're not doing what you came to do.
About 4-6 weeks into a thru hike you start getting your trail legs and eventually become a hiking machine. This is also a dangerous time. You feel great and want to walk all day. You think your body is battle hardened and capable...until it buckles suddenly and without warning under the strain.
Or your luck finally runs out and you bust yourself up on one of the thousands of slippery roots and rocks along the way. Or you fall prey to one of the other common trail maladies: lyme disease, giardia, or norovirus.
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